Speaking of honor roll...(sorry to go pretty far off topic, but I've got no where else to blow off this steam)
In my shool, if you're in the normal level classes, and you get an 85% or above in all of your normal level classes, you get honor roll. But! If you're in the higher level classes (like myself), the standard for honor roll is still 85% in all classes! So this makes me look retarded just because I have like an 83 in one of my classes, and the kids who are in the normal level classes are in "honor roll" from getting 85% or above...There's something not right about that. I'm obviously smarter than the normal level class kids with the same grade, or else I would be in advanced classes, yet they get rewarded more than I. Class-A bullshit.
I know how it feels Agentcel. My high school made no distinction between kids enrolled in honor classes and those who took easy classes. My graduating class of 350 had about 25 4.0 GPAs, most of which were lazy ass kids who never took an honor class. I took almost all honor classes except for maybe 3 or 4 my entire 4 years, and I had a 3.76 GPA at graduation. I was only a few kids away from being out of the top 1/3 of my class. That of course affects how you apply for colleges and scholarships.
But hey, I'm pretty sure my life is a lot better than most of those guys, I know many of them didn't really go anywhere after college. So, it all works out in the end.
I zoomed into the glasses as well. Going back to the honor roll discussion-- I thought that AP classes were automatically counted more than regular classes? I thought it was a national rule, not just in a school district... and I'm pretty sure they're not just telling me that and that this is actually true.
In any case, Agentcel, the trick to having a good ranking is to go to an arts school, and be in one of the laziest classes the school has seen in a while (for example, the senior class of '08). So lazy that even though the school has a lot of the smartest kids in the district (that's not saying much, since Dallas Independent School District is HUGE and overall really crappy), most of the students either take all of the regular classes and sleep through them, don't bother to do any homework or regular assignments given to them, or both. On top of this, take tons of the music classes (that happen to be REQUIRED by the arts school) that will give you free 100s as long as you don't suck at music (which, being that you have to audition to get into the school, is highly unlikely. This is being proven wrong year after year) to boost your GPA.
After all of this, you can afford to blow off (in MOST people's definitions of blowing off, meaning, putting minimum effort into school but getting enough done to pass your classes) your first 2 years of school, find a potential spouse, decide that grades might actually be important your junior year, maintain grades that show a little bit of effort for the next 2 years, and end up ranked 13 in a class of 159.
As an added bonus, make sure this school is in Texas. This way, because Texas has some weird law that if you're in the top 10% of your graduating class you're automatically accepted into any Texas Public College or University, you can actually manage to get into the University of Texas, without really doing too much.
I would have put this in the success thread... but I really don't see it as much of a success. I just got really lucky, haha. But really, that law and the fact that the students at my school are lazy as hell has made life so much easier for me this past year. I hope you can manage to run into something that will make things a little easier for you, it's a really nice feeling!
High school has no significant meaning. I was one of the smartest kids in my school judging by test scores, but ranked near the bottom of my class.
I still went to 2 colleges which both accepted me proper despite my high school's attempts to sabotage me by not properly releasing the records beyond my bad GPA and terrible grades. I just took tests to prove I was in fact quite intelligent and they let me in just the same. I went to 2 schools and got very high GPA's at both. I got a nice portfolio built up and I don't think I've had an employer ever more than glance at the transcripts I have in it. They were far more interested in all the projects I had which showcased my actual abilities.
I'd say the big secret is that employers don't give two shits about how you did in college beyond that you graduated and they care even less about high school. They want to know what you can do. Do some awesome work. Put it in a portfolio. Present yourself well and you can get a good job.
Don't fret over classes and grades too much right now. The purpose of college is to give you time, motivation, and direction to work on cool things that you can show off to potential employers. The purpose of high school is to get you ready for college. School before that isn't much more than babysitting. The depressing part comes in when you realise that the cool stuff you did in college just gets your foot in the door at best and you won't be able to get a good job until you have some actual work experience to prove your worth, but that's getting into a whole other topic.
X speaks the truth. It's the dark, ugly truth most students don't know about the real world: grades don't mean shit.
Employers care about what you've done and what you can do. Most people in positions of hiring power know how the grading system can be flawed, and they don't put much thought into it. Experience is infinitely more important.
I'm not telling you to go fail all your classes, just don't shit yourself over an A-.
Just keep in mind that stupid educational programs that offer scholarships and what not look at grades and race almost exclusively. If you want free college, yeah, freak out over that A- and low class rank.
LONDON -- "It's very dark. It's almost black." May Woodward, an office worker in central London, is holding an Oreo cookie in her hands. It's the first time she has ever seen one "in the flesh as opposed to on an American TV show," and she's not sure she likes what she sees. "It's the color of wet mud!" she complains. "And the bit ... looks like toothpaste rather than cream."
She twists and turns the cookie in her fingers, staring at it from every angle with a screwed-up look on her face that seems to say, "Gross!" not "Mmm, cookie time." You could be forgiven for thinking she's handling some dangerous alien element, Cookie Kryptonite, say, rather than one of the best-known biscuits in the Western hemisphere.
She bites, chews, raises an eyebrow, chews some more.
"OK, I get it," she says, finally. "I can see the attraction. It's very sweet." Suddenly she seems to change her mind. "Actually it's too sweet ... it's becoming mushy," she says, alarmed as tentative chewing becomes frantic munching to wolf the cookie down.
My impromptu taste test in Leicester Square is now attracting the attention of puzzled passersby giving us weird looks.
Ms. Woodward's verdict is that the Oreo is "too ... damp."
I tell her that, according to the ads, it should be "dunked" before eaten.
"In tea?" she asks. (Dipping biscuits we Brits call all cookies "biscuits' in a steaming hot cup of tea is an almost sacred ritual here.)
"No, in milk," I reply.
"Milk?! A biscuit dipped in milk? Who does that?"
"Apparently Americans do," I explain.
"Well, let them," she say dismissively. "I won't be doing it anytime soon." And with that, she disappears into a throng of pedestrians, nonplussed by what has been labeled here as "America's Favorite Cookie."
" " "
The Oreo has landed in Britain. And it is giving rise to a furious Battle of the Biscuits.
The classic sandwich cookie may be as familiar and nostalgia-inducing as, well, Mom's apple pie for Americans, but the majority of us here have never seen or tasted one. Until now.
Now, Kraft, the makers of what some Brits refer to as "the black-and-white biscuit" is launching it across the United Kingdom in an advertising campaign that makes it hard for anyone who lives and breathes to avoid the Oreo message. Big blue-and-white posters on the sides of our iconic red buses implore us to "Twist Lick Dunk." A new TV commercial shows a young boy teaching his scruffy dog how to eat an Oreo: "First you twist it. Then you lick it. Mmm. Then you dunk it," he says, sploshing his Oreo into a glass of milk. This will be the first time that many Brits have seen a biscuit dipped in milk.
Supermarkets nationwide are promoting Oreos right at the checkout stands where the wait gives shoppers time to contemplate the curiosity.
Kraft hopes the Oreo will capture Britain as it has America (with 419 billion Oreos sold since they first appeared in 1912).
Since its 1996 launch in China, the Oreo has become the No. 1 biscuit in that vast country. But the Chinese Oreo is very different from the American one it has less sugar and it is a crispy cream-filled wafer. The version being launched in Britain is the exact same as the American one. Only the packaging has changed. At 74 pence ($1.44) a go, we Brits will get our Oreos in a long, thin tube.
No biscuit in Britain is as dark as an Oreo even the classic Bourbon, two thin chocolate biscuits with a chocolate filling, is light brown. So admits Jocelyn McNulty, director of UK biscuits at Kraft Foods.
Some Britons might think the Oreo is strange-looking at first. But she's confident that they will fall for the Oreo and what she calls the "child-like, delightful ritual" of licking the cream and dipping it in milk.
Others disagree. One tabloid newspaper has attacked those "Yanks" who are trying to "snatch the biscuit from our mouths and replace [it] with a tackier piece of inferior confectionary." Another described the Oreo as "an imperial juggernaut of a biscuit backed by one of the world's biggest food companies."
Blimey. Will we Brits soon be twisting, licking, and dunking like there's no tomorrow or erecting biscuit embargoes against the colonial cookie?
" " "
Britain is more than just a "biscuit market," warns Stuart Payne, author of "A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down." "There is a long history and culture in the way we consume our biscuits, and Oreo will have an uphill struggle convincing us to change our ways," he says.
We Brits are biscuit-mad. The British Department of Trade and Industry estimates that $3.1 billion is spent on biscuits here annually, and one newspaper estimated that the average Briton eats 1.5 tons of biscuits and cakes in his lifetime. There's the aforementioned chocolatey Bourbon; the Custard Cream, a vanilla-flavored biscuit with a baroque design stamped on it; the Rich Tea, a plain biscuit perfect for dunking in hot tea or coffee; the Jammie Dodger, a round shortbread sandwich of sticky raspberry jam. (My mouth watered as I typed that sentence.)
"Some of these biscuits have a history of 150 years," says Mr. Payne. He describes British biscuits as "thoroughbreds" specially designed in a Darwinian process of the survival of the dippiest over generations to suit British tastes. For example, he notes, "Our love of tea-dipping has influenced the selection of flour and the temperature at which biscuits are baked. Our biscuits are built for dunking."
Yet the Oreo, because of its high-sugar content, is "woeful" when it comes to being dunked in tea, he says. "In my experience, it dissolves. It's not a survivor in tea terms like the British biscuit is."
Eating biscuits in a certain way is part of British culture, says Payne. It goes back to the days when lots of people worked in factories, and the only thing they could squeeze into their 10-minute breaks was "a cup of tea and two Rich Tea biscuits." Biscuits had to be sturdy and satisfy hunger.
Payne's not convinced that Oreo can take on such a deep-rooted culture in which only the toughest, tea-complementing biscuits survive, in a society where offering someone a plate of Rich Tea, Custard Creams, or Jammie Dodgers is a way of expressing friendship, love, and concern.
" " "
Yet in a taste test in Borehamwood, north London, I found plenty of Oreo fans.
"They are absolutely yummy," said Anita Rawal, a personal assistant. "Our whole family likes them. My mother-in-law had to send them from Nepal before they were available here."
It seems that younger kids not so attached to the old Rich Tea culture, are especially keen on the new black-and-white invader. "My kid loves them he could eat them all day," observes Shak Shakir, a sales consultant.
Still, Faizaan Sackett, a recruitment consultant, has found himself "raging" at Oreo ads on buses, seeing them as part of "the American invasion of snacks.
"Before we know it, the next generation of kids will not know the word biscuit at all," he grumbles. "Whether it's fast food, TV chat-shows, or cookies, we must resist all that is American for the sake of our own souls."
" " "
Back near Leicester Square in a small supermarket, a woman takes a tube of Oreos off the shelf, briefly reads the label, and plops it in her shopping basket. I wonder if she knows that she has just unwittingly fired a shot in the cookie war. Probably not. She may just like to try a different sort of snack every now and then.
Other countries don't need tolerance.
But this is a little distressing. I'm surprised that people would shoot something down so quickly based on the suggested usage from one ad. Are they really so unimaginative over there that they can't consider eating it in their own way, or even just on its own. I've never really liked dunking cookies in milk, I just eat them. Oddly, I had no idea it was a British thing, I've dunked cookies in tea before. I don't know if I saw it somewhere or just came up with it myself. I've done it with coffee, too.
The hell? We've had Oreos in the UK for years now, although not as popular, they've still been here.
Although the dark colour does mean that people don't know they're chocolate flavoured. Plus I hate that ad. I hate the little shit they put in it. Contemptible little fucker he is.
And Behemoth, the thing is that people are used to doing certain things with their biscuits here. It'd be like an ad on chinese TV saying that to enjoy these cookies you need to embrace democracy or something.
He was saving the dog's life. Oreos have such rich and chocolaty flavor, that the dog would've been dead in 2 seconds.
Also, that announcer at the end sounds like a pedophile.
And Behemoth, the thing is that people are used to doing certain things with their biscuits here. It'd be like an ad on chinese TV saying that to enjoy these cookies you need to embrace democracy or something.
That seems like a rather extreme analogy. I've never been to the U.K., so I guess I'll just have to take your word for it. Over here, if something tastes good, we eat it in whatever fashion suits us.
Comments
In my shool, if you're in the normal level classes, and you get an 85% or above in all of your normal level classes, you get honor roll. But! If you're in the higher level classes (like myself), the standard for honor roll is still 85% in all classes! So this makes me look retarded just because I have like an 83 in one of my classes, and the kids who are in the normal level classes are in "honor roll" from getting 85% or above...There's something not right about that. I'm obviously smarter than the normal level class kids with the same grade, or else I would be in advanced classes, yet they get rewarded more than I. Class-A bullshit.
But hey, I'm pretty sure my life is a lot better than most of those guys, I know many of them didn't really go anywhere after college. So, it all works out in the end.
What's this thread about again?
Michel Gondry Entertained For Days By New Cardboard Box
I'd pay to go hang out in Gondry's cardboard box. Wonder if he's explored its potential as a time machine, transmogrifier and duplicator.
In any case, Agentcel, the trick to having a good ranking is to go to an arts school, and be in one of the laziest classes the school has seen in a while (for example, the senior class of '08). So lazy that even though the school has a lot of the smartest kids in the district (that's not saying much, since Dallas Independent School District is HUGE and overall really crappy), most of the students either take all of the regular classes and sleep through them, don't bother to do any homework or regular assignments given to them, or both. On top of this, take tons of the music classes (that happen to be REQUIRED by the arts school) that will give you free 100s as long as you don't suck at music (which, being that you have to audition to get into the school, is highly unlikely. This is being proven wrong year after year) to boost your GPA.
After all of this, you can afford to blow off (in MOST people's definitions of blowing off, meaning, putting minimum effort into school but getting enough done to pass your classes) your first 2 years of school, find a potential spouse, decide that grades might actually be important your junior year, maintain grades that show a little bit of effort for the next 2 years, and end up ranked 13 in a class of 159.
As an added bonus, make sure this school is in Texas. This way, because Texas has some weird law that if you're in the top 10% of your graduating class you're automatically accepted into any Texas Public College or University, you can actually manage to get into the University of Texas, without really doing too much.
I would have put this in the success thread... but I really don't see it as much of a success. I just got really lucky, haha. But really, that law and the fact that the students at my school are lazy as hell has made life so much easier for me this past year. I hope you can manage to run into something that will make things a little easier for you, it's a really nice feeling!
I still went to 2 colleges which both accepted me proper despite my high school's attempts to sabotage me by not properly releasing the records beyond my bad GPA and terrible grades. I just took tests to prove I was in fact quite intelligent and they let me in just the same. I went to 2 schools and got very high GPA's at both. I got a nice portfolio built up and I don't think I've had an employer ever more than glance at the transcripts I have in it. They were far more interested in all the projects I had which showcased my actual abilities.
I'd say the big secret is that employers don't give two shits about how you did in college beyond that you graduated and they care even less about high school. They want to know what you can do. Do some awesome work. Put it in a portfolio. Present yourself well and you can get a good job.
Don't fret over classes and grades too much right now. The purpose of college is to give you time, motivation, and direction to work on cool things that you can show off to potential employers. The purpose of high school is to get you ready for college. School before that isn't much more than babysitting. The depressing part comes in when you realise that the cool stuff you did in college just gets your foot in the door at best and you won't be able to get a good job until you have some actual work experience to prove your worth, but that's getting into a whole other topic.
Employers care about what you've done and what you can do. Most people in positions of hiring power know how the grading system can be flawed, and they don't put much thought into it. Experience is infinitely more important.
I'm not telling you to go fail all your classes, just don't shit yourself over an A-.
'Color of Wet Mud!' Oreos Invade England
But this is a little distressing. I'm surprised that people would shoot something down so quickly based on the suggested usage from one ad. Are they really so unimaginative over there that they can't consider eating it in their own way, or even just on its own. I've never really liked dunking cookies in milk, I just eat them. Oddly, I had no idea it was a British thing, I've dunked cookies in tea before. I don't know if I saw it somewhere or just came up with it myself. I've done it with coffee, too.
Although the dark colour does mean that people don't know they're chocolate flavoured. Plus I hate that ad. I hate the little shit they put in it. Contemptible little fucker he is.
And Behemoth, the thing is that people are used to doing certain things with their biscuits here. It'd be like an ad on chinese TV saying that to enjoy these cookies you need to embrace democracy or something.
Also, that announcer at the end sounds like a pedophile.
That seems like a rather extreme analogy. I've never been to the U.K., so I guess I'll just have to take your word for it. Over here, if something tastes good, we eat it in whatever fashion suits us.
Also, has anyone else successfully twisted an oreo in two? It always breaks for me