GaoKao more like Hao No

My topic is the GaoKao. I chose this topic because my pen pal, Huang Min said that it is a college entrance exam and being a high school senior, entrance exams are interesting to me since I have completed the ACT. Huang wrote to me "If one fails passing the GK, it will take one more year to start senior there". She is saying that if you fail the GaoKao, you have to repeat your senior year. Apparently, senior year is basically just studying for this test.

Chinese students taking the GaoKao

GaoKao literally means "high test". This test is all students prepare for all of their senior year and determines where students will go to college. On businessweek I read that the whole country works together to make sure that the students have a safe and quiet testing center. The test has three main parts; Chinese, math, and English. This test lasts for two days and is very strenuous. I looked at some practice questions and realized that this is the SAT on steroids. it truly shows how hard Chinese students work.


Taking the ACT is one thing but this test is that multiplied by twelve. I don't even think our smartest students at Parkview could pass with a very high sore. Think about it, if this test is all students prepare for during their entire school career, studying for hours and hours everyday, this test is tough. I actually have a lot of respect for Chinese students and their work ethic after looking into the GaoKao.








Letter from Huang Min

Roberts, Dexter. BloombergBussinessweek. N.p., 6 June 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-06/china-girds-for-high-stress-gaokao-weekend>.

Implicit Bias Test

So there is this thing called the "Implicit Bias Test". It was invented by some Harvard student and this test is supposed to see if you are bias towards one thing or another. There were multiple tests that you could take including a race test, a skin color test, a religion test, and a fat/skinny test. I selected to take the skin color test.

For the skin color test, the program determined if you preferred light skin or dark skin. To do this, the test was broken up into multiple parts. The first part was a word/picture correlation where if a word like "happy" pops up on the screen, I had to click a button if it is "good" or "bad". If a picture of a light skinned person popped up, I had to click if I thought that they were light skinned or dark skinned. 

The next part of the test was easily the easiest but the most fun sucking thing about my day so far. There was a set of survey questions that I had to answer. about 17 questions all along the lines of "do you like light skin or dark skin better?". Of course the questions weren't that word for word but they all had that same type of theme to them.

The final portion of the test was filling out a basic "get to know you" type questionnaire. Just basic information like gender, area code, country, religion. I assume that all of the tests get complied and broken down to see if there is a trend between preference of skin tone to gender, area code, country, and religion.

In Response to Plagiarism

Given the option of writing a book response or responding to an article an about Plagiarism, I chose the second option. The article about plagiarism was posted by the New York Times and discussed the way students are copying and pasting works from the web and claiming them as their own.

Plagiarism is defined as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own". Basically its copying other people's work. Copying has been the best friend of students since schooling was invented. If I were to ask a student if they would prefer to do an assignment and get full credit or just get full credit, the student would choose the adder of the options.

The post in The New York Times is concerned that it is too easy to commit plagiarism and that students are considering not considering copying from the web as serious cheating. Just look at this statistic;                  

 

 "the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes “serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade." (The New York Times)     

 

I understand that plagiarism is a problem but, eventually there will be a time when the specific though you have is already published. That day may not be for many years but with that being said, I think that there needs to be a statute of limitations on plagiarism. In example, if the sentence I want to convey was published 15 years ago, I can use it without it being considered plagiarism.

Book Blog #3

I have no clue how I did it, but somehow I managed to suffer through Burning Blue. I didn't enjoy it that much and it was boring. Still, the best thing about the book was the authors writing style but due to lack of creativity the book was predictable.

My favorite character by far was Jay. Jay is a hacker/loser that gets made fun of because he had a seizure in front of the whole school and peed his pants (another glimpse at the writer's "genius" creativity).

 "Jay understands how it feels to be treated like a freak, and he also has a secret: He's a brilliant hacker. But the deeper he digs, the more danger he's in - and the more he falls for Nicole."



Even though this quote makes this book sound horrible, it describes him perfectly.

Of course the loser guy no one talks to falls in love with the now relatable former school beauty.  *sigh* Hooray for 21st century writing... Currently Im reading another one of my favorite author's books, 1984. I have never found a book that smart and well written other than Animal Farm. which is another one of Orwell's books. Ill talk about that later though.

As time progresses, is the quality of writing going down? Because it seems to me like it is.

Book Blog #2

Burning Blue

 

 

     "A beautiful girl, a hideous crime, and one boy caught in the middle of it all". That is a grabber written on the front of the book Burning Blue. That line makes the book seem fast passed, fun, and entertaining. Unfortunately, that line is terribly, terribly wrong. A beautiful girl named Nicole has acid thrown on her face. She meets lonely guy named Jay who is good with computers and together they try and find out who attacked her. There is however a bright side; the author's writing style.

 

     The author's writing style is interesting and fun to follow. Paul Griffin writes this story from multiple views including Nicole's, Jay's, and segments from Nicole's personal diary and Dr. Schmidt's journal. Doctor Schmidt is the therapist that Nicole sees after being traumatized from the attack. With all of these views, it makes you realize how damaged Nicole is, who was previously thought to be perfect, and it shows the paranoia taking place. Everyone is worried that there could be another attack and since the attacker isn't known, there a many different opinions on who it may be.

 

     In my opinion, this book moves too slowly and even though the writing is great, this book is still a bad read. I plead to you not to read it. Even the idea of a mystery book like this is old news. What makes this book different from all the other "acid attack mysteries" this one is different from the rest because of the view you get from all the different characters. im sure there will be other books just like this in a couple of decades if not a couple of years.



101 things about me..... nah just 15

1. I work at Chuck E. Cheese's
2. I'm one of the few kids at Parkview that can say that they enjoy country music
3. I drive an old muscle car
4. I don't have any pets but I love kittens. Not cats.  
5. I get really bored really fast
6. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is put on socks
7. I have self diagnosed myself with chronic short term memory loss
8. Tennis is bae. I play too much tennis for someone that isn't very good
9. I don't enjoy reading non fiction but I don't mind writing it because I have a pretty active imagination.
10. I'm on Cabinet at school so that's awesome.
11. I live with my grandparents.
12. I enjoy meeting new people
13. Don't challenge me to anything crazy because I always except (as long as its not illegal or involves nudity)
14. My favorite movie is The Lego Movie
15. I'm terrified of falling into an oven. That's why I don't bake things.