Amy+B’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

=Title of Speech= Parents, School, and Grades Oh My!

=Text of Speech= I’m sure we can all agree that being a teenager can suck sometimes. There’s always something going on; either drama with your parents or your friends; having the never-ending mountain of homework still on your desk waiting to be completed. All of this going on while you’re trying to maintain a semi-decent social life, still fit in sleep somewhere, and attempt to keep your sanity. So it’s no wonder why we are so stressed and anxious all the time. Yet, when we talk to adults (and for me, most notably, my parents), they don’t seem to be very comforting about it. So more than once I have come home to my family and tried to explain to them why I am so physically as well as mentally exhausted. Maybe your parents say the same thing, but the common response from my household tends to be, “Amy, we’ve both have gone through high school before. We know what it’s like, just try your best and everything will be okay.” Well no mom and dad you have not gone through the same schooling I am going through, I’m sorry if that sounded like a typical teenage thing to say, but honestly you were no where near doing what I am doing today. Neither of you took A.P or Honors classes, neither of you took the SAT, and neither of you were stressed about college because you never went to college. I’m not trying to penalize you for not doing those things, but stop saying you know more about testing and college than I do because I highly doubt you do. I don’t want to sound arrogant (which I probably already do) but please mom and dad, stop trying to do everything your way, when you have no clue what you’re doing; but also don’t get mad and walk away from me when I try doing something my way. At this stage in our lives, it seems like parents either think that we are five year olds and need to hold our hand 24/7 or they treat us like we’re adults and we shouldn’t have to rely on them for anything. Neither one is true. We still need your help, but we don’t need you controlling us anymore. Let us go off and do our own thing and when we ask for your help, help us. But please don’t start the whole “just try your best” crap that parents always tell their kids. I almost always give my 100% on everything yet my parents start yelling at me when I get a B+ in Geib’s class, and their excuse is “I didn’t try hard enough.” Thus they feel the need to take control of everything again because I can’t handle things on my own apparently. It’s like my best is never good enough for them and grades reflect who I am as a person. The school system doesn’t help either. Grades completely ruined the idea of learning something new because you wanted too. Now, we are forced to learn things that don’t interest us whatsoever and are graded on whether or not we understood it. I’ve stopped being interested in things that once caught my attention because I don’t feel like I could handle learning about another entire subject. When I come home from school rather than wanting to read this really awesome psychology book that I got for Christmas, I just want to numb my brain out in front of the TV for a few minutes to de-stress. The last thing I am trying to do is hate on school, but I don’t think format of it is well done. School shouldn’t be forcing us to learn something that either a.) Someone doesn’t find interesting completely or b.) Useless to everyone whose goal isn’t to be an engineer. And the whole idea of grades is just awful. Yes, I’m sure we have all heard about how teachers, and students, hate grades but I know so many people who don’t care at all about school, never do there homework and will still get straight As just because they nailed the tests; and then there are people who try there best, do everything the teacher told them to do and end up getting only a B in the class and having their parents yell at them for it. I don’t consider this a just way of learning; we are being penalized for trying our best and for not being number one. There are so many people who totally deserve to be at an Ivy League school but have lost hope of ever going because they are not what is considered “number one”. In the America I grow up in, I don’t want the future generation to feel like their best is never good enough. I want parents to encourage their kids to try and if they don’t end up doing as well as they had hoped, I want parents to still tell them good job. I want schools to teach children topics the children are interested in, if they love history but hate calculus, teach them history; don’t force them to study something they cannot stand. Lastly, get rid of grades, they destroy the want of learning something new and can make a kid feel like they are worthless.

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