"The best time of the year"

Yes, it is research paper time. Next year, who knows how many research papers I'll be writing. Right now, I'm signed up to take Honors Chemistry, Honors US History, Honors English III (I WILL GET INTO THIS CLASS EVEN IF IT KILLS ME!), Pre-Calculus, AP Enlish Language (Either that or AP English Literature. I get the two confused), Spanish I, Broadcasting II, and Advanced Chorus Spring Semester. So, I'm screwed. I heard the AP class I signed up for is fun. Even if it focuses on nonfiction, I'd still like to take it. My dad would have had me take AP Biology, but I managed to get out of that mess. If I did take that class, I wouldn't have been able to take Broadcasting and Chorus. Seriously, with this schedule, I'll be lucky to be able to sit down and relax. Perhaps I should change Pre-Calculus to Advanced Functions and Modeling, at least it would be easier......

What was I talking about again? Oh, research paper. This time, I had to write a paper on a world topic. It can't be about the United States, Great Britain, or the Holocaust and it has to be in Cause/Effect form. Guess what I chose!........The effects of the Japanese school structure on its students. For the past few days I've been researching information about the school stucture to put into my paper. Some of the information I found was shocking. Apparently, there is a saying for studying for exams that goes something like 'Sleep four hours, pass. Sleep for five, fail.' EVIL! I tell you. Also, the curriculm for high school students is outrageous. Compared to a US student's curriculm, their high school work is equal to our college work. Here's something else I found to be interesting. In a Japanese elementary school class, they only have to cover ten topics the entire year, but a US school has sixty-five. SIXTY-FIVE!

Overall, this was an interesting topic to research about. I was actually suprised at how many people chose a topic relating to Japan. On boy chose to do something with the Meiji period and another chose to do the effects of the nuclear bombs in World War II. Other topics I heard were the Korean War, the Treaty of Versailles, and some sort of scientific device that related to physics that's in Sweeden.

So far, I think this is going to be an interesting research paper. Especially since we have to do a presentation to the class. I think I'm going to contrast U.S. schools to Japanese schools to show how different the two are.

One last thing before I leave, I have a week and two days before I leave for New York. According to my chorus teacher, we're going to get to see the muscial Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and talk with that cast for an hour afterwords. How cool is that? I shall answer. VERY cool.