I got a Snapchat story from my friend Jessica earlier today. Jessica and I have been friends since we were 12. We met at a middle school dance we both attended in the 7th grade. She's the longest friendship I've ever had. I remember back when we were teenagers she found the idea of sex appalling and now here she is with an 11-year-old. People change over time. Don't they? Anyway, I bring this up to talk about her kid and the Snapchat she sent me.

Did any of you have standardized tests when you were in school? I hated them when I was. I felt like all they did in school was prepare us on taking tests. We didn't learn about what would exactly be on these standardized tests. We were just told how to take them. The tests really serve no purpose other than figuring out how much money the schools get. Children don't really learn anything from them aside from how to fill in bubbles on the sheets. Jessica said this is difficult for her son. She said he does well in school with his projects and papers he has to write and everything. He just doesn't test well. She had a parent/teacher meeting about it and about how her son doesn't score so well on these tests. Big deal. Some kids just aren't great at tests. She said, "What's the point of these fucking tests other than to get your school more money that you're just going to blow on more sports equipment anyway?" 

I always felt like my schools spent too much time, energy, and money on sports as well. I even had a project in high school to draw a political cartoon. Mine was about the education system and our school in particular. I drew the principal and one of the teachers. The teacher saying that the grades of students in her class had been low with the principal replying, "Who cares about tests? Have you seen these football scores?"

Maybe if schools in the South had hockey teams I may have been more interested. I've always loved hockey ever since seeing The Mighty Ducks movies as a kid. I was on the wrestling team in middle school but gave that up because it was going on the same time as hockey season and I much preferred playing hockey for the recreation department. I digress.

Standardized tests don't teach you how to write papers. They don't prepare you for college. They don't prepare you for life, yet they just keep adding more and more of them to schools. End of the semester tests, end of the year tests, SATs, ACTs, etc. When you get to college none of this shit matters.

In other news, I see that the U.S. is all in a tizzy about TikTok and the Chinese spying on Americans. Now, I use TikTok quite a bit. At night I'll do my nightly routine of watching my friends stream on Twitch, read some of whatever book I happen to be reading at that particular time (right now it's The Cement Garden by Ian Mcwan), then I'll scroll through TikTok. I share funny videos I see on there with friends of mine and with Stephanie. I've said before, "I don't give a shit if someone is watching what I'm doing on TikTok. Let them see that I like watching funny dog videos and videos of women with big boobs. Yeah, I'm a boobs guy (one of the things that I first noticed about Stephanie and she knew it too. Hahaha!)

Why not just make it where government officials can't get on the shit? I have nothing to hide. Search my phone, search my computer. Pretty much everything I search people know about anyway. I'm quite the boring person the more I think about it. Why do you think my blog posts aren't more provocative? The government doesn't seem too concerned with the people of Facebook and Instagram invading our privacy. The government itself spies on Americans and already knows everything about us. Is it the typical "It's OK when we do it!" bullshit?

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