Escandalo 2

My temper is easy to alter. It was altered today. I entered my AP Macroeconomics class which takes place during 4th period and I sat down. There was a boy sitting across the room from me that was still finishing an exam for the period prior to mine. He called me. He was taking a test for his government class and he shouted," Hey, Alex! You'll know this. Come!" Out of curiosity, I walked toward his desk and he handed me a paper and pointed at three questions. I read them each several times and overlooked the answer choices. I did not know the answers and I simply responded with, " I don't know them." He then proceeded to respond with a comment that had benevolent intentions but that pained me like a thorn pains skin. He said," But you're supposed to be like the smartest person in the whole world." I did not look at him. I am not the smartest person in the world. I will never be the smartest person in the world because that is extremely subjective. One person might be amazing at Calculus but horrible at Biology. Just because I have achieved decent grades throughout high school does not mean that I will know everything. I am not a computer. I am not google. I do not have an infinite amount of knowledge. I am not an encyclopedia with information from the letter A to the letter Z. I let it drift. I let the anger dilute like a drop of sugar would dilute and dissolve in water. However, in the next ten minutes, something similar occurred again. We were handed a test. I was angered not only because I did not know anything on my test but because I did not recall the teacher teaching us anything on the exam. I do not recall her doing it. I recall doing book work. Yes, I could learn from a book. Yes, but it does not engage me. It does not allow me to wrap myself around the subject and appreciate it. Book work makes me distant from the content. Defining vocabulary terms does not stimulate me to learn. So there I was sitting on a desk looking straight down at a paper that might as well been scribbles or Chinese. Everybody turned to me. Everybody turned to the imaginary knowledge that I had on Economics. WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT ECONOMICS? NOT ENOUGH! And definitely not enough to fill the vain, hurtful, and unrealistic expectations of a class full of ignorant teenagers. I am not trying to be offensive but they are ignorant because they expect me to know everything. When they look at me yearning for answers that I do not have and will not have, because I cannot grow knowledge out of nothing, I answer, " I do not know anything!" They look at me with wide smiles. They smile because they cannot believe that the perfect student does not know the answers to a pathetic quiz. The great, powerful student has fallen. The great future Princetonian has met her match: a 15 question quiz on demand and supply in economics.

We all sit there powerless. They beg the teacher to give them answers. They whimper with their teenage voices that it isn't fair. Simultaneously, they fill their papers with guesses, guesses that have been discussed various times. It is incredulous how so much could happen in such a small classroom with a teacher present. I guess it shouldn't be so difficult to believe since the human cell could do so many things with its size and resources. It should not be so hard to believe that the teacher is in a classroom and she intentionally chooses to ignore the many voices that are transferring answers from one person to the next. As if being "blind" to the cheating did not cripple the students enough, she chooses to give us clues. She chooses to eliminate two answers per question. She tells us that answer choice C and D are not correct for question 1. She goes down the line until she gets to question 4. She decides to skip that one because it is "easy." The students protest because they do not know the answer to number 4 either. Beggars can't be choosers, right? She says, " You take what you get." We take the answers that you give us. Thank you for the answers. Thank you for stripping us of the great habit of learning. Thank you for making our lives easier. Thank you. You have truly taught us what the great American Public School System is all about.

The American Public System has turned into a battle. It has always been a battle of who gets the highest grades, yes, but this battle is different. Who will win? Your integrity or your need to maintain a decent grade point average? Do you choose to obtain the answers from your classmates and get an A in order to stay in the top ten percent? Or do you choose to be a good person and sink while everyone else gets to the top by cheating? HOW DO WE CHOOSE? If you choose your integrity, you lose your validity. Universities see a transcript. They see a sloppy D or a shiny A. They do not see integrity or honesty. They do not see the snickering students at the back finding the answers on their very smart phones. They do not see the teachers pretending to be blind or the teachers that think they are helping students with their grades. Universities see a letter. They do not see the story behind the letter. So, what is it? Your integrity or your future?

Escandalo 1

I am listening to boleros at this moment and I enjoy them greatly. I find it indulging. I feel hopeful yet hopeless. I have been reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and I must say that it has kept me sedated? I have been under a bit of pain. I am numb at the moment. I poured my heart out. I poured it and I squeezed until there was nothing left. I was romantic in thought and action. I guess I can flashback to the occasion where I left the contents of my heart to someone else. I guess I didn't completely leave them all cause I still feel the pain, the neglect, the distance, and the longing. I do not want to feel any of it anymore. I know I still feel it. I know that sometimes I believe that I do not care anymore but then why in the world would I still dream of him? Why do I find myself comfort eating all the time? Why do I find myself driving in solitude and listening the most poetic love songs? WHY IN THE WORLD DO I ALWAYS FEEL THE NEED TO ASK FOR HIS OPINION?  I was sitting in church today listening to a priest preach about how God was the truth to everything. How God is the path to life. How he is everything and the question in the mind, aside from the constant arguments to the priest's preaching, was I wonder if Mario believes the Bible is based on a true story. How vain of a question is that? The priest had good intentions. I honestly don't believe he did an adequate job at the interpretation of the bible. He was very hesitant about what he was saying and his entire preach did not sum up to a whole point. It was very unorganized, I guess you could say, just like this blog entry. Anyway, on a day in April, I told him. I told him how I smiled just by thinking about him, how I loved his mind, how I wanted him to go to Princeton because of us, how I was afraid that he would fall for a Harvard girl, how I didn't want to be telling him all that stuff because it was extremely selfish, how I knew that I saw him at Harvard but that every part of me wished to see him at Princeton... Of course all those arguments were to no avail because we are not going to the same school. I don't really care about that. I didn't want him to change his decision for me. That would have pained me. A few days later, I also sent him a book. I sent him my favorite book which I thought was a nice gesture. I wrote him a pathetic letter, a letter not full of challenging vocabulary. It was a letter full of pleas and stupid recollections of moments prior to that letter. It was a hopeful letter, a letter for the future, just like John Legend's "Love in the Future" album. I just found it disappointing that after doing all that, communication between us ceased. Well, he did spontaneously text me one day and told me that one of my pictures made his mouth drop. But, how is that of any worth? I do not seek to make his mouth drop because of something that I cannot control. I cannot control what I inherited from my parents. I want his mouth to drop because my thought process surprises him, because my mind is rich, because he finds me spontaneous. I also do not want him to stop texting me for weeks. I do not know if his intentions are frivolous or sincere and full of promise. I have a feeling they're frivolous but part of me convinces another part of me that he is incapable of doing any harm.I mentioned earlier that I was hopeful but at the same time hopeless because I am hopeful that I can stop thinking of him as something more than a friend but I am also hopeless that nothing is ever going to happen between us. I wanted to at least give it a try. I wanted to share a kiss. I wanted to get to know him and I wanted to be his most intimate relation. I am afraid that it won't happen though. In fact, while I am writing this, his thoughts might be fixed on a girl. A girl whose existence is unknown to me but of whose existence could be everything to him. I know I can live without him. I am just scared that this unpopped firework will ruin any type of love future in my path. Whatever, I guess. It happens. The most ardent loves do not always reach their full potential and maybe I am just expecting a million dollars when I would only be getting a thousand. I'll see what happens, but one things for sure, I am not texting first. If he does EVER text me again, I will try my best not to answer. A taste of his own medicine wouldn't be so harmful, in my opinion. GOODNIGHT, I guess.