I want to go to college, or at least that is what I told my young impressionable sixth-grade self when I decided to take the AVID program. AVID, also known as Advancement via Individual Determination, is a college preparation class that, you guessed it, helps you prepare for college, or at least that is what they tell you. Throughout the five years that I have been in the AVID program, I have seen very little of this. Sure, the whole idea of AVID is a great one; however, it is being done poorly.

   Year after year of doing it, I have realized that AVID is actually a pretty hollow program. Ever since the seventh grade, which was when I started AVID, we have done the same activities over and over again: tutorials (an activity in which you bring a question from a class and have it answered by classmates and tutors), “fun” class bonding activities that supposedly incite critical thinking, college research/ trips, and binder checks (where you have to bring in a binder with three notes from every class and other things they want in your binder). Cheap modafinil onine http://buyprovigilcheap.com/buy-modafinil/

   The first problem I have with AVID is that we have done the same thing every year since I started the program in middle school. Every year of AVID goes like this: You start the year learning about how to take Cornell notes and discussing what AVID is about. Then, you learn about tutorials and binder checks and how to do them properly. Afterwards, you begin to follow this schedule for the rest of the year: random activities which rarely have any point to them on Mondays and Wednesdays, tutorials on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and binder checks on Fridays with the occasional guest speaker who talks about their life or some school. This is how AVID has worked every year since I joined in 2013. However, this is not the only problem that I have with AVID.  

   One of the main promises of AVID is to prepare you for college. They do this to a degree, but not as much as I hoped for. AVID does tell you about the A-G requirements, which are extremely important to know about to get into college. However, I was very disappointed to find that many of the things AVID spends time on showing you can be easily learned by looking at posters on walls of classrooms or a quick trip to your counselor, which basically throws countless hours and days of being in AVID in the trash. We spent many hours on projects that completely revolved around these things, and looking back on it, makes me pretty mad. I also noticed that there are a lot of recycled activities and projects that you will do in AVID.  For example, there is one activity where we are given an article and we have to “interact” with it by highlighting main ideas and other unimportant things which we have done countless times every year. In AVID, we could be spending our time much more wisely, like having conversations with real college officials or maybe even doing more in-depth research on the SAT.  However, despite these bad things AVID is still a very promising program and has helped me in some ways. Order Viagra online https://www.rpspharmacy.com/product/viagra/

   First of all, AVID has helped me with applications, which was something that, beforehand, I was completely oblivious to. You do go fairly deep into the application process for not only colleges, but also for any jobs or positions in general. Also, I do appreciate the trips to colleges that AVID takes us on. At first, they do teach you a lot about what colleges have and what you can expect on a college campus, but over time, I found that the trips became useless since we went to certain colleges multiple times. There was not much to learn after the first couple of trips because, believe it or not, most colleges are alike. I also give them credit for ending my extremely lazy student phase that I was in when I arrived in middle school. I used to procrastinate (or at least more than I do now) before AVID helped me with it. However, I feel that the negatives from my experience with AVID completely outweigh the positives. Some things I learned from AVID were helpful; however, a majority of what AVID is meant for is unneeded.

   I personally do not recommend taking AVID in the state it is currently in. Much of the information you learn in AVID can be learned elsewhere and in a much less time-consuming fashion. A lot of the activities are either busy work or do not really achieve its goal. However, with adjustments, I feel like AVID would be a good program. For right now, though, it is a mess and should be avoided by those who value their time.