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It's the digital equivalent of forgetting why you've entered a room, Gil Zardon.
I once forgot to eat for eight days...
Every couple of hours my stomach would yell at me to get food, but I'd go to the kitchen, forget what I was doing, and just go curl up with a book and a mug of tea. Cause dang if Chomsky didn't have interesting things to say...
In a similar vein, I once forgot to sleep for 62 hours... Simply because I'd folded some clothes on my bed before stowing them... Forgot to stow them... And stopped seeing my bed as a bed...
In another similar vein, I once took a shower... in which I went through an entire bottle of shampoo. I washed my hair I don't know how many times... And then I'd forget if I'd done so and just do it again to be sure...
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. I honestly don't know how I've gotten through life so far. ^_^
You are a medical marvel, Z. My body won't let me go without sleep for more than 8 hours before forcing the issue.
Nah, at the time I was still in school. And was also in the habit of carrying around a rather large thermos of black tea, which I had to refilll almost constantly. ^_^
Also, if I wasn't horribly sleep deprived I had a tendency to think about the material presented by my teachers... Which would lead to me asking far too many questions... Which would lead to my summary expulsion from the class...
It was a necessity born of my inherent belligerence. ^_^
I'd generally sleep eight hours out of every forty, which kept me just tired enough to avoid trouble... While awake enough to remember what order my classes were in. Usually.
Don't question the authorities. You'll give the sheeple ideas!
Went without sleep for about 3 days once. That was.... interesting. I think the auditory hallucinations were my favourite part of the whole experience.
I didn't question their authority, (as I never recognized it in the first place) I questioned their teachings.
I'd be told two and two was four, and I'd start asking why we use a base ten system when base twelve was so much more convenient.
I'd be told I had maths in the morning, and I'd start asking why school started so early, when it seemed apparent to me that proper rest was the largest indicator of scholastic success.
I'd be told that our school was named after a certain A.C. Reynolds, and I'd start asking after who that fellow was and why we named a school after him.
To be honest though, the problem was never what my questions were, it was the sheer quantity of them. After all, how is a teacher to teach forty disinterested youths when bombarded with questions every two seconds?
Also, my tendency towards low class slang, long hair, and general stoner vibe probably didn't help.
P.S. I'll try not to bore y'all with more of this, as I've tendency to rant about my school days.
I have minor auditory hallucinations ordinarily. For me the coolest thing was the crippling paranoia.
Well in contrast to your school days, I think I slept through most of mine. My most vivid memory is of waking up with a start, head on the desk, with my history teacher's head lying on the opposite side of the desk mockingly. Even back then I felt they were teaching me to pass an exam, not to learn for the sake of learning. I think that's the biggest problem with the whole shebang. As I suppose is true of most people, I've learned so much more since finishing my A-levels than I ever did at school.
Yup. Thanks to decades of people who really have no teaching background at all making incredibly ill-informed decisions about what should be taught and how it should be assessed, we are rapidly approaching a state where you might as well just get people to memorize sections of the phone book and recite them.
Exams are really quite bad if you want to actually judge someone's knowledge of a subject. They don't lend themselves well at all to in-depth analysis questions and leave a lot to be desired as they essentially condense a year's worth of study into a 2 hour window on a day where for all the examiner knows you could have a bad case of the flu. They perpetuate the idea that knowing loads of stuff is the same as intelligence and promote an entirely false idea of learning and education, namely that learning stuff is like pouring water into a jug.
The best kind of education, in terms of actually promoting the kinds of skills people would need as adults and to become well-rounded people would focus more on how to learn. Unfortunately such a system would be very, very expensive.
My most vivid memory is of having three police officers hauled in to arrest me thirty minutes before school even started. ^_^
And that was at the high school I eventually graduated from, as opposed to the two I got kicked out of.
I don't recall ever waking up with a start... I did wake up several hours after the end of classes on occasion though. ^_^
As for teaching for an exam... I have no idea. I just sat around and read fiction books, so I don't remember any of my classes, or even the names of most of my teachers. I picked enough up to ace any exams they threw at me just because I had perfect attendance. Excluding the many, many suspensions of course.
In fact, where I live, suspensions don't count as "excused absences" so you have to make up attendance if you get suspended enough. I actually failed an entire semester in my sophomore year because I didn't realize this. ^_^
...sorry. I just said I wouldn't bore you with my rants.
More than expensive, the problems are much deeper. There are too many variables regarding an individuals capacity to dedicate themselves to the prospect of learning. I've seen firsthand people that end up dropping out of school just because they're too busy working to make ends meet. The problem is systemic. All of our problems are piled on top of each other like a game of jenga. And at the bottom of it all, is a democracy that is naught but a joke. Ignoring current political problems. (campaign finance, gerrymandering, election rigging, the indefensible obscenity of a perpetual two party system, etc.) One finds that even our constitution is horribly flawed. I mean seriously, why does the electoral college exist? the very notion of a system in which a president can be elected with 78% of the population voting against him can't even be called a democracy. Three times we've elected presidents against an absolute majority. Most recently with a certain Bush junior... Who's election back at the turn of the millennium is its' own can of worms.
What I'm trying to say, is that the problem is deeper than just with the schools themselves, and far deeper than any mere lack of funding.
Archenomia and Canaltia
Makes sense. ^_^
I was somehow under the impression that you were mentioning him as an ambassador forgot to add to the list. ^_^
I don't think we need to be in too much of a hurry though. Canada seems super chill about the whole thing. ^_^
I'll keep you in mind though. ^_^
I define my high schooling as stupid due to the following:
I was forced to attend both Calculus and Phys Ed during the last 80 days of my school year even though I passed my AP exam a month earlier and I was one of the best athletes in my school.
Attendence is utter bullshit. So is schooling. I learner far more outside of school than I ever learned in it.
And I happen to be a teacher now. Outside the US thankfully.
Gil zardon and Canaltia
Hey, 
Frieden-und Freudenland is one of the least authoritarian countries in Forest!!!
We, Frieden-und Freudenlandians, are celebrating right now!
Because they can!
Not by jumping into the ocean, that much is certain!
Shalottes celebrate different events in different ways, as in all cultures. Their most recent nationwide celebration would have been the Shalotte New Year, which takes place on 1st November. If the weather is good enough to go outside (or rather, not bad enough to be forced to stay inside), in settlements it's marked by big bonfires, troupes of col'tir-daen playing relevant folk music in the street, dancing and the like.
Yay! I'm impressed that I managed to get so low on that as well, only a couple above you. I guess aside from economic stuff, Caracasusians can do pretty much whatever the hell they like.
Dear Journal:
After 34 grueling hours of trying to stay adrift on my jumbo suitcase, I awoke to a sudden jolt. My suitcase burst open as it hit a jagged rock on the shore of one of the most pristine islands I've ever laid eyes on. I paddled ashore and kissed the sand. I rubbed my swollen eyes to find the natives throwing a grand celebration in honor of my arrival. I've made the right decision.
Esterild, Shalotte, Frieden-und Freudenland, Dazed butterflies, and 1 otherCanaltia
The natives welcomed the bear-costumed man. One of them, who was a follower of an obscure belief system - suggested that the bear-suited man must be thrown into the volcano in order to appease the Supreme God of Forest Animals.
The natives started cheering...
I'm really sorry, but I'm busy again IRL and won't manage to find time for being an ambassador in Canada :/ The list of puppets and ambassadors will be ready this week, though.
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