doyle

(For example, I recently read a fic in which something bad happens and Giles tries to tell Buffy that there was no way she could have anticipated it. She replies, "But I should've done!" That just looks weird to a Yank like me.)

I'm sure I'm guilty of using that myself. Why's it wrong? Should it be 'shoulda' instead of should've?

You've gotten several responses to this already, but I'll chime in: Americans wouldn't use the "done" (which always makes my inner grammar kitty VERY unhappy when I'm reading British literature, even when I smack said kitty with a rolled-up newspaper). It would "But I should have", with no contraction and an emphasis on 'should'. A few people have suggested extending it into "should have known", but I think the shorter version works better for the context. Buffy's not making a general statement about her knowledge or lack thereof; she's responding directly to and refuting to Giles' statement:
Giles: "You couldn't have known." (or whatever)
Buffy: "But I should have!"

...any other glaring errors any of you have noticed non-Americans making?

It's hard to say with the Buffyverse; in canon the characters speak in Buffyspeak, which is peculiar in that it's both more awkward and more elaborately grammatical than usual American. Characters make up words/sentences structures by adding things to the ends of them: "fight-y", "Scary much?/Lame much?/Bored much?/Pregnant much?" On the other hand, there's no WAY that Xander could have done as badly on the verbal portion of the SAT as he claims, because his vocabulary's larger than mine. (Unless he slept through the test. Which, hey, story idea...) Someone wrote a book on Buffyspeak, which I've always intended to pick up, if only to see how watching "Buffy" has warped my own speech patterns.

Sort of on-topic: I'm a Texan and a Fred-fan, and I can get irritated at the lack of fanfiction writers (and the "Angel" writers on the show as well, really) who do anything with Fred's origins in Texas more than give her a thick accent and a Dixie Chicks poster. It's especially annoying in light of the wealth of stories exploring the cultures of England, Ireland, California, and LA specifically and how those cultures influenced the characters who originated there. C'mon, y'all! It's Texas! Texas is insane! Fred was on occasion insane! Have FUN with it, peeeeople! ...Sigh.

If anyone reading this could point me at some good fiction involving Fred & Texas (not necessarily set in Texas, mind), I would be so happy. I've had a Fred-fic "Fair to Midland" lying around ostensibly completed for the past year or so that's all about (probably obnoxiously so) "But Fred is from TEXAS, dammit! TEEEXXXAAAAS!" I've never released it because I really need to throw the first half out and rewrite it, and I'm lazy. But originally a Brit beta-read it for me, and that was interesting, though she did a fabulous job.

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On Xander's verbal SAT: absolutely. The guy who says 'don't deconstruct my segue' scores nowhere near as highly as Buffy?

I'm trying to think of any Texas Fred fic and not coming up with much...

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Buffy scored exactly 100 points higher than I did on the SATs. I shall always, always be bitter. ;)

Sigh on the Fredfic. But I did find the Buffyspeak book.

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I never understood how Buffy could get so high on her SATs. I mean, I know nothing about the education system over there, but didn't she get almost as high as Willow? While missing classes, not caring about homework and complaining that 'math, wah'?

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The "Buffy" writers were on crack. The test only goes up to 1600, so I assume that Willow scored in the low-to-mid-1500s and that's why she was so distraught in "Lovers Walk". I was a straight-A honors student who studied my ass off and got a 1330 combined, which was good enough for several very nice schools to send inquisitive tendrils my way. The SAT is really not a very good judge of natural intelligence or even overall academic performance, because the SAT is basically a test of how well you can take an SAT. ;P But even so, Buffy would've had to study how to take the SAT, and the test does require some basic general knowledge you learn in high school (especially math classes), so it's very doubtful Buffy could have scored a 1430 without some hardcore prepwork tutoring from Willow in their Scooby off-hours or without the writers being on crack. The "Buffy" writers were also on crack if they thought that a rockin' SAT score would be enough to get Buffy into the college of her choice, as the Scoobies, Joyce, Giles, and even Angel seemed to think--with her shoddy grades, spotty class attendance, history of arrests and discipline problems, total lack of any regular extracurricular activities, and total lack of any adult school authority figure over her willing to vouch for/recommend her (except for maybe Jenny Calendar, who died; Buffy's favorite teacher didn't even remember her). Even Willow would have to have some kind of extracurriculars to have a real "in" to very good schools, so I assume that during her spare time she was president of the Computer Club or cured cancer. UC Sunnydale seems to have been the kind of state school that's required to let in pretty much anybody who applies. (Poor Willow. Did she even graduate before the town and school with it went BOOM?)

See, it's for this kind of stuff that I have to tell myself, "It's okay, Kawy, it's just a fantasy show" MUCH more than the vampires and demons. ;)

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I wondered that myself about her record and extracurricular activities: I knew early on that I wanted to go to my local university, and that I was applying for a course that's not fully subscribed, and my school still made me join the choir and the debate team and stuff so that I'd have something to put on my application.

I tend to fanwank that the Council of Watchers altered her score, though I'm not sure why they would...

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airawyn.livejournal.com

UC Sunnydale seems to have been the kind of state school that's required to let in pretty much anybody who applies.

Except that it's a UC school (University of California), which means it's got high standards. (The "state schools" that let almost anyone in are CSU - California State University. [Although those are getting tougher to get into, because of budget cuts.] There's a two-tiered state university system in California.)

Maybe it has something to do with the location.

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Ahhhh, cool! I didn't know that about California schools. Thanks for the clarification.

Apparently incredible standardized-test-taking skills are just part of the Slayer package...that or the Council pulled some strings, thinking that she should be in college where the freshman-sucking vamps lurk or that it would be unbecoming for the Slayer to work at McDonald's the rest of her probably-short life!

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Maybe nobody wants to go to UC Sunnydale because of the town's high death rate?

Of course, that doesn't explain how Sunnydale became so large that it not only had a university but that Buffy and Willow lived on campus instead of staying at home... but then I expect Smallville to grow a college next year, too.

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airawyn.livejournal.com

Some students do live on campus even when their parents are in town, so they can get that "away from home" experience. That's what I figured Buffy and Willow were doing. Both of them came from families that would be able to afford pay for housing, presumably.

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metalphoenix.livejournal.com

What always irritated me is that in season one, she had a very low GPA, around 2 point something, and never studied, and yet, somehow she manages to get an amazing score on the SATs AND get into Northwestern, which is a college I've always wanted to go to.

When I got back my SAT score, I looked at it and said... that's not fair. Buffy did better than I did. v_v;; And then, for the longest time, I didn't get a letter back from Northwestern, and I was going crazy thinking she got in and I didn't. It was very distressing. But, it's okay now, because I did get in, and I'm going this fall.

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Did she get into/apply to Northwestern, or was Northwestern just one of the schools that Joyce mentioned she could get into, which is how I remember it? I would've thought I'd remember ~~and bitterly resent it to the grave, you already beat my SAT scores, Buffy, leave me some dignity!~~ if she'd actually gotten in.

Congratulations on getting into Northwestern! That's really awesome for you. :)

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metalphoenix.livejournal.com

Yea, she did get in. In Choices, Joyce gets really happy for her and talks about her future, and then calls her relatives in Chicago. She also tells Giles who gets really happy for her too, but Wes tells her she can't. And then, she learns that she can't leave, and Willow agrees to stay with her even though she could go to Oxford, and aww, it's all happy. ^_^

And thanks! I'm really excited about going.

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Congratulations, that's great!

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Well, the thing about the verbal SATs is that you CAN'T study for them, really. The verbal is all things like reading comprehension and vocabulary. A friend of mine tried to study for the vocabulary years in advance... and I was very pleased to beat her verbal score... ;)... but it's really a matter of having read a lot. Now, Buffy doesn't strike me as much of a reader, but she does gradually do more research. She's also quite smart with strategy and stuff... she just has other things occupying her time than academics, as Professor Walsh noted.

As for the math, I did less well than on the verbal (but still fine) because the math on it was all years behind what I was currently taking as an honors student. I took the SATs junior year (11th grade), and the math was from 7-9th grade. I would have done better if I'd gone back and reviewed, but if Buffy was being tutored by Willow, and taking level 1 or 2 math instead of honors, she might have been quite well prepared for it.

Another thing to remember is that they reset the scoring about 8-10 years ago because the median score had dropped (because lots more people started taking the SATs than used to). However, it's worth noting that SATs are not worth as much as grades and essays to most colleges, and recommendations and extra-curriculars matter too. So yes, Buffy's score put her in the SAT range for good colleges, but they might not have taken her anyway.

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This is all good info for me, because I don't know anything about the American exam system (for instance, until you mentioned it above I didn't think about grades on homework as counting towards someone's college application - GPA's Grade Point Average, isn't it? How's that work, then? Do you get a certain number of points for an A, etc?)

How it works in the UK is you do SATs (sometimes called Ket Stage 3) at 14 - these are just in English, Maths and Science. At 16 you sit GCSEs in anywhere between 8 and 12 (or possibly more) subjects. People can leave secondary school then or go on for another two years to do A-Levels in 3 or 4 subjects; there are the new AS Levels to let people take more subjects. The A-Levels are graded A, B, C, D, E, N, U, and these get converted to points for university applications (10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 0 as far as I remember) Nobody graduates from secondary school, they just leave.

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Well, in most schools you get a letter grade every quarter, or least every semester. In my school, we also had "progress reports" which were filled out by hand by the teachers rather than mass-printed by the school. They were less formal, but let you know where you stood. Often a parent has to sign a report card (or progress report) and the kid has to turn it back in, to ensure the parents are aware of their kid's grades. Some schools hand them out in homeroom, others mail them.

The grades usually go A, B, C, D, and F. Some schools give A+s, but most give -s on every grade except F and +s on every grade but A. An A would often be 95-100%, an A- 90-95%, (assuming no A+s)... B+ is around 87-90%, B 84-86%, B- 80-83%, etc. Anything under 60% is an F. For things like papers which have less to do with percent correct, A range is excellent, B good, C fair, D poor, F failing (usually for not doing the assignment at all). C is supposed to be the average grade, but since parents don't like that much, in both high school and college the median is often in the B range. Plenty of teachers also give harder tests and then curve them... so in a given math class, you could get 60% of the questions right, but still get a B or A, if that was one of the better scores.

Every teacher decides for themself how their grading system works, and how everything is weighted. A class might be 30% exams (in my school, two hour scheduled tests twice a year), 30% tests, 20% quizzes (which are given more often and are short), and 20% homework and participation. But it totally depends on the class and the teacher – some teachers grade notebooks, English and history classes usually have papers, lab sciences may have lab reports, foreign languages may give more weight to participation, etc. And teachers can, at their discretion, give a higher grade than a person's actual average, if their work is improving, or if they've done extra credit work.

Confused yet? GPA is the numerical average of all your report card/end of semester grades during a semester, a year, or all four years of high school or college. Generally speaking, an A is a 4.0, a B is a 3.0, a C is a 2.0, a D is a 1.0 and an F is a 0.0. Classes that are longer – like lab sciences – may be more heavily weighted in the averaging. Classes like gym are usually not averaged in.

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(cont.)

In my high school, GPA was adjusted to reflect the different levels of classes. The idea was that an honors (or level zero) class was more work and had higher standards than a level one class, a level one class was harder than a level two class, and so on. They figured someone shouldn't be punished for getting a slightly lower grade in a more challenging class. (Punished because GPA determines class rank, and class rank is one way colleges sort applications.) So for my honors/level 0/AP (advanced placement) classes, an A was averaged in as a 4.4 rather than a 4.0, and so on.

The class levels went from 0 or 1, depending on the subject, to 3 or 4. 1 or 2 were standard levels, 3 or 4 was usually remedial. Buffy's school was clearly different, because Willow and Buffy and Xander were often in the same classes. My high school did have unleveled freshman science, health, and some other classes... those didn't get factored into your GPA at all. One controversy in American high schools has to do with leveling or "tracking" – where you are put into a given level at the beginning of junior high or high school, and stay there. This tends to perpetuate class distinctions, and is sometimes racist, and all that. In my school you could move up a level if you convince teachers you are capable – and moreover, willing to do the work, which was the big difference between honors and one (or one and two for a class with no honors offered). But in subjects like math, that would be nearly impossible, because the highest level class in a given year might teach something totally different than the lower leveled classes.

High school ends after senior year/12th grade, when there is a graduation. Some places have graduations from junior high/middle school (usually covering two to three years between 6th and 9th grade) or grade school, or even kindergarten (for 5 year-olds, pre-first grade), but I find those a bit silly. You can drop out of school legally at 16, but that tends to lead to lower-paying/unskilled jobs... the state is required to educate you until you are 18. There is an alternative to regular high school called vocational or voke... it's usually for non-college bound kids, who study things like wood and metal shop, auto repair, hair dressing, sewing, etc., as well as a reduced regular academic curriculum. Some vocational schools now include preparation for more technical careers, and some arrange for and require job internships outside school in the local community.

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know... two comments worth!... But it was sorta fun for me to try to break it down for someone unfamiliar with it, because it's quite complex when I think about it... I just always took it for granted.

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You rock hard. I'm saving all this for future fic reference.

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Sweet. Feel free to ask me more... I keep thinking of more things to explain (like statewide tests for graduation, which some states have and some don't, and all the pre-college tests), magnet schools, etc etc. But those things are unlikely to come up. If you really are saving this, please note there is no grade F+... I messed up that sentence. *g*

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thesecondevil

Just dropping in to say they've changed the points system, you get:

At A-Level

360 points for an A
300 points for a B
240 points for a C
180 points for a D
120 points for an E

At AS level

180 points for an A
150 points for a B
120 points for a C
90 points for a D
60 points for an E

And obviously for an N or U, you get nothing.

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indri

I'm writing a fic at the moment about Illyria (and hence Fred) that's set in Texas. I lived in Austin for a couple of years but even so, I'm going to make all sorts of wrong assumptions. I may have another Texan lined up to beta, but if that falls through, would you be interested?

I don't know if you've read any of my stuff, it's at Blood and Weetabix if you want to look.

Sorry to hijack the thread, Doyle :(

We now return to our regular programming.

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