The U.S. education status is beginning to scare me. How can 30% of its high school students dropout? How? How is the education just so bad when Bush keeps ranting about his No Child Left Behind Act? And no, all you Bush critics, this time for once it's not his fault. He got that act done, but the educators we spent gold and toil for simply lied to us about the dropout rate. Still, it's alarming. 30% is abnormal, especially for a DEVELOPED country! Now I wouldn't be surprised if we were a developing country with a 30% dropout rate, but DEVELOPED, DEVELOPED country! Our work force is most certainly going down the drain.

Just how are we going to deal with the influx of foreign people who have a 10000X better basis in math and are going to steal all those science and engineering jobs from us? I feel suffocated from knowing that I cannot compete with them, that I must not compete with them, and thus I cannot choose electrical engineering, or any kind of engineering as my major, for fear that they'll simply grab the job from under my nose. (Espeically since engineering requires top grades. If I do get the top grades, get into some engineering school, I am not going to be pleased when I discover it was stolen from me by outsourcing.) What can I possibly do better than them? Besides my English skills, I'm nothing! And what English skills do you need to learn how to network a computer? None.

So I feel 10000X safer doing graphic design, doing something, no, anything that's related to the liberal arts. Sure, I can never leave an English speaking country; I'll probably have a difficult time finding jobs outside of one, but at least I'll HAVE a job within the country. That's better than getting your job stolen by outsourcing, which I can guarantee it will be. Yet, parents simply do not understand the toil. They ought to know, since they grew up in a foreign country, that their country's citizens are several layers above U.S. citizens when it comes down to math. I mean, god forsaken, even art majors study up to something equivalent to Calculus BC in math. I'm sure they'd pass the SAT II Math IIC portion with honors, unlike us, who struggle with it and wonder if we still remember our formulas on sequences.

Perhaps I'm ranting now. Biotech does seem quite a bit safer though. And I certainly do not lack interest in that sector. The only thing is that biology happens to be the most sought after subject at my school, considering that my school contained the high-scoring Biology AP classes. On the brighter side, there's less people of foreign countries (nothing against them, mind you) pouring into biology, since many of them tend to not study biology at all. Biology is simply not as popular as being a programmer, not as ostentatious as being a networker to the austere Chinese whom are interested solely in physics, chemistry, and the pursuit of electrical engineering. Anything less means that you probably should be participating in some liberal arts major. For them, physics is a sign of raw educational power, just like the nuclear bomb. (JKJK)

Wow, I certainly am not a very good essay writer. It's unbelievable that I just went from high school dropouts to what I want to be when I grow up. Sad, but then again, this is just a journal entry. No biggie.

Speaking of random things, I just need a second rant--Naruto has horribly ripped off Hunter x Hunter. The two are incomprehesibly similar, and it was obvious Naruto was published a year later than Hunter x Hunter and that the two authors were good friends, making it more likely that the younger Kishimoto had read some of Togashi's works. (Sorry, run-on sentence there) Kishimoto's Chuunin Exam was utterly similar to Togashi's Hunter Exam. Especially during the part when Kishimoto makes the Naruto characters retrieve scrolls from each other--each group has either the Earth scroll or the Heaven scroll, and in order to pass, they must keep their own scroll while trying to retrieve anothers' scroll of the opposite nature. In the Hunter Exam, the Hunter examinees were made to do something similar--the had their own hunter exam number; they were to keep their own license plate while hunting down either their target's plate (3 points) or a random person's plate (1 point), with a total of 5 points needed to pass. Kishimoto seems to have taken Togashi's idea and twisted it on his finger. The whole idea of having a tournament in the Chuunin exam is probably not considered copying, though, since I wouldn't be surprised if any shonen manga just randomly held a tournament.

However, the creation of the Akatsuki once again proves Kishimoto's ideas' origins. The Akatsuki seem by far too similar to the Ryodan, almost as if they were modeled after the Ryodan. Orochimaru is a horrifying relic. Just how similar can that snake senin be to the clownish Hisoka? So, both are psychotic and are interested in messing around with children (well, and in Hisoka's case, twenty-six year olds work too), both supported some S/A class criminal organization (the Akatsuki and Ryodan respectively) and both eventually left their respective criminal groups--betrayal. Gods, even their personalities are similar.

Even the main characters don't stop from being similar. So, Sasuke craves revenge on his S class missing nin brother Itachi for murdering his entire clan; while Kurapika yearns to exact vengence on the Genei Ryodan for slaughtering his clan? Why is it always about killing clans and hunting down people for vengeance? And the fact that these two clans both possess something special about their eyes and that this specialty leads to red eyes is surprisingly similar. Couldn't Kishimoto have at least changed that bit a little?

And Kisame certainly bears some resemblance to Ubogin, both with their crazy, craving kills mode, and Kisame's face is uncannily kin to Franklin's face. Itachi holds similarities to Feitan; both seem quiet, moody, and torturous. Naruto is representative of every shonen manga's main character. Naviety is their chosen trait. Just like Gon, like Luffy, like Yoh, like a million other shonen manga stars.

And, now the recent incidents where Naruto deems to save Sasuke from Orochimaru's grasps. That's quite a bit similar to the Zoldick arc when Gon went to the Zoldick mansion and adamantly forced the Zoldicks give him Killua. Both incidents involve the main characters saving their friends. Alright, alright, rant done. XD I'd best be snuggling up in my bed right now. Or working on that damned lit speech.