On the Logical Fallicies of Self-Torment

There are three more days left in the school year, and five more days until I go to California for college visits. There is still a mountain of schoolwork to be done before the end of the school year. And there is just one more summer separating me from upperclassman status.

Now is, I believe, as good a time as any to reflect on why we, high school students, torture ourselves so much for the sake of good grades and "respectable" extracurricular lists. Why, I ask myself, do students who demonstrate no personal interest in writing, business, or science force themselves to slog through AP English, AP Economics, or AP Biology when they could very well spend their time doing something they truly enjoy?

In all honesty, where is the resident musical prodigy going when he or she takes AP Biology despite their conviction that their calling in life is as a concert performer, not a doctor? Does it really make sense for the average high school student to push themselves to the limit with a full- or mostly-AP schedule while also insisting on a veritable goldmine of extracurricular activities and personal accomplishments? At what point, I ask, is enough enough? High school students are practically killing themselves left, right, and center for the sake of the perfect transcript-but is all that self-torture worth it?

To be frank, I have little right to complain about overachieving, high-performing, academic robots; some in my school might say that I myself am one. However, as the prospect of a full AP schedule looms ahead of me in my junior year while I feel my college chances paradoxically plummeting, I have come to increasingly question the value of the AP schedule, especially when it detracts from one's own opportunities to experience life.

Just a little something for parents to brood upon and students to keep in mind as they continue on the headlong rush towards Ivy League fame, glamour, and glory.

-nn.

Freudian Typographical Error (FTE)

In my AP English Literature class, we have a class blog. The URL for this blog is www.wvaplithardin.blogspot.com; "wv" standing for "Westview", the name of my school; "aplit" standing for "AP Literature", the class the blog is intended for; and "hardin" being the last name of my teacher, Mr. Hardin.

However, whenever I type this URL, I end up typing "www.wvaplithard.blogspot.com".

It used to be that I thought that was just a stupid mistake, like typing "its" instead of "it's" or "wierd" instead of "weird" in Microsoft Word, because you know that Word auto-fixes those little errors, anyway.

But then it occured to me that maybe there's something else at work.

Everyone has heard of Sigmund Freud: he of the psychoanalytic school of thought in psychology, the originator of "ego, id, and superego", and, of course, the Freudian slip, where one unconsciously gives voice to their true thoughts without realizing it. Freud, of course, thought these slips of tongue were deeply insightful glimpses into a person's true, uncensored thoughts, and thus, their importance was heavily emphasized in his theories of the mind.

Then I started wondering--what does typing that "hard" in www.wvaplithard.blogspot.com signify about me?

But of course, it's too obvious: I think AP Lit is ridiculously "hard".

Surprising? No. Depressing? Yes. Significant? I think so.

People make typos every day and think nothing of it. But maybe, just maybe, there really is something to those little mistakes we make. Maybe, just maybe, they really do illuminate something about our deepest, most secret selves.

And that's all I have for you today.

-nn.