The Best Jam Sessions Happen At Midnight

Quiet Hours in the dorms have officially begun. Starting at midnight, the dorms are under full time quiet hours, save for a couple courtesy hours around lunch and dinner. To commemorate the occasion, there was a jam session in the hallway, which pretty much consisted of Tim shredding some mad licks on his ax. Before it finished, though (since it was about 20 minutes long), I joined in to provide the rhythm guitar part of Free Bird, over which Tim rocked the solo. The people on my floor have really put me to shame, as far as guitar skills are concerned. I'm no slouch on a guitar, but these kids legitimately rock. At least a couple of people were upset about the jam session, of course. I suppose that's kind of understandable, but there are plenty of times when those same people are extremely loud early in the morning, usually singing themselves praise over last night's drunken escapades.

So today was officially the last day of classes for the semester, and year for that matter. All that is left of my freshman year of college is finals, which I am admittedly a little nervous about. They fall fairly early in the week (Sunday and Tuesday), and so I don't exactly have a ton of time to prepare. Despite the fact that college is naturally far beyond anything I did in High School, I don't feel overly freaked out about these tests. I think that just goes to show how completely inept the High School system is at preparing kids for college. There is such a huge gap, it's like training an astronaut by having him jump on a trampoline. Even most of the AP classes I took in high school didn't make any sort of noticeable difference, other than require more work of the same level.

The whole thing makes me think of one story I heard about my old school district. Apparently there were too many students with 4.0 grade point averages, and the district felt that it needed to do something to bring this number down (a thought that is not as evil as it sounds). The problem is, instead of enriching the curriculum of existing classes, or offering more advanced classes (which the students in question would take if given the opportunity), they nerfed the grading scheme. Previously, an A of any kind, from A+ to A-, had been a 4.0. The change dropped the GPA of an A- down to 3.67. Here are the issues I take with this:

• A grade of A- carries a penalty in GPA, but a grade of A+ carries no benefit.
• An A- implies a proficiency of between 90 and 93 percent in a given subject, and this is reflected in the 3.67 GPA, roughly 91.5% of the highest possible 4.0 GPA. HOWEVER, the large down-scaling from class percentage to GPA (something that always occurs when applying percentages to vastly different totals) is not compensated for in the policies of most higher education institutions. I'm not sure about every university in the world, but I know almost all of the most respected institutions don't even consider applicants with GPAs below 3.7.

The whole situation seems rather contrived, as if the policy was put in place without any actual consideration of how it fits into the educational system as a whole. When a student with an A- average (mind you, this means that if you give him 100 questions, he will typically answer at least 90 of them correctly) is compared to a kid with a 4.0, the difference appears much larger than it actually is (I don't mean to discredit those students who do actually achieve 4.0 GPAs, as this is a great accomplishment that should be rewarded.). Factoring in any system that uses weighted grades (that is, a system that rewards AP or honors classes with a 5.0 grading scale) further decreases the value of a 3.67 GPA.

All this being said, I must admit that I am writing in my blog right now, when I should probably be studying for my chemistry and biology exams. I suppose I should get to that.