12 XII 2001 - 21:02 - de_ludo3

Sit down, because you won't believe what I have to tell you.

I am done with the homework that is due through the second half of Friday.

Perhaps you are one of those who doesn't fully appreciate the significance of this. That's all right. But I ask you to look at the time I am writing this entry.

Yep, that's right. 9:02 PM on a weeknight. This is unheard of. Most days I write at 11 or so - and I am nowhere near done with my homework at that point. (I usually haven't started.)

And I had a cello lesson today. I mean, is this great or what? I am basking in the not-having-to-do-anythingness except, if I'm smart, I'll get ahead on those billion personal projects of mine so I can feel like I have something I'm doing for myself, you know?

As an aside, I'm really proud of you, Raych.

Now. What I don't like about this week - a bit of explanation, now. Our finals used to be after break. This was nice for me, because it meant I had all of break to study, and then we would get intersemester break something like two weeks after Christmas, and it would be all happy and lovely and there would be "Dead Week," the week before finals during which teachers are not supposed to assign drastically new material, and there would be "Reading Day," the option review sessions that I would go to about an hour of and then decide to leave, leaving the rest of the day to - well, you know, screw around to my heart's content.

Well, that was then. My school has since changed its schedule (I'm convinced it's only to foil the students and destroy any chance at any balance of happiness they might have) so that we have finals before the break. What does this mean?

Well, for one thing, it means our semester is shorter. Which means that teachers who have been around for fifteen years are now trying to cram their old lesson plans into a period of time that is shorter by about two and a half weeks. This is bad because, well, it's bad. Classes fast bad, means I actually have to do some thinking (god forbid). (All right, I enjoy doing the thinking. But I would like to be able to relax a little, you know, before I have to start applying myself.) Then. "Dead Week" is cut out because we obviously don't have time for a whole week if the semester is already shorter, so that becomes "Dead Days" which are conflated with Reading Day. Yep. Mandatory review sessions which occur during classes on the two days before finals = tomorrow and Friday.

Now the really great part: because our school thinks "oh! review! more review is good!" it wants our long-block classes to be on those review days. Except our long-block classes take place on Tuesday and Thursday. So what do we do?

It's obvious: we shuffle the week around! So we have all seven of our classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (as opposed to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and three or four of our classes on Thursday and Friday (Tuesday/Thursday).

First, this screws up any hope you have of making your after-school schedule regular. Normally, you get out of school at 3:05 on Monday and Wednesday, 3 on Tuesday and Thursday, and 2:45 on Friday. But because we've reshuffled the week, we get out at 3:05 on Monday and Tuesday, 2:45 on Wednesday, 1:40 on Thursday, and 11:40 on Friday.

All right, all right, so it's not so bad. But it's change! Change is bad! Change makes things difficult! Difficulty is bad and is to be avoided whenever possible! I am going to stop using exclamation points now before I give myself another reason to be hysterical!

But more importantly, it screws up your homework balance. See, on Monday night, you have only three or four classes the next day. So you only really have to do four or three classes' worth of homework. You can do a little more, say, for the classes that you don't have until Wednesday. But you can do less than your full seven classes' worth.

Is that possible with the new schedule? Noooo. There is absolutely no spacing at all, which means that the entire student population of the school is staying up until 12:30 and probably beyond, trying to get seven classes' worth of homework in for the next day all at once.

Yes, I am overly frustrated by this; yes, I am aware that this matters so much less than I seem to think it does. But I don't care about that, for I am annoyed.

Why am I annoyed? Because the SFSYO is only now getting its act together for Peter And The Wolf and so we had an extra rehearsal scheduled for before our concert on Saturday. All well and good, because extra rehearsals are usually on Thursday nights, and that's the night before review, which means I don't need to worry about homework, right?

Wrong! I don't have to drive three hours to get to orchestra, which is completely irrelevant to the point which I'm making so I will stop now! It is wrong because our conductor has to be out of town on Thursday! So they switch it to - you guessed it - Tuesday night, and wow, that happens to be a night where I am already unhappy about having to do the big pile of homework that I have to do!

But anyway, I'm done with homework now, and Adam updated, and I can go type in Gaelic because, well, I'm a freak who enjoys typing in languages he doesn't understand.

I'll be going now.

J

(hugs Raych)