Exit Tickets 4: Fill & Download for Free

Wake up at 5 am. Check to see the time to realize you missed the 4:30 alarm. Not having time to shower, you use dry shampoo. Go to the 'school' section of you closet because the other clothes don't fit the dress code. Pick an outfit. Realize that it is now 5:30. You finish homework that you couldn't do last night. 6:15 now. Your mother screaming at you to hurry up. You shove everything into your backpack.You beg your mother to drive you. She gives in. You try to finish the chapter for language arts in the car. You rush for the cafeteria, making it for breakfast. You barely touch the food because you were trying to do IXL and complete the worksheet for Spanish. You are released to go to your locker. You skip the locker because you have a backpack for a reason.The lights dim, warning you that you only have 1 minute to get to class. You make it to advisory, which doubles as choir. You rush to Language Arts, read two chapters of the assigned book. 30 pages for your AR book. And write an essay about the common theme of two poems. You go to Spanish, the teacher have up on you paying attention because you still do good work. You go to dance class, and get choreagraphed to awful music.Math. Yay. (Can you sense the sarcasm?) You do the rewind. Do IXL. Take thorough notes. Do boardwork. Do exit ticket. All while asking ‘yourself what even is this?' and thinking about food.Lunch finally. You stop at you locker, and walk to the cafeteria. You get in line for lunch. You see something actually, probably, edible. Hot wings. You walk to you and your friends usual table. Eat and realize that you have to go back to class. You turn off your phone and go to your locker.Social studies. This isn't too bad. You fill out worksheets. And get assigned homework. You walk to science, which you do the same thing as social studies. Worksheets and get assigned homework.You make the 1 1/2 hour walk and bus ride home. Make a light snack. Read. IXL. Spanish worksheets. Essays for Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. Study for the tests coming up. And realize that the dinner your mother made had gotten cold. By now it is 10:00. Only you and your sister, who is in highschool, are up. You practice the songs for choir, practice the dance, check to see if you forgot anything. 11:00 now. Read fanfic and scroll through Instagram. Triple check alarms. Think about the fact that it only gets worse.And do it all again tomorrow

I have been to America only three times. Twice as stop-overs for 2 hours to and from Mexico, and once on a holiday to Florida.My first experience was at George Bush International Airport, Houston. Three 777 Continental Airline het arrived together. We had 2 hours 15 minutes for our transfer. How many immigration gates did they have open ? Just two. We moved slowly, whilst the let JAL passengers also stopping over to catch another flight “cut in line” or as we say “queue jump” ahead of us. After 1 hour, we were still a good 2 hours from the front of the line. I found a member of staff to explain that we had another flight in 75 minutes, and his response was to wait. I pointed out that JAL passengers were allowed to cut in yet their flight was in two hours time. After another half hour, with my wife asking this time a different member of staff, they reluctantly agreed to let us go to the front.Then came the aggressive questioning. “Reason for visit?” “ Stop-over. Flying to Mexico” “Why have I put number of days to be spent in the USA as zero?” “ Because we are not here for 1 whole day. We are leaving in less than an hour”. Questioned without a smile, without an ounce of humanity. This was pre-ESTA days when you had to fill in a card on the plane. Eventually we get through. We made our flight only be sprinting around the airport and got on the plane after the last call was made.On the way home we stopped at Newark/New Jersey for 1hr 55 mins. This was pretty much the same script, but this time we say how the immigration people really went to work on humiliating people. The guy in front of us, who walked with a pronounced limp, was trying to get through the security. He explained that he was disabled and had metal callipers on. He, of course, set the scanner alarm off. At this point men arrived with guns drawn, aimed at him and ordered him to a wall and to place his hands against the wall. I thought they were going to shoot him. A security official went over to him and then frisked him. He ordered the man to remove his callipers. The man explained that he had documentation to say they support his weight and that he couldn’t easily do this. They then force marched him to a desk and started DNA swapping the guy like a criminal, in front of everyone. They shouted at him and humiliated him. No Americans around us seemed bothered. They only other ones shocked were the French guy who we had sat near on the plane from Mexico and ourselves. If this was the UK I would have taken their names, their ID numbers and complained. In the US we knew this would go nowhere if we did this and we too could face problems.Finally, we made it to the departure lounge with literally two minutes to spare. We got to the gate, were told we were late, but we needed and exit ticket. “A what ticket?” Apparently we had to line up by a machine, press a button, get the ticket, then hand it to the man on the door before heading on to the plane. At this point I snapped, but remained very British. I explained that we had waited in immigration, we had seen a man humiliated at security, we had done everything asked of us and now we had to get in to a queue of 200 people to get a ticket? Finally, a human appeared. About 6ft 4 inches, the spitting image of Denzel Washington but with a voice like Barry White said “Why are you here? - Just answer clearly. Why are you here?” I said were returning from our honeymoon and just wanted to not miss this plane and to get home. He said we could board the plane without a ticket and apologised for the problems we had. Phew.Forward wind 11 years and we are in Florida, with a 6 year old and a 9 year old. We wait and wait 45 minutes to get through immigration. ESTA forms printed, everything should be simple. I hand it over. The guy says nothing. He types. He looks at me. He types. He clicks his mouse. He types. He looks at me. And so it goes on. After about 5 minutes of this, he asks me where I am staying. “Caribbean Beach Resort and Walt Disney World”. It is on the form, but he asks why. I didn’t give the sarcastic reply and ask him why he thought a family of four would be visiting Disney, but I said “holiday”. “Vacation” he corrected me. Okay, I thought. I‘m not here to argue. He then says “Look in to the camera”. Which camera ? I see no camera. He shouts “LOOK IN TO THE CAMERA”. There is no camera. He points, like I am an idiot to what looks like a small glass screen (no visible camera). The then tells me I am too tall and that I must duck to get my picture on the screen. He then clicks, types, looks at my passport, types some more, looks at me. Looks at my passport, then finally says. “Okay, you can go”. He then ushers me to go beyond a yellow line.Next up is my 6 year old son. I then go back to my son, who is only six, to help him answer questions. The immigration man orders me to walk away and stand beyond the yellow line. “How do I help me son?” I ask. He just ignores me. “Passport …” he says to my son. I have his passport. I say to the immigration guy that I have his passport and he tells me to be quiet and stay beyond the yellow line. And so it goes on.This is how America welcomes people to its borders. It’s the worst, the very worst part of any visit to America and unrivalled in how I have been greeted in Spain, Greece, France, Mexico or anywhere else. My wife has traveled through Africa, Australia, Canada and more places than me and we both agree that American Homeland Security staff need some basic lessons in courtesy and humanity.All the nations I mention are hot on their security, but they do it with a smile.Update- Thanks for the upvotes. Can I just add, for those people who seem to think I wrote this in praise of immigration in the UK. I didn’t hail our border security people. They are hardly award winning with their greetings, but they are not on a par with US TSA officials. Also, some seem to think I wrote this because I have an issue with Americans. Far from it. My next holiday will be, again, to Florida. We loved Florida and the people at all the resorts we visited were amazing.

French here.You have an Australian press tycoon badly muddling the debate because he’s going to make better business with Brexit, he thinks,You have a country that’s been a constant pain in … the neck (the kind of pain in the neck that makes it difficult to walk) for the past … 20 years?You have a country that’s unable to see the extremely preferential deals they’ve been given, and that seems to think no deal is better…You are at a point in time where you’d need rational, cool-headed decisions; and an ability to see that “EU is the worst solution except for all the others”…Now one of the points is: everybody else is watching how this unfolds… for the future… any thoughts of X-exit in your neck of the woods? Listen carefully to the guy with the white hair… (a Mr Barnier, I believe)…The question of the exit ticket is paramount. Why? Because it’s still EU functioning, you silly.So? Snickering would be “bye bye and good riddance” —but I have British friends…