School

As I've said before, I attend Anderson High School in Austin Texas. School goes Monday through Friday, from nine in the morning to four fifteen in the afternoon. I have to be there at seven thirty for band practice and normally leave at about four thirty except on Mondays, when I have band until seven that evening.

Our school has a wide variety of clubs most of which meet anywhere from weekly to monthly. Some of these clubs include the Darfur club (working to end the genocide in Darfur), the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance), Mu Alpha Theta (Math club), Spanish club, French club, Key club, and Anime club. The main reason we have so many clubs is because its relatively easy to start a club. All you really need is enough interested students and a teacher sponsor. In many ways, the variety of clubs reflects the personalities and beliefs of the students on campus.

For an American school, our academics are fairly rigorous. We are an IB school which naturally causes our classes to be a little harder. For all our core classes (Math, Science, English, and Social Studies) there are two levels of difficulty. For Freshmen and Sophomores there are regular and Pre-AP classes. Juniors and Seniors have regular and AP classes. Pre-AP and AP (or IB) classes are significantly more challenging then their regular counter parts. There are also many electives that can be taken as Pre-AP or AP classes.

This year I am taking all four of my core classes Pre-Ap. I normally have anywhere from one to five hours of homework on weekdays and about two to twelve hours on weekends. Band and homework fill up my schedule pretty fast. Currently, we normally have a football game every Thursday or Friday and a competition almost every Saturday. Games take up pretty much the entire night and competitions normally take at least five hours.

While I feel pretty busy most of the time, I enjoy Anderson. It's a lot of hard work, but it's still a lot of fun. While I sometimes wish was taking easier classes, I need them to be competitive and I get a lot out of them.

Illegal Immigration

We have illegal immigration in the United States. The majority of the illegal immigrants are from Mexico. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, there are only two countries that border the U.S, Canada and Mexico. Canada and the U.S. have higher standards of living then Mexico, so it’s easier to make a better life for oneself in the U.S. then in Mexico. Because Texas is on the U.S.-Mexico border, we have more illegal immigrants then many states.
There are many problems with illegal immigrants. Firstly, it is currently easier to get into this country illegally then legally; which sets a very bad precedent. Not only that, but also these immigrants often do not pay taxes and yet rely on government-funded resources such as education. Also many illegal immigrants have a fear of law-enforcement because they are, after all, breaking the law. Because of this, areas that have large numbers of illegal immigrants also tend to have higher crime rates since no one will call the cops. To a large extent our country debates over what to do about illegal immigrants rather then doing anything. However, we do have border patrol, which deports illegal immigrants when they’re found.