The World vs America

I remember...
A's being 100-90
B: 89-80
C: 79-70
D:69-60
E: WTF, mate?
F: 59 or lower

EDIT: Yeah yeah, fixed the number.

 

Same except that D was actually 69-60

Until I went to my second year at college (transferred after first year) then it was
A: 100-90
B: 89-80
C: 79-70
F: 69-0
And that's if the class wasn't required for your major. If it was then prepare your anus
A: 100-90
B: 89-80
F: 79-0

Get a C or D? Fuck you! Take it again! SO MANY EMOTIONS!

And people wonder why I'm not in school right now.

 

A chat on another thread reminded me of something…

American currency is so damn cryptic compared to most other places. Coins being relatively worthless, One dollar bills, the money being all the same colour and easily crumpled/damaged. I always end up looking like an idiot at the till whenever I go down to the states.

 

Speaking of coins being somewhat worthless (unless you have a lot of them) it was pretty different for me being in Canada recently. I'm used to getting a lot of change and then leaving it somewhere to accumulate, in case I need a few cents or want to exchange a lot of coins for bills at one time. In Canada, I got a lot of change but needed to keep all of it on me because a handful was like $6-8 instead of maybe $1. I'm not used to having all that metal on my person, and it got heavy and unwieldy because I had no good place to keep it. XD

 

Don't you badmouth our loonies and toonies!

We actually make the nicest money in the world, we do glow in the dark coins, with dinosaur skeletons, we are working on holographic coins right now, we have coins with colours on them, we did poppies for a generation of remembrance day quarters, we have First Nations (native american) art on a lot of our coins and bills throughout the years, we have the most colourful money in the world, and our bills are made of a polymer instead of paper now, making them nigh indestructible. Hell, our $100 bills smell like maple!!!!!!

 

Oh don't get me wrong haha, I like Canadian money. It's much cooler than our stuff. I kept one of the polymer $5 bills just as a souvenir. It was simply that I wasn't used to change being something I'd want on my person all the time, so I didn't have like a pouch or a good pocket or anything. It made my wallet sad to have to stuff the coins into it lmao.

 

I lived in Canada for 7 months (and had like $100 for a few years afterward). I probably still have some coins left over. I keep coins from different countries in a box, with the state quarters I collected (only by coming across them), silver dollars, Indian head pennies, tokens from a pizza parlor/arcade that no-longer exists cause 2 kids died there... or something.
What the hell am I talking about?

 

Is it actually true that the $100 bill smells like maple? I keep seeing this around Tumblr and other various portions of the internet and I'm just.... Is it real??? I think the countries with the most beautiful currency is: Malaysia, New Zealand and Kazakhstan! :3c

 

Americans seem to say they smell like maple... I've tried smelling one and can't say that they do.

 

Normally I'd avoid reviving a topic that's been dead for so long, buuuut I do have something to say regarding American vs Canadian education.

I'm a rare example of a person who started high school in Canada and finished in the USA. Not my choice, and I'm back in Canada now.
So, the differences between the schools I went to are absolutely astounding. In my Canadian high school, you have 4 classes per semester, each worth one full credit, totalling 8 per year. You need 30 to pass grade 12 as long as you've got all the mandatory credits, meaning you're allowed to fail two non-essential classes. Students who got to grade 12 without failing two classes already were permitted to take a spare period, during which time they could just do whatever as long as they weren't disrupting classes already in session. They could go to the library, leave the school for a bit and come back when their class starts, leave early if it's the last period of the day, show up late if it's the first. Same freedoms were given during lunch, in that you could leave if you really wanted.

The American high school was very different. You take 7 classes per semester, which are only worth one half credit each for some reason, so 14 classes and 7 credits per year. You only needed 22 credits to pass high school there. That means you can fail 12 classes that aren't necessary credits, and still pass high school. I was kind of floored at that. In addition, due to the low pass number, and the fact that I was only in the states for grade twelve, and 8 + 8 + 6 = 22 (I'd failed two classes) I already had enough credits to graduate. Awkward moment in the admissions office when this kid from another country is eligible for graduation a year early. So then I was told that there was one credit I would need in the states to graduate, and that's US government. Fair enough I said, I'll just pop in for the class and pop out.

Nope. If it isn't a medical emergency, you are not allowed to leave the school before the end of the day, and if you're not there for homeroom you get weekend detention. No exceptions, even if your parents write a note saying you can leave. They made me take a full year of classes, even though by all rights I only needed one to pass. I came to find out later that they were very literal about the "no leaving" policy, no students could leave during lunch time either (which was 13 minutes by the way. Not even joking). They didn't even let students go to the washroom during lunch most of the time.

I was allowed to take spare periods, but you have to sit in a designated "spare" class, and be constantly supervised by a teacher. Sometimes two teachers. The only way to get out of that was to ask for permission to go to the library, which was a privilege only given to three people per day, usually the first three people to show up. I made it a point to get to my spares as fast as possible.

And then there was the open hostility. I was quite taken aback, but very keenly aware, that students and teachers alike were treating me different because I wasn't from the states. I remember one time, early into the year, the government teacher was quite cross with her students for letting "the Canadian kid" get higher marks than they did on a test of their own government. If I said anything about the USA in anything that could be perceived as a negative light, I was almost instantly either contested about it or told how inferior my country is if they couldn't think of a reason that I was wrong. I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm not.

So, ultimately I ended up graduating, did horribly in many classes due in part to the environment, and a few months later my family and I moved back to Canada. I'm just glad that Canada has accepted that year as legitimate, on the virtue that regardless of how many credits I have, I still graduated.

 

That's crazy! I've always been extremely confused by the differences in the system, this goes a long way to clearing them up and scaring the hell out of me to boot. Of course, I'm sure those school systems vary from state to state, what state did you go to school in? And what province were you originally from and then presumably returned to?

 

oh, wow. you've got a much different view to have come from Canada to here. i've had a couple friends in school that were exchange from Mexico that had similar claims.

the credit thing in US schools are confusing. semester classes (one half a school year) are a half credit, but if you have two of the same classes over the whole year you'll get a full credit. and some kids would have classes really weird, their schedule didn't only change in the half-year: they changed weekly.

i can back you up on the open hostility. my own anecdote, coming from my Junior year when i'd left my "public" school to a Technical School- it's a step up to college, with classes actually tailored to you- and i was in a class alike English classes that public school had. and oh boy was it so much better. we didnt sit around learning random words all day and what adverbs and stuff were (and i can't tell you a lick of sentence structure. i just write it!).

at one point we had a debate project. you and another team picked a topic, chose sides, and debated your side. me and a friend (in hindsight was a BAD idea) chose gun control (also bad idea) with a group of three boys that were gun-heads (BAD IDEA) (and they were pretty sexist). we decided to try on the side of restricting things a little and making stronger guidelines and enforcement. and oh boy, that THAT end badly.

Spoiler: story time

come presentation time. the boys start with some points, and it proceeds to our side. i went first with my own points that adults with severe metal issues could get a gun, and some cases of that. my friend did the same, but KIDS getting their parent's guns and killing someone, bringing the point that's happened. it proceeds then to them, which they said about how it's America and you should have a gun and all. okay. once they wrapped up, that's when it went downhill.

it was my turn again. i started with the statement of i wasn't advocating a ban on all rights for guns, but for a little restriction on ownership and stronger guidelines to keeping them. i also pointed out that i had guns in my own house, and i even have three knives, a bow and arrow and a dart gun with 4-inch metal darts in my own bedroom. i live not far from the state prison, and also in the middle of the woods where a bear of coyote popping up isn't uncommon. my family were all stable individuals that all knew safety and how to shoot. personally, i don't shoot because i dont like the noise of the gunshot. if i needed to stop someone, i'd use my bow and shoot them in a leg. far less deadly, actually, because an arrow wound won't bleed as much as a gunshot because the shaft plugs the hole it creates, much like a nail in a car tire.

throughout that claim, they interrupted me saying "isn't it dangerous to just your entire vocabulary in a single sentence?" because i used a few choice, albeit large, words that were a little uncommon. i don't know how that helped their side. but anyway, i continued while ignoring them. my friend's tun came... oh boy.

the boys were tired of us by then. i am not kidding when i say that they took it personal. it was all a whirlwind of thrown insults and comebacks between them and my friend. i am also not kidding when i say that my friend as absolutely no tolerance. things went downhill, very fast. about three minutes where they threw insults back and fourth till i had enough and called down the ruckus. there was swearing by the boys, and some very sexist comments. i reiterate my points that i was simply calling for making it a little harder to get a gun, to keep indecent people getting them, and stronger guidelines for keeping them so unstable people/kids don't get a hold of them (aka: a key-and-combo-lock gun locker).

the boys ended up winning.
the American experience: you don't know if the bang you just heard was a firecracker or a gun.
and both are illegal in the state.

you can get an automatic gun capable of killing several people in short time easier than you can get lifesaving medicine. it's simple as walking into a gun shop.

my friends in college have told me that you are very imprisioned in highschool, and i don't doubt it. American education doesn't exist to actually make you smarter: it exists to teach you to be quiet and follow what they say, and never deviate.

i'm very glad i made the choice to go to the technical school.

 

You're going to have to tell me what high school you went to and maybe I can travelin the TARDIS and annhiliate all those rude close minded people.

My high school we can leave the school to go put for lunch if we wish. They had block scheduling, meaning 4 periods of classes which lasted from 8-3:15. If you earned enough credits you were allowed to graduate early (I believed its still 22). I actually loved block scheduling and was glad I wasn't attending when they went back to 7 period classes.

Our school has exchange student programs, mostly from Germany, so we are very tolerant of folks from other countries. I'm sorey your first expirence in America was like that

 

oh, are we sharing stories about high school?

 

Feel free to comment!

 

i was in Kittanning senior high but moved to Lenape Tech where this happened.
and i've graduated, no have they. but i wouldn't mind taking my bow to those guys.

 

Maybe it's just because I'm Canadian but hearing how many weapons somebody has will never make me comfortable. You debated well and the behaviour of the other team really demonstrates how sensitive the gun nerve is for people. Why guns are such a big deal is a whole other matter. Why highschoolers should be so (forgive the pun) up in arms about it is another, frightening, sad matter entirely.