school, colleges, and the future

I wrote this on my Tumblr a while ago. So I'm just using it now.

With the schedule thing happening last week, it felt like a really uncomfortable rush of decisions. For that week, people are planning for their future and the main, which also seems to be the ONLY topic going on in conversations is what classes your friends are going to take. Everyone’s throwing around suggestions to each other like ‘TAKE THIS, TAKE THAT! NO DON’T TAKE THAT I HEARD IT WAS HELLA HARD.” And me? Well. I’m just in the background, confused and dazed because I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do either. To be honest, it kinda sucks being like that. All of the people around me seem to at least have an idea of what they want/are going to take next year, and it seems like I’m the only one who doesn’t really know. Fuck man. The deadline for the form is a bit unclear to me too; some people say it was this Monday and I’ve heard that it’s this Friday. I’m gonna choose to believe that it’s due Friday because I still haven’t done counseling. But I still have a recurring thought in my head that, maybe I shouldn’t turn it in. Maybe I should just let the school pick my classes for me. It’s basically what I did last year, and I’m pretty okay with it. Hell, I still don’t even know.

Concerning all that shit, a conversation on Thursday with Sutherland was enlightening. He said some things that.. well, seem to have made my thought process clearer about what I’m going to do in the future. One of the things he said was that colleges were beginning to devalue AP classes. This really makes sense to me because well, imagine this. A shitload of people take AP classes as is, right? But will that really stand out to a college? If all a college sees in applications is ‘I took __ AP classes” over and over again, it’s basically become a common thing. The same concept as money, perhaps. The more you have of it, the less valuable it gets. All of the people taking so many APs confuse me. AP Physics, AP Calc, AP Stats, APUSH, APES, and so on. I’m pretty sure they aren’t interested in all of those subjects at once. The purpose of an AP is to expand your knowledge. Say you really like math, it makes sense if you plan on taking AP Calculus or AP Stats. But it doesn’t make a bit of sense if you’re taking APUSH too. APs seem to have evolved into something that’s like ‘HEY LOOK AT ME I’M REALLY SMART.’ or just something that’ll ‘make you look good’ in college applications. But among other things, Sutherland also helped me in the subject of picking a college.

People seem to have the idea that attending a good college equals having a good job. Well, what’s the definition of a good college? Is it some college with super high standards or an Ivy league? Does popular mean good? Personally, I don’t think so. My definition of a good college is a college where it best suits your interest. Think about it. Why take a subject if you aren’t even interested in it? Just because it looks good, right? I don’t know, but I guess it could be a legit reason. It just seems like you’re pushing yourself into studying a subject that you don’t even like in the first place. Which in case, is a total waste of time. I guess what I’m trying to say is, before you pick a college, you should at least have an idea of what your interests are and pick a college that best suits that interest. For example, if you’re interested in art.. well, you’d obviously go to an art school. In medicine, a medical school. In law, then law school. If you know what you like, it’s a lot easier figuring out what your profession could be. It’s like, why bother going to a “good” college that’s really strong in mathematics when your main interest is science? I don’t know, I know my main idea, but I find it hard to explain.