NCEA sucks. If ur an NCEA noob, NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement. In every subject, the topics that you study are called 'Achievement Standards'. Each Achievement standard (AS) is worth a certain amount of credits, usually ranging from 2-4 credits each, but you can get the odd achievement standard that is worth 5 or 6 credits. When you do a test for an AS, you are given a final mark for that AS which can be either Not Achieved(this is the fail grade), Achievement(Achievement or beyond is a 'pass the AS grade'), Achievement with Merit or Achievement with Excellence. No matter what grade you get as long as it is a passing grade, you still get the same number of credits. For example someone with Excellence will still get the same number of credits as someone who Achieved.
Now, something i dont get about the grades is why dont they just give you a (0 being not achieved)0, 1, 2 or 3(3 being Excellence) rather than introducing gimicky names for these grades like Achievement, etc.. with all this crap going on, you might as well invent some of ur own grades like Achievement with Awesomeness or Achievement with Distinction or Achievement with Brilliance or Achievement with Utter Nonsense. It's probably true that NCEA likes to say what people with each grade can do. For example in many ASs, the criteria for Achieved is often 'Describe', Merit is often 'Explain' and Excellence is often 'Discuss'. However NCEA tests never account for the fact that if you had one more night to finish your work, you might have been able to 'Discuss' your topic, rather than 'Explain' it, and therefore achieve with Excellence. Or when you do an NCEA test. Lets say you screwed the test up with one little mistake and thus got Not Achieved, but you know that if you could sit that test just one more time again, you would be able to get Excellence. In fact that nearly happened to me once. In a Level 2 physics internal, i was going to get Not achieved because i wrote a right answer, scribbled it out, then wrote a wrong answer right next to it. This little error was enough to make me fail the whole test, but since the teachers felt sorry for me, they gave me one more chance to correct my error (which I sucessfully did) and so got Excellence. But I can't help wondering how many other people have actually been screwed over by this 'one mistake, fail the whole test' thing. This is yet another reason why NCEA SUCKS BIG `#$@!^ %&^* *&(^($#@. Also not to mention that fact that if u fail an AS, you get shit-all for doing it. In other words, if you spent a whole weekend of your precious spare time finishing an NCEA Achievement Standard, and you failed it just because of some technicality(e.g. indented paragraphs rather than leaving spaces between ur paragraphs) then you get absolutely nothing for it. No recognition for trying to do it at ALL!!! Just like getting a 0% mark for it. But if your worried that ur spend ages working on an internal and fail it, then there’s a solution that someone I know did(AND IM NOT GOING TO SAY NAMES). For a physics internal, they just copied and pasted information off the internet for their work, then just gave a different web site as their reference so none of the markers/moderators could tell. Now believe it or not, they got a Merit. Which would be exactly the same as someone who spent their whole weekend trying to get Excellence, and got a Merit instead because their work wasn’t quite up to an excellence ‘standard’. Percentage marks are better because they give a much fairer, more detailed and clearer, indication of the persons abilities.
However, a problem that I have with all grading systems, not only NCEA, but Bursary, School certificate, Sixth form certificate etc., is that they intentionally discrimate against dumb people. I mean, if you were someone really dumb, how would you like it if someone came and rubbed it in your face that you are the dumbest person in your class, or possibly the whole school... (dumb sounds a too harsher word so i will say 'not smart')... if you weren't smart, you probably would have left school at an early age because you can not stand this grading discrimination crap being rubbed in ur face that everyone else is better than you... So what is this world coming to?. First, we discriminated women, then we discovered black skinned people so we discriminated black skinned people too. And now with all these fundamentlist hard-core Islamic terrorists around, we start suspecting every Islamic person to be a terrorist, thus discriminating peace-loving Islams as well. And, now, we have moved on to 'dumb' people: people who just aren't good at learning things. Is this fair? NO! So in these grading systems that every school around the world is guilty of using, every school is guilty of discrimination against these sorts of people, and so are 100% guilty of Human Rights violations.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Me work, No play
I spent most of the day working today at Trentham Racecourse. The pay was good: $21 an hour. No, I'm kidding. It was somewhere between $10 and $12. And worked for about 7 and a half hours today.
And I went to Edgefest yesterday. And mother of god!, there are some weird people around. Such as, at Edgefest, I (1) talked/flirted(sorta) with this random 19 year old chick in the guy's toilets who kept wanting to tell me how much she wanted to lay 13 year old boys (2) had at least 2 chicks pinch me on the ass in the moshpit for no reason at all (I mean, what the hell!!!) And it hurt. *cries*:) (3) Had this little kid try scam 3 bucks off me for a glowstick, the little brat (4) After buying a blue glowstick, the festival camera kept showing me waving it arOund in the moshpit on screen( I swear, I so wanted to draw glasses and a moustache on the band players, but my hand couldn't reach high enough on screen)... And I nearly lost one of my good jackets but found it lying on the floor in the moshpit fortunately. However, I did lose my cellphone. I've tried ringing it like, 5 times, but no one answers. Some people can be so cheap that they steal cellphones. But i don't care because it gives me a good excuse to buy a new, even better one. At the moment, I'm definitely going to get a Telecom phone tho... probably one of those new basic flip-out ones .
Anyway, I can think of a dozen other things I should be doing at the moment like doing my chemistry assignment or writing up my legal assignment(both due Tuesday 22nd March), but I can't be bothered. I'll do them tomorrow (yeah, right!)
And I went to Edgefest yesterday. And mother of god!, there are some weird people around. Such as, at Edgefest, I (1) talked/flirted(sorta) with this random 19 year old chick in the guy's toilets who kept wanting to tell me how much she wanted to lay 13 year old boys (2) had at least 2 chicks pinch me on the ass in the moshpit for no reason at all (I mean, what the hell!!!) And it hurt. *cries*:) (3) Had this little kid try scam 3 bucks off me for a glowstick, the little brat (4) After buying a blue glowstick, the festival camera kept showing me waving it arOund in the moshpit on screen( I swear, I so wanted to draw glasses and a moustache on the band players, but my hand couldn't reach high enough on screen)... And I nearly lost one of my good jackets but found it lying on the floor in the moshpit fortunately. However, I did lose my cellphone. I've tried ringing it like, 5 times, but no one answers. Some people can be so cheap that they steal cellphones. But i don't care because it gives me a good excuse to buy a new, even better one. At the moment, I'm definitely going to get a Telecom phone tho... probably one of those new basic flip-out ones .
Anyway, I can think of a dozen other things I should be doing at the moment like doing my chemistry assignment or writing up my legal assignment(both due Tuesday 22nd March), but I can't be bothered. I'll do them tomorrow (yeah, right!)
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
This is my chance
Finally, a place where I can shit out all the bullshit I could ever want: Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Now I also don't have to talk about absolutely stupid nonsense to people so much as well cos I can let it out here. That means I don't have to talk to someone, then leave them hanging, thinking, 'what the hell is Sam on about?'
Anyway, this is my first post on dis blog. Perhaps i'll make up a name for my blog...maybe i'll call it Bob (how original), so it'll be 'Bob the blog'. (Sorry, random thought. I'm full of random thoughts. They just come to me. I would estimate I have about 200 random thoughts a day).
Did you know that research scientists, probably from the U.S of A, discovered that people read words mainly by looking at the first and last letter. Without the first and last letter of a word, no one can understand what is being written. Try this:
'h uic row o umpe ve h az o.'
Bet ya couldn't understand what that said. It said 'the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.'
Now try this:
'cre o, o otherfuckin un h ike niffin og sse'
Lol, i'm not going to tell you what that said:)
Here's something I wrote a while ago but my views on it myt hav changed by now. (I jst can't be bothered reading it again to update it).
Here it is...
Have you ever wanted something real bad, but knew you had to stay away from it for your own good? Have you ever thought that there might be two ways of looking at everything, good or bad, in our world?
Lets look at what it means to eat pizza. Imagine it’s your favourite food. (it's my favourite food anyway). You want to eat it everyday or at least once a week. You love it. But what are the pros and cons of doing this? It fills up your hunger, it tastes nice, you don’t have to cook dinner, it’s easy to get(you just phone a pizza delivery restaurant) and it’s a real festive party food. Now the cons are: costs you money, makes you fat, contributes to pimples, makes you thirsty and clogs your arteries. To decide whether or not you are going to eat this pizza, you sub-consiously weigh these pros and cons against each other, and decide which of them is the most important to you. Most people will decide to eat it in the moment because it is a pleasant food to eat, and eating one pizza won’t hurt, or at least in the short term, even though it makes you fat and clogs your arteries. But ask yourself, in the long term, just how many of these pizzas do you have to eat to make yourself a big fat sweaty pizza-munching machine. Well I can’t tell you because I’ve never seen anyone eat so many pizzas. It’s like you eat the pizza because it’s good in the short term, but you know it’s for your own good if you stay away from it in the long term. But my point here is that there are always at least two ways of looking at everything. Why do you think it’s possible for people to have arguments? Obviously both participants in an argument think they’re right. But why? One of them has to be wrong don’t they? Sometimes it depends on what each person values the most. The United States government thinks they’re right in leading this war against terrorism and terrorist groups. Their main reasons for this are: to get revenge for the 9/11 attacks, prevent terrorists from making future attacks and gaining weapons of mass destruction, and to keep the morals of the western world alive. These sound like perfectly reasonable reasons so they must be right, right? So why are the terrorists insisting that the Americans are ‘infidels’, and attempting to prevail no matter what it costs them. Most of these terrorists are extremist Muslims(different to peace-loving Muslims) who believe that ‘god’ will give them credit for either converting people to Islam or killing people who are not Islam, and who believe that everyone must practice the Islam religion. So surely they are right if it’s ‘god’s’ will. Well they’re right as far as they believe. But wait!. What about what all the Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists think ‘god’s’ will is. And what about the atheists? ‘God doesn’t exist so he can’t have a will!’. Someone has to be wrong don’t they??? (Btw, I’m not really religious) This is why we’re always having wars because everyone believes they are ‘right’, and so people will always fight on. And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, why we will never achieve world peace! Because there will always be someone who will disagree with someone else on a humanitarian issue. Anyway I think the world would be too boring if we achieved world peace, and everyone agreed with each other all the time. That’d be no fun. Everyone would most likely die of boredom. And that is why everyone should go on carry killing each other with their suicide bombers and home-made hand grenades. So much for having world peace.
(End)
Now I would like to say, since I wrote that, I may have changed my point of view on things... I just can't be bothered going through what I wrote becos i find what I write to be utterly boring so I havnt checked through it. But if u've read this far, you must be finding this slightly interesting. One question:
Can you understand what
what i'm talking about?
Did you read 'what' twice twice;)
Alrighty then.
Anyway, this is my first post on dis blog. Perhaps i'll make up a name for my blog...maybe i'll call it Bob (how original), so it'll be 'Bob the blog'. (Sorry, random thought. I'm full of random thoughts. They just come to me. I would estimate I have about 200 random thoughts a day).
Did you know that research scientists, probably from the U.S of A, discovered that people read words mainly by looking at the first and last letter. Without the first and last letter of a word, no one can understand what is being written. Try this:
'h uic row o umpe ve h az o.'
Bet ya couldn't understand what that said. It said 'the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.'
Now try this:
'cre o, o otherfuckin un h ike niffin og sse'
Lol, i'm not going to tell you what that said:)
Here's something I wrote a while ago but my views on it myt hav changed by now. (I jst can't be bothered reading it again to update it).
Here it is...
Have you ever wanted something real bad, but knew you had to stay away from it for your own good? Have you ever thought that there might be two ways of looking at everything, good or bad, in our world?
Lets look at what it means to eat pizza. Imagine it’s your favourite food. (it's my favourite food anyway). You want to eat it everyday or at least once a week. You love it. But what are the pros and cons of doing this? It fills up your hunger, it tastes nice, you don’t have to cook dinner, it’s easy to get(you just phone a pizza delivery restaurant) and it’s a real festive party food. Now the cons are: costs you money, makes you fat, contributes to pimples, makes you thirsty and clogs your arteries. To decide whether or not you are going to eat this pizza, you sub-consiously weigh these pros and cons against each other, and decide which of them is the most important to you. Most people will decide to eat it in the moment because it is a pleasant food to eat, and eating one pizza won’t hurt, or at least in the short term, even though it makes you fat and clogs your arteries. But ask yourself, in the long term, just how many of these pizzas do you have to eat to make yourself a big fat sweaty pizza-munching machine. Well I can’t tell you because I’ve never seen anyone eat so many pizzas. It’s like you eat the pizza because it’s good in the short term, but you know it’s for your own good if you stay away from it in the long term. But my point here is that there are always at least two ways of looking at everything. Why do you think it’s possible for people to have arguments? Obviously both participants in an argument think they’re right. But why? One of them has to be wrong don’t they? Sometimes it depends on what each person values the most. The United States government thinks they’re right in leading this war against terrorism and terrorist groups. Their main reasons for this are: to get revenge for the 9/11 attacks, prevent terrorists from making future attacks and gaining weapons of mass destruction, and to keep the morals of the western world alive. These sound like perfectly reasonable reasons so they must be right, right? So why are the terrorists insisting that the Americans are ‘infidels’, and attempting to prevail no matter what it costs them. Most of these terrorists are extremist Muslims(different to peace-loving Muslims) who believe that ‘god’ will give them credit for either converting people to Islam or killing people who are not Islam, and who believe that everyone must practice the Islam religion. So surely they are right if it’s ‘god’s’ will. Well they’re right as far as they believe. But wait!. What about what all the Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists think ‘god’s’ will is. And what about the atheists? ‘God doesn’t exist so he can’t have a will!’. Someone has to be wrong don’t they??? (Btw, I’m not really religious) This is why we’re always having wars because everyone believes they are ‘right’, and so people will always fight on. And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, why we will never achieve world peace! Because there will always be someone who will disagree with someone else on a humanitarian issue. Anyway I think the world would be too boring if we achieved world peace, and everyone agreed with each other all the time. That’d be no fun. Everyone would most likely die of boredom. And that is why everyone should go on carry killing each other with their suicide bombers and home-made hand grenades. So much for having world peace.
(End)
Now I would like to say, since I wrote that, I may have changed my point of view on things... I just can't be bothered going through what I wrote becos i find what I write to be utterly boring so I havnt checked through it. But if u've read this far, you must be finding this slightly interesting. One question:
Can you understand what
what i'm talking about?
Did you read 'what' twice twice;)
Alrighty then.
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