Hope for us yet?

I've been hooked on tea lately. It's a curiosity-- as soon as I lose the floss I have been carting around for a few months, I switch to tea. I hope this doesn't mean that I will stop flossing my teeth entirely.

This week has been all sorts of panic attacks. The debate over the HOPE GPA raise to 3.7 will happen this Wednesday. It's sad. Our entire academic career has been based around the guarantee of a free education, and now at the point when we need it most, the rug is being ripped out from under us. The other day I found myself writing a letter to our dear Nathan Deal (who probably doesn't care because he has to meet budget demands) about the drastic changes. Take GPA from a 3.0 to a 3.5 and I understand, but a 3.7! Now to be clear, I didn't think this would affect me at all. Worked hard, good grades, challenging classes. Done. But now, in the face of an endless summer stuck in two part-time jobs, I am really too lazy to handle the burden. Why should I have to, considering I held up my end of the deal?

To lawmakers the change seems like business. But there are seriously kids out there who need the extra 10%, around 1,200 dollars, for books and a decent computer. I wouldn't have had a problem with these changes until I realized that the way to calculate hope gpa is less than fair. Take all of your core classes, subtract honors and ap points, add .5 points back for ap classes. Now, don't be fooled, sure the .5 may sound reasonable, but it is compensating for the fact that any B is a 3.0. Take an ap calc class and -gasp- earn an 86-- a decent grade, and maybe you even earned a 5 on the exam. But really that grade is a 3.5, less than the 3.7 needed for hope. Take your 3.5s and average them with the 4.0s (a 4.5 doesn't exist) and you will find that your A's actually do not balance out your B's. The system does not reward for A's, but really, punishes you for B's, or (horror) C's. It doesn't seem fair. There is a disparity between the way national AP curriculum is structured (in which you need to be challenged in order to learn) and the cracked way the state determines your academic worthiness.

I honestly yearn for socialized education. At least there is some guarantee in that.