The end of school has always come early for me, at least much earlier than for everyone else. In fact, throughout my four years at TJ, I will have experienced the magical month known as June for no more than a handful of days. I have already said my goodbye to the school building as a high school student for the last time, and I have mixed feelings.
High school as a whole was definitely a positive experience, especially being at TJ. I doubt I would have been as well prepared for the rest of my life at any other school. The common sentiments about the school are all true. The teachers here are amazing compared to those elsewhere. The community is something unparalleled across the nation. The sheer amount of technology that we have access to is astounding. And the amount of work that everyone puts in is great to look at.
But I'm not sorry to leave. Senior year has been a trip from distaste to being downright sick of the school. Maybe it was a bad sense of planning; I had saved the requirements I really didn't want to do until senior year. But I don't think so. I spent the academics fair last year browsing the choices for my fourth history credit, and hit on History of Science and Ideas. Back then it struck me as an amazing concept, and indeed it turned out to be one of my favorite classes throughout the year.
So what is it that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth? It was the atmosphere of the place. Throughout my first three years of attending TJ, I saw a student body of people who diligently applied themselves to everything that they did. Maybe the seniors did a little bit less work, but what they did do they did with a passion that I could admire. This year I haven't seen that.
After college applications were submitted, I saw something that made me lose respect for many people at this school. Left and right, students were dropping the extracurriculars that they had worked hard to build up for the past three years. I realized that no, they were not actually passionate about the endeavors, but were just doing it as a way to add another line to their college application. That thought sickened me.
A friend of mine told me that he decided against a college because it was too much like TJ. The daily routine was wake up, go to class, do problem sets, go to sleep. Honestly, I couldn't agree more. Here at TJ, I don't see anybody thinking to themselves, “This would be a great project, let's work on it together!” In the past, I know it's happened. That kind of thinking is what created TjBash, Kings of Chaos, Intranet and many other great projects that we still enjoy today. Where is the entrepreneurial spirit that drove TJ students of yore? All I see now is “Ugh, time to do this dumb project for English.”
So many seniors did math team just for college.
ReplyDeleteAnd even some freshmen. A lot of them only go to math team if it "counts" for something.
I don't think its a function of the school so much as a function of the year. I was once talking to a friend about how much I liked TJ, and how I would love to send my own kids there one day. He responded that I should mull that over a little bit, that I had such a great time in part because I was in the Class of 09. And it's true. If I had been in your year, I would probably have been likewise disgusted.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm not even sure it's their fault, per se. I think you'd be surprised, but a whole lot of people behave this way because they don't realize that they even can be passionate about something subconsciously (I'm sure everyone can imagine being passionate about something). Lots of people grew up only knowing the competitive aspect of things, and they never really thought about anything else. It's correlated, I think, in some part (but not exactly) to how well people know the path they're going to follow when entering college.
On a less somber note, glhf at USAICO and MOSP.
ReplyDeleteArvind: It's correlated, I think, in some part (but not exactly) to how well people know the path they're going to follow when entering college.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the path you're going to follow when entering college really has to do with being passionate a lot something. A lot of people are passionate about things that they do not plan to pursue as a career.
On another note, I wish I knew what path I want to take. So many choices, so little time to do everything.
AND YEAH GOOD LUCK MAKE IOI [duh] AND IMO :D
I fully agree with what you said about the detriment of the atmosphere of the school. I can't describe how annoyed I've gotten by some of the members of the senior class who used to seem so passionate about extracurricular activities who just dropped them during second semester.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, good luck at the 9001 really smart things you're doing this summer and then at MIT and make sure to come back and visit TJ next year xD.
You know what, I've tried commenting several times on this post, but I end up deleting it and not posting it because I can't think of a constructive way to phrase my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteInstead, I'm just going to say that we missed you at ARML yesterday, and I'll echo the latter half of everyone's posts and wish you the best of luck at the IOI and IMO.
I think seniors slacking in some sense has to do with fitting in. Everyone else is slacking, so you feel like you should as well or else you're weird (?).
ReplyDelete@Arvind, Jenny
"Knowing" what path you're going to follow when you enter college doesn't seem particularly meaningful to me, as it's almost certainly going to change. I don't think I could have ever predicted that I'd be doing what I'm currently doing at the beginning of college.
I agree with Jacob. I used to actually work hard in middle school but it always pissed me off that there were people writing their papers during lunch and getting higher grades than me. I thought that would change at TJ but it didnt and i got sucked in somehow :P
ReplyDeleteWriting a paper during lunch doesn't correlate with not working hard. It could just mean that you don't care much about that subject (or spend so much time at home working on other things that you don't have much time to work on actual school work).
ReplyDeleteI'm of the opinion that English is actually a useful subject, so I worked fairly hard on English in high school (which I assume is the subject we're talking about, since we were talking about papers and it's high school), but there definitely exist subjects where doing the work during lunch is the optimal strategy.
After writing this, I realized that everyone is going to take this the wrong way and think that I condone slacking off in classes. Er...I guess don't do that? What I actually condone is prioritizing work based on actual benefit rather than external performance metrics (although on some level external performance metrics factor into benefit since they can lead to increased future opportunities).