Todd vs High School

Victory! High school was defeated! Well,...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:34:00 -0400

Victory! High school was defeated! Well, “defeated” is the wrong word but it’s finished. It truly was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Along the way I had my doubts as to if I’d make it through but it ended up being an amazingly fun time. Everyone at the school was a pleasure to be around and I have the greatest thanks for my principal, Dale McLane, who took a chance on me and the whole experiment and who I consider a great friend.

In the picture is Kevin Kaufman, the filmmaker who made “Todd vs. High School” with me. He has done a brilliant job so far and now we’ve started editing the movie. I think it’s going to be really good.

I’m not going to make any promises about more updates because I’m clearly not good about coming on here but I’ll let everyone know when the film’s coming out.

Thank you all for your support. It meant a lot.

Apologies for the delay in posting. I’d fallen into a bit...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:50:08 -0500

Apologies for the delay in posting. I’d fallen into a bit of a motivational rut. Lazieness and senioritis have combined for a period of academic apathy. Tardys, missed days, and half-done assignments were par for the course and updating somehow got tossed into that mix.

While I’d only been doing just enough work to get by over the last month and doing just ok on tests, during this time period I’ve had a lot of fun actually. The school I’m at is just as great as its always been and and the people still make the days really enjoyable. In that sense, I started thinking about if there was even a need to put more effort into my work. It’s a very challenging school academically and I had pushed myself so hard off the start that this felt like a vacation. I’d been pretty happy cruising by during this time period; less stress, more free time, actually getting some sleep.

But what it did, really, was get me to think about an internal debate we all have that’s not even about school: how hard should we push ourselves? What is the balance and relationship between happiness and success?

School is an interesting prism to view this issue through in the respect that while in our adult lives these concepts seem very vauge, in school there’s such a direct correlation between hard work and success. And more to the point, there are cold, hard, numbers that let us know how we do. So in that sense, we need to all decide what is acceptable to us. Am I happy as a 3.0 student who does just enough to get by and has fun? What’s wrong with just cruising through school and being happy? Would I be happier as a 4.0 student who works hard but is perpetually stressed and goal focused? Or will I only be happy if I’m #1 in my class? Is there a balance that’s acceptable? Should I just focus on learning and let the grades be what they are? What is that balance?

Well for me I decided that while I’d been having fun goofing off, something felt wrong. It’s almost hard to articulate and it’s also hard for me to determine how much of that feeling is from within and how much of it is from a programed sense of responsibility but I do feel the need to push myself more. Not even so much to get better grades, but (cliche alert!) to take advantage of the opportunity to learn and apply myself to the best of my abilities (or at least closer to them). I only have 6 weeks left of school and for whatever reason, I just feel like it’s something I need to do. Hopefully in doing this I’ll gain a better sense of the larger question of “why” but for now that it feels right is enough.

Or who knows, maybe I just think too much. Mostly I’m just getting sad that school is coming to an end. Whoever thought I’d ever say that.

Sorry again dear readers, I know some of you have sent e-mails asking what was going on and want to hear more. I’ll be updating more from here on out.

Does something seem strange about this list to you besides the...

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:34:27 -0400

Does something seem strange about this list to you besides the fact that “Andy Roddick Beat Me With a Frying Pan” isn’t on it? With all of the great books at our disposal, why isn’t there anything more modern being taught? I really don’t understand the Shakespeare fascination and probably never will. To me, he’s just a writer who was trying to write entertaining material. There’s no greater purpose to reading his work beyond that. But I think if you made a list of books most enjoyed by high school students none of the Shakespeare would be in the list. Which raises the question: Why are we not trying to encourage students to love reading instead of forcing things on them we know they won’t like?

MOST TAUGHT BOOKS IN HS
1. Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
2. Macbeth by Shakespeare
3. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I said I was...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:59:00 -0400

This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I said I was going back to high school to dominate athletically.

Been meaning to post this one for a while: I saw some of my 90’s...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:52:09 -0400

Been meaning to post this one for a while:

I saw some of my 90’s high school friends this weekend at a tailgate before the Pitt and Navy football game. I couldn’t drink per my new regimen, though the temptation, beers, and boozers were all around. But after watching a parking lot filled with tons of college kids trying way to hard to act rowdy before the game, I was grateful for my teetotaling.

One of the weirdest things about seeing this now that I’m back in high school is how clear it is that college students are way less mature than high schoolers. This is something I’ve always contended but seeing the collegiate crowd a day after being in high school made it more clear to me. Maybe “mature” is the wrong word, but there’s something incredibly annoying about college students to me.

From my experience, both the first time around and now, high school students, by and large, have a certain degree of individuality and cleverness that’s enjoyable. College students, on the other hand, drive me nuts. There’s much less room for uniqueness. Personalities seem to become more crafted and trying to act cool trumps all. I’ve always felt that from a personality perspective college ruins a lot of good and interesting people.

So my message is this: don’t go to college! No, not that, but if you do go, just stay who you are and find people there who don’t care if you do or don’t drink and prefer weird jokes to beer themed humor.

Sitting here on a Sunday night, dreading the school week. Last...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:48:00 -0400

Sitting here on a Sunday night, dreading the school week. Last week I had tons of tests and quizzes and was pretty worn out when the weekend rolled around. Now the week is about to start again and the majority of my thoughts are negative; not enough sleep, run down, can’t even stay up to watch the football games, too much homework… pretty standard high schooler stuff. On top of that, I realized I needed to put a post up and decided to take the lazy way out by finding a high school news story and just commenting on that. But when I typed in “high school” to a Google news search my perspective on the week did change a bit. Things, it appears, could certainly be worse:

————————————————-

Special Needs Teacher Killed at Texas High School

NY students suspended over raw-meat hazing ritual

Felony charges in bus attack

Axe - Wielding Pupil Wounds Several In German School

Florida school officials won’t go to jail for praying

High School Drug Ring Shut Down, Police Say

Tony Danza shows high school students who’s boss

Missouri high school students arrested after $30000 theft

2nd arrest for teacher in alcohol, pot case

Student Stabbed to Death in Florida

Masked police chief sparks brief school lockdown

Cops arrest suspect after gunfire near Houston high school

Extra police near Fenger High School after beating death

——————————————-

There’s about 100 more of these, and that’s just a sampling of the first page of one day of high school news. As much as I hate to admit it, I have it about as good as possible. Yet while these awful occurrences are pretty much inconceivable at Trinity, within a five mile radius there are multiple high schools that this kind of stuff happens in all the time.

This train of thought, and post, would have seemed very trite to me the first time I was in high school. If someone tried to give me the whole “Don’t take how good you have it for granted” spiel would have been annoying to me. That is if I paid attention to what they were saying at all. But somewhere along the way that stuff starts to click in your head. Maybe it’s when you actually get exposed to some of the kinds of people that populate the Google news stories you develop a different perspective on it but there certainly are worse things in the world than my complaints and thank goodness I’m in high school where I am.

Complaining to resume as normal tomorrow….

When I see people from high school who are not taking care of...

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:06:36 -0400

When I see people from high school who are not taking care of themselves and looking prematurely old and weird it makes me feel like they’re betraying some kind of bond or something. Like they’re doing something unfair to me by reminding me of how old I am. Where as when I see someone who looks the same, it makes me like them more, as if we’re on the same team.

The same goes for anyone from high school who has a totally different personality and acts like they’re a serious adult…all it does is depress meI don’t even want to think about how depressed I make people when they see me. Although, to be fair, maybe I depress them with the fact that I still act like I’m in High School, which I am, so in that sense I guess they only have themselves to blame for their depression. Have I mentioned I’m deliriously tired again?

The girl in this video might be taking the “not getting prematurely old” thing a little far though…

I was so exhausted when I came home I fell asleep on the...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:50:00 -0400

I was so exhausted when I came home I fell asleep on the recliner at 6:30 and just got up now at 5:00 AM. I have a ton of homework to do before school I’m going to start on right after this post. I’ve found I have two different times I can fall asleep. Either between 1 and 3 AM, which obviously isn’t good because I need to be up at 7:00 AM for school, or immediately when I get home where I pass out from exhaustion.

One thing I’ve noticed is how much more productive I am when rested. I spent my study halls in school yesterday trying, trying, trying, to get my homework done, but it just wasn’t happening because my mind was so ready to shut down. Now that I actually caught up on a little sleep, it should be a breeze. Knowing this, I don’t even try to fight staying awake when I get home and just make sure to set an alarm so I’m up in time to do my work.

Seeing how important sleep is, I don’t understand how culturally there’s this weird attitude towards it. It’s like we’re supposed to be ashamed of wanting and needing to rest. Every school I’ve ever been to has kids who just don’t naturally get to sleep at a time that’s in line with the school schedule and who suffer for it. I’d go as far to say as a lack of sleep is the primary cause of my failings in school the first time around. There’s tons of evidence to support that teens need a different schedule than what the school system is on.

What’s nice is the principal at my new school gets that, and believes school should start later. We start at 8:15 which is actually pretty late by most high school standards, but still earlier than most any adults jobs start. The problem is for school to start later the entire city school system would have to change their busing times. This is something I’d love to see happen.

Read the link below, it explains it in pretty straightforward terms:

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/pubs/ResearchWorks/sleep.html

NOTE: It’s amazing how much easier it is to write these when the other option is doing homework. I have no excuse now for not having any of my work done today.

PRESS: MSA Sports Network Broadcast, "33 Year Old Goes Back to High School"

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:12:52 -0400

PRESS: MSA Sports Network Broadcast, "33 Year Old Goes Back to High School":

Hi, it’s Jill! Here’s the transcript of a quick little Q&A with Todd. Interview by Josh Rowntree of MSA Sports Network. Can you tell which high school soccer player is Todd in this team photo?

Showed some veteran savvy today. Had a talk with one of the...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:02:00 -0400

Showed some veteran savvy today. Had a talk with one of the freshmen after my Spanish 1 class about not asking the teacher if she wants our homework assignments.

Someone in my class was talking about Mark Long of The Real...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:55:00 -0400

Someone in my class was talking about Mark Long of The Real World. I tried to hop in and sound cool by saying something about Eric Nies who was on Season 1. No one knew what I was talking about. Even my reality TV references are dated.

Spanish 1 is still impossible. My mind just does not process...

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:19:05 -0400

Spanish 1 is still impossible. My mind just does not process foreign languages. The fact that I’m struggling to this extent in a class with all freshmen is all the more humiliating. The effortlessness in which the students minds process the information is mind blowing to me. The teacher tells them a word in Spanish, it goes in their mind, and then comes out whenever they need it. The word goes in my mind, fights a battle with the warring factions in my brain, gets lost around 5 conversations I’m having with myself about 5 different topics, and disappears forever.

Bill Cosby Helps Detriot Schools Start 30 Minutes Later

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:33:03 -0400

Bill Cosby Helps Detriot Schools Start 30 Minutes Later:

“The students were taking part in a roundtable discussion that included comedian Bill Cosby. They said 7:30 a.m. was too early. Bobb agreed to have morning classes start at 8 a.m. by the second semester, which begins Jan. 22.”

For being someone who talked Andy Roddick into playing tennis...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:54:33 -0400

For being someone who talked Andy Roddick into playing tennis with a frying pan, I sure could be having an easier time in my Rhetoric class.

Are there such things as moral victories? We played Greensburg...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:38:00 -0400

Are there such things as moral victories?

We played Greensburg Central Catholic, one of my old high schools tonight. Lost 1-0 but their only goal came in the first minute of the game. The first quick goal aside, we (Can I say we when I just kept stats and screamed like a lunatic?) played them even the rest of the way.

GCC is supposed to be the best team in the section and has a massive winning streak. Unlike the team I was on, they didn’t have a girl take the field at any point. That we played them so tough after getting down like that on their home field made me really happy. It would have been easy to fold and end up losing by a bundle. Everyone played really hard and really well.

Still…Still…Still…

Losing sucks, especially when you know you’re good enough to win. It actually made me think long and hard about whether there’s such a thing as a moral victory. My gut says we’re too good for those.

Laboring on Labor Day Immediately after school on Friday, I...

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:43:44 -0400

Laboring on Labor Day

Immediately after school on Friday, I started gearing up to to my homework. It’s now 7:05 on Monday and I have yet to finish it. My two reading assignments (one for Brit Lit the other for Reformed Doctrine) were both enjoyable and I cruised through them easily. The rest is pulling teeth. It’s amazing the difference between doing work you enjoy and everything else.

This is why most advice is so hollow. If my girlfriend’s little brother came to me with the same complaint last year I would have said “Toughen up and just get the work done.” By the way, if this isn’t a great post, keep in mind I’m only writing it to avoid doing actual work.

Regression or Progression? I can’t say I remember what I...

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:43:37 -0400

Regression or Progression?

I can’t say I remember what I did for Labor day weekend last year, but I’m pretty sure it was not setting up a makeshift croquet course in the backyard and playing with my Mom, Dad, Aunt, and Grandfather. That, in terms of excitement, was the highlight of the weekend and is pretty much what I was doing for fun when I was 10.

The really odd part is this was an enjoyable weekend. While my friends were all out doing unspeakable things each night and are now paying the price, I’m ready for the week and feel great. Maybe there’s something to be said for family fun time.

If I’m singing a different tune a month from now, please don’t hold me to this post.

For years, many in the scientific community believed the human...

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:32:00 -0400

For years, many in the scientific community believed the human heart would literally explode before a man could run a 4:00 minute mile. When Roger Bannister broke the barrier, it was thought to be the greatest achievment ever seen on the track.

Until today…

Victory!!! Finally broke 14:00 minutes in the 2 mile run for soccer with a 13:12!!! Which I was supposed to be able to do the first day of practice!!!

p.s.

I let in like 7 bad goals in today’s scrimmage.

Grammar test was a monumental disaster, I fear. Even with an...

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:57:36 -0400

Grammar test was a monumental disaster, I fear. Even with an open book I had no clue what was going on. Jill, please double check this post for mutilation of the English language when you get back from vacation.

Grammar review in Brit Lit today. Teacher asked me how much I...

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:05:00 -0400

Grammar review in Brit Lit today. Teacher asked me how much I knew about the use of grammar and semi-colons, and I had to admit I knew absolutely nothing. Just like I know absolutely nothing about why this man dressed up as a semi-colon. This is either evidence of how useless knowledge of grammar is or evidence of how low standards are for being an author. Either way, I told the class they should learn the stuff so they don’t look like an idiot when they send e-mails…or when they write blog posts. Quiz on Wednesday;