what does it mean to be educated?

i take a class at mlc called Intro to Fine Arts. the class is all about the history of music, art architecture from the dark ages on. we learn about significant people who contributed, trends, movements; pretty much what you'd expect in a class called "intro to fine arts." what bothers me most about the class is that we really dont learn anything.

i'll be the first to admit that i'm a crappy student. actually thats not true. my problem is i'm a chaotic person who just kinda chucks things in general location when done with them. i never know what i'm supposed to do for a class and when i do know, i get all perfectionistic and put it off cuz i know that i won't do it well enough anyways. i wonder how many people know that about me? pretty irrelevant except that unlike alot of people i try to participate in class. i hate not answering questions or not contributing to discussions. usually i have so much to say or just want to have my voice heard. i like interacting with people better than with my notes. i hate reading my own notes, i dont know how to write notes and even more i dont know how to study notes from a class. i usually just wrote notes in class because they were a good way of getting more out of the class and keeping me focused.

this relates to intro to fine arts because honestly the structure of the class sucks for someone like me. we sit there and listen to prof potratz talk about motets and madrigals and mary magdalene always being a certain color in paintings from a certain century and i sit there. i dont write things down cuz thats just as pointless as all this. i dont get to interact. i sit like a puppy and wait for the clock to hit 12:05 so i can book it out of there.

the first test i bet a girl i'd beat her on the test. joanna is a girl. i work at an afterschool daycare program. boys misbehave and go crazy, girls are sweet and innocently go crazy. a broad generalization yes, but in general girls do better at behaving and learning in a school/classroom setting then boys. attribute it to being feminine or something. so what im getting at is i didnt stand a chance. girl got a 100% jason got a D and cheered. attribute it to study habits.

in this class we sit there listen to seemingly random fact about church music or paintings and take the test with a million multiple choice questions. after the test i dont think many people knew much more than we started. i know alot about brett favre. ive read practically every article about him. watched almost every single game hes ever played. and random facts i pretty much got him covered. i dont know brett favre. you get to know people by interacting with them. for whatever reasons, i learn subjects the same way. so sitting there in a class learning random facts and forgetting them the moment i put them down on the test doesnt work for me. i just forget them a little too soon i guess. but i love learning things for the point of discussing them, learning them as a story to be told. just something for me to think about if i'm ever gonna be a teacher i guess.

write me letters

camp address

Jason Schleef
W9944 Buttercup Ave.
Wautoma, WI 54982

the trifecta

since my last update i really learned one of those things that i suppose every teenager my age learns with personal experience: prom is overrated. of course i should have learned this last year but since i didnt have a date last year i figured having a date would make it what everyone and by everyone i mean girls and stupid tv shows say it is. of course its not. its just another dance. and just like any other dance, what makes going to it worthwhile is not the crappy rap music or fellowship without room for the holy spirit but finally enjoying the company of friends and those closest to you. so hopefully i dont sound bitter because i am in no way bitter, im simply more experienced at the whole prom thing since i went to three this year.

First prom: kettle's

Location: phister in milwaukee
The Phister was a fabulous place to have prom. The building was beautiful and the food was delicious. only problem was that its location in downtown milwaukee made the school go anal and forced people to be driven there by professional transportation.

Transportation: yellow school bus
my friend justin Scherbarth's dad drives a school bus so for a reasonable fee he took a good group of kids down to prom. Bus was clean, driver was hillarious.

Dance: Leah wasnt feeling very well and was really tired since she had school that day and had to get up at 5 in the morning. This meant we sat and she simply rested on my shoulder for most of the dance. Sometimes its your job as the guy to be a pillow, this was one of those days and i think we made the best of it.

Post prom: me and leah watched the disney version of robin hood at my house which was actually alot of fun. The she had to go home because her handbell choir had state the next day.


Second Prom: Wisco's

Location: Four points Sheridan
The place was not quite as fancy as kettles but was very nice none the less. major bonus for serving us as many dinner mints as we wanted. again dinner was served here and again we had a good meal.

Transportation: small limo
the limo only held 6 people but was alot of fun nonetheless. the rest of the people were all wisco kids which is ironic because they were all in wisco's show choir with the name Wisco Kids

Dance: Yeah, this one was pretty much a mass orgy. completely different than fvl or kettle in that everyone was as kettle called it "pelvic grinding" it was hillarious to watch. overall this one was a fun time.

Post prom: once me and leah got to her house and passed all the seemingly sold out cheap hotels me and leah watched a movie and then had a heart to heart talk about the future of our relationship because ill be gone all summer at camp and then we go to colleges in different states. it was hard but something that needed to be done.


Third Prom: FVL's

Location: it was at some country club with lots of pine trees and a big staircase.

Transport: not much beats shinnick's car with sherry jones shinnick and dan

dance: there was very little need to dance with such great company and the loss of freebird

post prom: i lost my virginity...... to smoking. that was fun. first party was slow but the people were great and root beer was a plenty. then we went to midgets which rocked. i love that kid.

ok so i started this post a while back and i never finished it until today. i got more stuff to write but here is my prom saga.

my happy 50th

post that is. and indeed it is time for one. i have been somewhat addicted to myspace lately. if your not my friend, you should really look me up cuz im not sure if were really friends unless myspace says so. today was an odd one. i was supposed to get braces today. that was supposed to take about 2 hours or so but just to be on the safe side..... i got a preplan for the whole day of school. of course when i got there i sat in the chair and watched scooby doo for a lil bit. it was the scooby doo where the kids are actually kids and i caught the tail end so i didnt really understand what was goin on. but they caught the bad guy, and i was happy. then the orthadontist talked to me and asked, "so your going to be gone all summer?" me: "yes" him: "and your going to go to college in minnesota?" me:"yes, i told you all this last time." him: "well then i cant give you braces, youll have to transfer somewhere else." so i wont have braces this summer. sorry for the false alarm.
eventually i got home and called my mom to tell her the news. she was cool with it, but then she made me go to school. which meant i had to waste a perfectly good preplan. i did get to give blood though. i love cookies.

freedom

i put in my 2 weeks at mcdonalds today. that felt good. if i ever get another job like that i really need to do a better job of getting them my schedule ahead of time. other than that i learned how to make every single mcdonalds sandwich, the special sauce on a big mac is really just thousand island dressing, half price on the dollar menu is the shizzle (im gonna miss that) and finally how a kitchen without isa is like a person without a soul. ill have the month of may pretty much freed up then. i thought that was best, its my last month at home, living with my parents like i always have been so i figured id spend it with some more free time. plus i was sick of it. i cant wait for camp and college, even though now i have something back home that im really gonna miss. oh well, life goes on.
Ephesians 2:4-5 But because of his great love for us God who is rich in mercy made us alive in Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.

braces AND a girlfriend

wow, if you want to read me being emo scroll down to that last post. that was crazy, but i miss camp, but i guess i was there, even if not in bodily form. anyways so in case all you guys are wonderin whats up with my life well yeah those top two things pretty much sum it up. i just got back from the orthodontist and im getting braces on the 25th prolly, i gotta check some scheduling and such to see if it all works but yeah, thats the plan. i got into the whole orthodontist thing late so yeah, i get braces this summer and college instead of earlier. oh well, ill have straight teeth. and on a better note, me and the beautiful leah younk are now dating. so yeah, schleef has a girlfriend. anyways in case your wondering how that all went down. i guess it goes like this. i met her when i was hangin out with leah schlect at wsma and we talked and it was cool. i saw her again at wisco's musical when i went with igl and aaron to see it (she had the lead). so i talked to her a little more and then we set up a date at applebees and that went really well and we had another one where we just went to her house and played video games and watched the movie, "from hell" so yeah, i got a girlfriend who likes violent movies and video games. this rocks. she is so cool. she goes to wisco, loves jesus, doesnt want to have sex till marriage, went to camp as a camper and loved it. shes a good kid. shes also korean if that matters to any of you and wels which should. (i didnt know we had any koreans either.) its still pretty new and im excited. in the words of adam igl,
peace out brotha

wishing i was at camp

so i was supposed to go to the teen retreat this weekend. obviously im not there and heres why. i took a creative writing class as an extra english credit this semester so i already had all the credits i needed to graduate. the class was tough so instead of trying hard on it i pretty much blew it off. so natually i ended up with an f on my quarter report card. my parents looked at this and said that i was grounded and couldnt go to camp. this bothered me most of all cuz all my other grades were As and Bs except for an incomplete in my mandatory english class world lit. but that was just because i had been sick and needed to make up a quiz. i made that up and that should be up to either a b plus or a minus depending on how the quiz went. so i just talked to my mom about visiting friend whose grandma just died even though im grounded. she said no and yelled at me for this quite a bit about how i dont care about anything except myself. her reasoning for this is that her and my dad work very hard for me to go to kettle and then i just blow it off which means i dont care about them. they know this cuz they see a report card with 8 letters on it and one of those is a study hall so its really only 7. i know she was just blowing off steam because she was very angry about the F but it really showed me how little me and my mom understand each other. i know she doesnt really think that all i care about is myself and i know that she loves me. she thinks i would show my love for her by doing well in school but i dont understand that at all. doesnt doing well in school only benefit me? maybe i just need to grow up a little. actually its not a maybe and i need to grow up a lot. doing well in school as well as everything else is prolly a good start. since starting to write this she says i can go see my friend if i clean my room and get some homework done, i guess taking some time to cool off helped us both out. time to get to work.