The cleanup and publicization of a formerly private brainstorm. This title sounds like gibberish.

So when you've come this far and found so many things to whine about throughout your educational journey, you'd probably end up wanting to at least attempt to lend a hand at fixing some of these problems. Now that I'm about to enter college, I've been looking at ways to integrate the spirit of this blog into my career, whether this occurs in my future job or a side project. To start, here's a cleaner, more professional version of a private outline I made explaining the most prominent general problems I've observed throughout high school and want to help solve, mainly revolving around a theme of initiative and talent. (These observations are NOT necessarily factually correct, if it's even possible for them to be.) If you're reading this, it's probably because I asked you to, so feel free to shoot me any suggestions.

• Before I state this observation, let's set a definition: "Type 1" initiative = initiative taken in an activity that exists within an institution such as a school or a community organization, and "Type 2" initiative = initiation of an activity outside of an institution. From my observation, Type 1 initiative is encouraged more, and in the long run it is rewarded and publicized more than Type 2 initiative until a Type 2 project becomes very successful on its own. But obviously, it's not easy to attain that level of success without the kind of support structure that automatically comes with a preexisting activity/group that is connected to an institution.
• It may be easy to simply ask anyone for help in developing an idea, but it isn't always easy to find the perfect resources or collaborators, especially if one lacks an aforementioned support structure. Imagine if it were as easy as an internet search to find mentors, collaborators, or even advice--yet Google usually does not do a good job at this. The fear of starting something by oneself due to the difficulty of finding help is a major deterrent of starting anything at all. If I ever made a startup, it would be a website where one could outline any kind of project, seek help, and build a group of people to fall back on. If you know of anything like this that already exists, tell me. I know there's Craiglist and Github but there should be something tailored to ideas, and ideas in GENERAL. Generality isn't always a bad thing.
• People are often judged too much on what they've done in the past, or who they were, rather than what they're trying to get done, or who they are now. And I'm not talking about murderers on Death Row or anything. That's another story.
• Families, schools, and even after school programs and summer camps sometimes take too much control over young children in the assumption that they can't think for themselves. To an extent, it's true that kids can't make the smartest decisions alone, but sometimes they are barred from making basic decisions that affect their own lives (such as choosing between signing up for piano lessons or dance lessons). Many children are indirectly taught that their opinions and requests are insignificant. Adults often doubt young peoples' creativity and insight.

As you could probably tell, I'm interested in encouraging expression and inventiveness and making every drop of it count in all types of people. I don't know if I'll ever be able to apply my major in statistics to this vision, but it's important to me either way, and it would be cool if I could utilize technology to help give a lift to people with talent and imagination. But anyway...it's so up in the air right now. This is just the beginning of me doing stuff with my life for once. Cool.

A letter to the editor that I wrote for my school paper that is relevant to this blog...

I wrote this last month and somehow didn't think about posting it here until now. I just graduated from high school yesterday, and I, like many other high school seniors, had to go through the dilemma of pleasing myself or pleasing admissions officers. Luckily, I stuck with the former, but I felt the need to reassure other potentially struggling college applicants of the benefits of doing so.

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This is for anyone preparing to apply to college or doubting their lack of so-called “credentials” before or after the college application process.

When I was a freshman, I was directionless, whiny, and inflexible. Even after I realized this a few months too late, I spent nearly three years pacing around trying to get to where I am now as a senior. So, where am I now? You could argue that I haven't gotten anywhere at all, or that I've even gone backwards -- after all, I stopped going to one of the two clubs I was involved in, and I just gained my first leadership position a few months ago. As of yet, I have absolutely no proof that I have ambition or the ability to take initiative, and plenty of proof that I'm useless. Others may see this as an issue -- but I refuse to.

What I’ve told you are my external (lack of) credentials. Yet in reality, the time I spent staring at a wall and thinking have brought me to the insanely satisfying last six months in which I've become more understanding of myself and what I want to do with my life than ever before. The only problem is that this epiphany hasn't externally manifested itself just yet, and it completely missed my college application deadlines. Had this moment happened a few years earlier instead of now, almost everything on my applications would have been strikingly better, but what about me would have actually changed? Nothing. Had I interrupted my self-assured period of idiocy to embellish my application, what progress would I have made in getting to this moment? None.

One major yet probably irreparable flaw of college applications is that they only provide a blurry snapshot of people who are animated and constantly changing. It’s an unfair game of timing: some people’s ambitions are going to ripen before the Common App comes out while others’ are not, and there are colleges that will turn down people that they suspect fall into the latter category. Don’t bother letting this intimidate or guilt-trip you off a path that you have a good gut feeling about. The college application process constitutes a window of time set at a definite point in your life, whereas the discovery of your niche could happen at any moment and may not necessarily coincide with that window. Simply put, college applications were not designed to suit nature. If you hurry to create a marketable yet ingenuine identity for yourself when you know you need more time to realize your true identity, or if you scrap the better idea for the speedier one, you may be shutting yourself out from your own potential.

Though you may have to make a few sacrifices when it comes to any competitive application, the risk from not getting into a “reach” school is probably less than the risk from turning too far away from your destination, even if that destination is unspecified as of now. So, to future applicants, aim for matches that are likely to accept you for what you’ve done so far. This way, you’ll secure a foundation to start with. Additionally, the more choices you make in favor of personal development rather than in favor of simply looking impressive, the more you’ll be able to attribute any rejections to the admission process’ inability to fully understand where you’re headed, and the less of a reason you’ll have to feel guilty about the rejections. (After all, there’s nothing better than being blameless!)

Regardless of how you will approach (or how you already approached) the whole ordeal, though, there’s no better way to proceed into the future than to start actively being the boss of your future now. This means letting your aspirational prime happen whenever it’s ready to happen, but also taking whatever actions you deem necessary to maximize the satisfaction you receive once it does happen.

So go as slowly and surely as you want.

Potential solution to AP-induced all-nighters AND inability to soak in the material??? maybe...I don't know, you tell me.

Exactly one year after the last long, tedious rant on this stupid blog, I'm dropping another one...uuuuggghh...

(TL;DR at bottom.)

Throughout high school, I've taken some well-taught and well-structured AP classes, as well as some that were the dead opposite of that. I've been keeping mental note of things I would do differently if I were a teacher since about fifth grade, so I'm going to spill a few mental notes about teaching AP classes. I have no idea what teachers have to do to get AP certified or about the extent of requirements they must fulfill while teaching the course, but in an ideal world, I'd like what I write here to be applied to both AP's standards and to teachers' personal choices.

• Although AP exams are designed to allow only a short amount of time for each problem, practice and preparation for the exam should not completely model after the exam's time limits--at least not during the beginning of the course. If the large majority of a student's practice consists of doing problems quickly rather than accurately, it will become a challenge for them to understand the material well enough to do the problem both quickly and accurately on the exam. Understanding should be the initial goal, and once that's mastered, speed can come in. (This applies mainly to science/math subjects, but writing can also be improved this way.)

• Side note: This is no excuse for struggling students not to seek problems/material to study slowly and surely on their own time, but if they are already receiving loads of work, how are they going to find time* to self-study on top of assigned work and doing other things that matter to them? (More on a homework solution below.)

• Consider replacing agonizingly long problem sets consisting of the same, typical type of problem with short sets made of more challenging/more varied problems that may not all be likely to appear on the exam but that will provide a deeper understanding of the material. If the quantity of practice probems is reduced, but the amount of rigor and variety is increased, students will be spending their time more efficiently rather than wasting it on hundreds of repetitive problems yet still not understanding the material. This would lead to a less superficial understanding of the material, and would reduce the need for students to seek additional, hard-to-find material to cover what the class failed to cover.

• Question that may arise from this: "Isn't an AP student's responsibility to independently seek resources to supplement what the teacher provides to them?" Yes, but this doesn't give teachers an excuse to make the class time-consuming and simultaneously superficial. Independence can be exercised within the course, not just outside of it, which brings me to my next point.

• If AP classes are supposed to model after college courses and focus heavily on independent learning, why are so many teachers still assigning things like key term sheets with CCQs and making them graded so students are forced to do them? Everyone has their own learning style, some more minimal or crazy than others, yet many inflexible AP classes are not accomodating to this fact. Diminishing unnecessary homework bulk will provide more freedom and time for students to learn the way they prefer, at a pace that they prefer. It would open up more space for getting help after school, and even self-studying if necessary.(Of course, pace still must be monitored and reinforced, just not ridiculously so.) This would satisfy the "independent learning" requirement.

• In my school, I have the reputation of being one of those students who always does their homework on time and rarely procrastinates. The reason why I get it done right away is that I'm the type of person who simply can't enjoy themselves knowing that there's unneeded work in the way. Notice how I'm only talking about "unneeded" work. Work that consumes time yet contributes little or nothing to my learning process, like sitting in a chair for half an hour trying to think of an insightful connection to a minor, abstract APUSH vocab word just because your teacher decided to make it a grade, actually hurts my learning process. Maybe for some, it would be helpful. That's fine. But don't make it required. Assign notes for a homework grade but have reasonable flexibility over the style and length--a basis for learning that each student can customize to fit their needs and schedules.

*If you're thinking, "If you dumb kids could learn time management, all your problems would be solved", yes, this might apply to students with hefty but manageable workloads or schedules, but once the workload gets large enough and you still want to maintain your grades, you're scientifically going to have to sacrifice something, be it sleep, your social life, a massive groundbreaking invention (who knows) that you're trying to draft, or even time to just...think. (Woah, teens THINK? Mind-blowing, right?) Even if you manage to fit 28 hours worth of activity into 24 hours, you would still sacrifice the quality of the activity.

TL;DR: If AP classes were cut down on the amount of homework assigned while increasing the amount of variety and challengingness in assignments, as well as giving students more personalized control over how they do the learning, the classes could maintain college-level difficulty while saving students' time, increasing students' understanding, and introducing college-level freedom that the classes previously lacked.

Nice. Even my TL;DR was too long to read.