Sarah+C’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech=
 * //Future High School Students who are not slaves to the College Board//**

=Text of Speech= Everyone loves Foothill but sometimes I wonder how my life would be if I attended Buena or Ventura. What would it be like to have a Football team? Or take German instead of Spanish? But mostly what would it be like to have this pressure and elitist feel to be gone? To be able to walk down the hall and be proud of going to a CSU or VC. To not have teachers group “Failure of the AP Test” to VC. I can only count on one hand the teachers who approve of community college.

Most if not all, of you want to go to college and all of you deserve to go to your dream school but I do not believe you should have to jump through the loops that are required for a chance of attending college. I do not think it is healthy that some, not all, viciously compete for that top spot. Why do some do this? We are in high school and should be acting like high school students, not those backstabbing, scheming people in the workplace who will do anything to work their way to the top. We have the rest of our lives to be stressed for things that actually matter such as putting food on the table for our family and paying off a loan. Right now I want to enjoy being in high school.

I dislike the reasoning behind our schedule choices. If I had a penny for every time the following conversation happened I would be able to buy a car. Me: So since you are in bioscience do you want to be a doctor? Bioscience kid: Not at all. Me: Then why are you in it? Bioscience student: It looks good on a college app. Or the following scenario: Me: “Wow, you must really like being a fire leader to do it for 2 years.” FIRE leader: “No, I just want extra community service to put on my college app.” Notice the responses to all these conversations are not “Oh, cause it is fun” or “I like serving my school through tutoring.” Now I have been guilty of this before. I seriously considered getting out of AMEX at the beginning of the year and now I wish I had. It is not because it was hard, even though it was, it was my strive to pass all the History tests and English vocabulary tests which if you have not figured out yet is impossible. But things do not have to be like this. I am not asking you to drop your electives or never take an AP class again, I am asking you though to go through your mind this summer and think Do I want to take this class? Or am I just trying to please the College Board? Taking a class because you want to challenge (the key word in that was want), a teacher you like is teaching it or because you find the subject interesting are all valid reasons to take a particular class.

I also hate how everyone sees attending a community college as shameful. For example, I said goodbye to my senior friend last Friday and congratulated her. She replied: Why? It’s just VC. I clarified that I was congratulating her on completing high school and continuing her education, it had nothing to do with which college she was attending in the fall. Although I am glad I will still be able to see her, I wish people took pride in going to VC. Sure, it accepts everyone and yes you’re only going across the street but VC is a stepping stone. We congratulate friends who are accepted into an internship even if they are not being paid and might spend all their time filing or going on coffee runs. If we can be congratulated on a job without pay why can we not be congratulated on attending a community college?

My sister is currently attending VC and working at a hostess at Black Angus. She has over $4000 saved up and is quite smart. Yet, former classmates at CSUs or UCs believed that she was not the brightest bulb because she didn’t attend a supposedly REAL college first. But why? Now I know some will disagree, but I will say it anyway: she works just as hard and is as smart as a UC student. Instead of taking super hard classes she takes easier but still challenging courses and instead of spending half of the day in a library, studying, she is on her feet serving customers who take their frustrations out on her. So instead of being mentally tired she is both physically and mentally tired at the end of the day. Especially when customers call and ask dumb questions such as does Black Angus serve ribs or if Black Angus is busy on Valentine’s Day. In addition to her job at Black Angus she also babysits children for multiple families, which, if any of you have ever babysat, know is exhausting.

In the America I want to live in I want all types of college to be affordable, I want to still be counted for attending a college even if it is a community college, I want to take fun classes for you guessed it fun, and I want this pressure to never be felt again at any high school. Now if I was not clear enough, please understand that I still want to attend college but I hope that by the time my future children apply the application process and the high school mentality for going to college will be severely changed for the better.

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