The Principal-Principal Problem

School: "an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age."


Let's review the hierarchical structure of a typical, IB Diploma Highschool:

The Board of Directors

School Principal

High School Principal

Head of Departments

Teachers

School is where people like me go to receive education and to prepare for life. We pay money; we invest in the school for it to, in return, provide us with the best quality of education and the best environment possible under the circumstances. Almost 200 people, from the cleaning staff to the head of the math department to the "board", work so that we, the students, can get the best education possible. At least that's what it's supposed to be like in a world where IB diplomas grow on trees and you can understand HL Math.

On average, I spend approximately 8 hours sleeping and 1 hour on the road everyday. The amount of time for which I am fully awake and functioning is about 15 hours. And I spend more than half of this time in school. So it is only natural for my school to have become like a home to me, especially because I've been going to the same school since kindergarten with friends with whom I learned to write with. I expect my school to support me and each and every student, because the reason there is a huge stone building on top of a hill 15 km outside of town with hundreds of people inside it spending their time is to educate us. We, and by "we" I mean the students, should be the priority in any decision the "school", people listed above, make. The primary and most important goal of a school being to provide the students with the best conditions and education seems like a given, but believe me, it is overlooked most of the time.

This week (so far), I've had 3 quizzes and an oral commentary, one math test, and 5 lab reports and one essay due. I also go to Dersane, private teaching institutions preparing students for the final 2 exams which will get them enrolled into university, and its only Tuesday. Last night, I came home at 8 pm, after a 2 hr 40 min long exam at Dersane, and started writing these lab reports then. You must have understood that I don't get enough sleep. Or rest. Or relaxing time. Or freedom.  None of us, seniors, get enough of these. So much is expected from us that we're trying very hard not to crumble under this stress. We burst out laughing when we hear the words "mock exams" and "IB" and "getting a 7 from HL Math", we slack off sometimes, uncomfortably watch  an episode of How I Met Your Mother instead of doing the math homework, and then stay up until 2 in the morning to finish that same math homework.

You would expect that people around us seniors would try everything to make our lives easier.

They don't.

Instead, for the first time in my 14 years in school, I've been feeling that the school is doing everything in its power to make our lives harder. I wouldn't have thought things could get any harder, but, hey, I was mistaken.

Maybe the first time it wasn't intentional; the people on top of the educational food chain thought they were actually helping us. We went and spoke to these people, and they listened.

The second time is also somewhat understandable though not excusable. We went and spoke to other people, and they did not listen at first. Apparently, a board "commitment" was more important than people's parents attending their child's high school graduation. Only after we bantered them with our requests and got our parents involved did they decide to do something.

But when this happens for the third time, when the people who are supposed to be helping us try to tackle us for their own personal benefits, for what they have understood of the current national education system and their (rightful) hate towards it, and perhaps, just to show their stance and "prove", rather despairingly, to the rest of the schools in Ankara that they are different, I personally don't want to go and talk to them. I now know, unfortunately, that we don't matter. Their decisions do.

With every regime, there arises a problem called the "principal-agent" problem (funny how the wording fits the exact situation at hand). This is when the people elected to represent the people (agents) do not serve in the best interest of the people (the principals). It is somewhat inevitable, because human beings are selfish and crude- and I'm sorry Mr. Freud, but the super-ego does not always kick in. Sometimes though, there is one person high up in the chain who you can rely on; who you know you can trust. Unfortunately, that person, being a "predator", is also the "prey" for some people.

Who suffers from this problem is the principals. The people. The students. The agents get what they wanted all along. It is true that the people have great power; they can go against the system and the agents, and with enough will they, too, can get what they want. But when the "principals" are broken, when they have no hope that the agents can be changed, when all they really want to do is to get these horrible few months over with and never look back again, when the place they called "home" turns against them, well, then, there is nothing anyone can do. The agents may proceed with their merry lives. The seniors (oops, I meant "principals" (!)) can suffer on for the next months and wait for the principal-principal problem to claim its next victim.

Knock Knock

Avoid the black cat!

Salt over the left shoulder.

Knock on wood.

Rabbit's foot.

Wear the evil eye.

There, all set to go!

All of these actions are things we do every day in order to set our lives on track. When we see a black cat, we expect our day to go terribly wrong. When we pass under a ladder, we live through the day frightened of what may happen.

These superstitions are nothing more than stupid beliefs we cling on to in order to have an "external force" act on our lives, change its current projectile and destination. We think that wearing an evil eye will protect us from a car crash, so we drive more recklessly. And when we don't actually crash into the back of a truck, we think it is because of the "eye".

When we see an owl on the sedge of our balcony, we expect someone to die in the following 24 hours. At least that's the way things work in Turkey.

If we have a rabbit's foot around our necks, well, then, we will ace the physics test!

But actually all of this is caused by logical fallacies. We only notice that there was an owl on our balcony if someone dies that day and we assume a causality. We can always perform poorly at an exam, but that one single time you may not be wearing your evil eye, and, again, we do the best thing humans do, the thing we are all professionals at; we assume. So these traditions are born by your very own mind tricking you. Like every false, hollow, seemingly-useful-but-really-not-worth-a-dime thing on our planet today,superstitions, too, are created only by humans.  They are all things humanity sticks onto to be able to blame something else for what happens to them. Superstitions exist for the same reasons that religion exists for. All these false beliefs are built on the same, selfish, arrogant idea: something went wrong? blame it on someone else.

So, we do knock on wood when we see a very pretty baby, or when someone mentions something horrible happening to another person. I personally do not believe that me knocking on the aged furniture at our house, not even real wood, probably, would delay the Reaper and turn him the wrong way at the intersection just down the road from our home, but my grandma does, and she tells me to do so, insistingly.

Even the most skeptical person on the face of earth, the scientists at CERN or the astronauts in the space shuttle looking down on our blue marble, has an instance of doubt when a black cat walks across the road right in front of them, or when a mirror shatters into a thousand pieces in their apartments.

So when I take the IB exams next year, I won't depend on an evil eye to protect me or a knock on the table to get me a 7. But, just to be safe, I still will wear my blue necklace, be careful around mirrors for the couple of weeks before the exams, pull my hair if I see a black cat on the street while waiting for the bus, and knock on the wood if anyone mentions failing the test or getting a bad grade, because you never know. Someday, those guys at CERN or USC Research Team may just announce that knocking on wood increases your intelligence and awareness.

 

In the Words of an IB Student...

 

Take the IB, they said.

It will be fun, they said.

 

Now another precious Saturday is over,

With little got done,

I'm sitting in front of the computer,

Entering the data for my lab report one by one.

 

I set the alarm early in the morning today,

Because Saturday and Sunday is no holiday.

They may be shaded on my calender gray,

But they are just like every school day.

 

The bright brilliant day outside,

And the wondrous things on the web, like Facebook,

Are incredibly alluring, but I must not abide,

Since I have not given my math questions a single look.

 

As if it knows,

The computer is reluctant to draw my graphs,

I need to calculate the uncertainties and the ratios,

But all I get from the data-collection software is bitter laughs.

 

There is a TOK essay waiting to be written by me,

Blank sheets gazing up, asking, "How do I know?".

I know, it's only 300 words and five comments, not fifty,

But why does it seem like I still have 1000 words to go?

 

Now I must stop writing this poem,

And dive back into the bottomless dark pit of position, velocity and acceleration,

I sincerely hope I'll get all my stuff done without becoming a victim,

Of the cruel IB and its high expectations.