The beauty and curse of Language

Blue! Baby! Purple! Hippo! Umbrella! 

Nuances. Pictures in your head. Imagination.

The possibilities are endless with any language. It's what's good about words. It's also what's bad.

We almost got to the issue in French class, during which insecure people were endlessly questioning the studentteacher about which answer is "correct" and how to answer in future tests.  "What if..." "What if..."

There is no solution. What makes language great is that interpretation, past experiences and imagination varies from person to person. I admit, it's also a bitch sometimes when misunderstandings occur, but if you can't live with that, stop using words and speak only Math. (Danny will be more than willing to help, I'm sure) There, a 2 is a 2, no matter the context.

Also, if the debate had persisted, perhaps the issue of the counterproductivity of reading comprehension tests would have emerged as well. It's absolutely normal that one person does not interpret a work in exactly the same way as the next.  But, reading tests absolutely want one specific answer, and in that way, education dulls the imagination like nothing else.

There are standard meanings for certain things, but past the basic necessities to understanding, is it really beneficial to allow yourself to be limited by some bozo who didn't even write the text and therefore can't possibly know exactly what the author meant but who decides which answers are "right" anyways?

People Giving Up.

5 years of IB. 5 years of endless hours producing BS, making links, sounding more knowledgeable than we really are, putting up with the stress, and I digress before you develop the need to see a shrink.

You'd think some people after all this time would have learned something more than just how to make professional sounding sentences and digging up grey matter to find even the darkest of links. Everytime you get through a difficult project, sleepless nights, a stressful and disastrous presentation, something should click. You should learn from it.  

One thing you could have learned, among the innumerable—except maybe the lesson about procrastination (let's keep it real eh)— is to not give up. We hit a few walls, and every time, we dug a hole, put up a ladder, blew the wall up. Proof: all of us are still here aren't we? It'll be easier and easier to give up as the end approaches. But you shouldn't. Think of it as a test of character. 5 years of hard work, and you're going to take a nap before the finish line and let the tortoise win? What the hell is this? What are you worth then?

Yet, there are indeed people giving up in various classes and being a general ass in class and ignoring class etiquette.

Worse, it's not "stop working harder and working smarter". Letting go of the ones that you don't need and focusing on the ones you need in CEGEP is a passable excuse in certain cases. But no, they're letting go in every subject and predictably, preventing others from learning because of their disruptions in class. 

Going through IB isn't just about the BS. If it was, it'd be long gone by now. I'd like to think it's also supposed to build a little moral character no? A little development on the personal side? 
In this sense, some people have failed the IB. They gave up right after their *conditional* acceptance into CEGEP. Giving up before the end. Needless to say, they might impact the bottom rather spectacularly. You don't want to be one of those people.


I'll leave you to ponder on this:

A parachute seller once said: If it doesn't work, bring it back and I'll give you a new one.