Why the hell didn't I keep my expectations low, like usual?
I never have another first day of school again!
And all I can say about that is thank Jesus. Because today failed.
I shall start with a chronological order of events, and then I will become - dare I say it - angsty.
My alarm went off at 6:21 plus the amount of discrepancy between my clock and central time. I got up, got ready, and went to school. Nothing eventful so far.
First block: Debate. This is good, as it lets us be in debate during our "focus time", our school system's euphemism for "we don't have enough funding to pay enough teachers to have eight classes a day so you're going to sit around and do nothing for a bit while we claim it increases academic rigor". But that's besides the point. I met our new debate coach, Mr. Loudis, who seems... okay. It's his first year teaching so he's not quite sure what he's doing. He seems like a cool enough guy, easygoing and all, but he's still young and idealistic. For example, if he's addressing the class, he refuses - refuses - to do it if anyone else is talking. He had a seating chart ready at the beginning of class. He has a "no sitting on the tables" rule. To the casual reader, none of these things sound particularly uncouth, but there is no way that this is how things are going to go down. Speech is a freeform class. You talk when you want. You sit where you want. Including on the tables. Loudis doesn't realize this, so we're going to have to break him. It's going to be tiring. And the worst part is - we already did that last year. And after everything we did to mold that teacher to our ways, he gets replaced with someone even newer. I feel like we're swimming upstream. Also, I asked him about the teacher mentoring that was on my schedule, and that I assumed I would spend in the speech room, but he said he was too busy to have a teacher mentee. So that means two blocks of my schedule were hosed. Worry about that later.
Second block: Chemistry. Advanced Chemistry, to be precise. Teacher: Mrs. Gilmore. Never in my entire school career have I liked a teacher less than her. And never in my entire school career have I had a teacher for more classes than her. Earth Science as a freshman, General Chem as a junior, and now this. I think I involuntarily shuddered when I heard her voice at the beginning of class. And this turned out to be the most enjoyable period of the day. See, there are only 10 people in the class. I'm friends with three of them, and acquaintanced with several others. So basically every time she says something we all just make fun of her behind her back. It won't stop her being annoying but it at least adds some sinister joy to the period.
Fourth block: Physics II. Hillcrest has a new Physics teacher this year on account of the last two Physics teachers we had not knowing how to teach Physics. His name is Mr. Brown. I don't like him. A swift judgement, this is. He's... well, he seems really conservative, for one. But that describes some of my favorite teachers, so I can deal with that. He's also fairly idealistic, but not in the same way as Loudis. Rather, he has immense respect for us, the students, as adults and as people, and seems to put a lot of effort into not knowing us just as students, but as people. In a way, it's good to know he won't be treating us like little kids. I have some problems with this though. Firstly, we are kids. "Treating us like adults" invariably means "holding us to higher standards", and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, I appreciate being cut some slack every once in a while. Secondly, we are students, and teachers don't seem to realize that there is absolutely no way they can dissolve the teacher-student relationship between them and the vast majority of their subjects. The best way for a teacher to have a good relationship with their students is to be a good teacher. Because, honestly, when they're not teaching, I don't give a flying crap about my teachers. I don't care that he likes Racquetball, or is in the army, or is a devout Christian, or moved a lot as a child, or whatever. I care that he's going to teach me physics.
The other reason I don't like him is probably enough to fill a post of its own, and I won't address it here. IM me or something if you have a burning desire to know.
Lunch: Apparently we have too many people and new lunch ladies who don't know what they're doing. Because today they physically could not serve the lunch lines in the ~30 minutes allotted for lunch. They had to let people stay at lunch late and then write them passes to class. I don't know how they're going to resolve this. But it doesn't matter for me because of
Eighth Third Sixth block: Who the hell knows? "Independent study", according to my schedule. This comes back to that hole that I suddenly had to fill. To make a long story short, it ended up being filled with me being a teacher mentee to Mr. Brown. Damnit. Oh, and seventh block never got filled either.
I got home and related all of this to my mom. Somehow she ended up being absolutely unsympathetic. All she seemed concerned about was figuring out what to do seventh block. Only in her case, she's already figured out what I should do seventh block, and her idea is - wait for it - ...: Read the newspaper.
I'm not kidding. She thinks I should call it independent study of, I dunno, current events, or something. And she totally can't understand why I'm resisting the idea. Somehow I just can't imagine any way of presenting this idea to the school. Plus I don't want to. I suppose I failed to convey this information, because I ended up just getting pissed at my mom and leaving the room.
I'm being a stupid immature teenager, I told myself. I know she's just trying to help. It's not her fault she can't read my every emotional need, considering how hard I try to pretend I have none. I had tried not to let on that she was getting on my nerves, and I think I almost - though not quite - pulled it off. I'm the one with the problem, no need to make it worse by spreading it around. Hopefully she thinks it was just because of my bad day. I need to graduate and not live here anymore. It pisses me off that I can't be mature enough to relate to my parents and being pissed off at oneself is even angstier than being pissed off at one's parents. I, of course, was both. Damn! Everyone gets pissed off at their parents! It's not that angsty, really! ...trying to convince myself of that doesn't help. And so here I am. Doing what angsty teenagers do and posting on my Livejournal. Does the act of posting on one's LJ make one angsty by association? If I pretend it doesn't exist, is that just as good as it not being there at all? I'm starting to hate that word again.
...
And all I can say about that is thank Jesus. Because today failed.
I shall start with a chronological order of events, and then I will become - dare I say it - angsty.
My alarm went off at 6:21 plus the amount of discrepancy between my clock and central time. I got up, got ready, and went to school. Nothing eventful so far.
First block: Debate. This is good, as it lets us be in debate during our "focus time", our school system's euphemism for "we don't have enough funding to pay enough teachers to have eight classes a day so you're going to sit around and do nothing for a bit while we claim it increases academic rigor". But that's besides the point. I met our new debate coach, Mr. Loudis, who seems... okay. It's his first year teaching so he's not quite sure what he's doing. He seems like a cool enough guy, easygoing and all, but he's still young and idealistic. For example, if he's addressing the class, he refuses - refuses - to do it if anyone else is talking. He had a seating chart ready at the beginning of class. He has a "no sitting on the tables" rule. To the casual reader, none of these things sound particularly uncouth, but there is no way that this is how things are going to go down. Speech is a freeform class. You talk when you want. You sit where you want. Including on the tables. Loudis doesn't realize this, so we're going to have to break him. It's going to be tiring. And the worst part is - we already did that last year. And after everything we did to mold that teacher to our ways, he gets replaced with someone even newer. I feel like we're swimming upstream. Also, I asked him about the teacher mentoring that was on my schedule, and that I assumed I would spend in the speech room, but he said he was too busy to have a teacher mentee. So that means two blocks of my schedule were hosed. Worry about that later.
Second block: Chemistry. Advanced Chemistry, to be precise. Teacher: Mrs. Gilmore. Never in my entire school career have I liked a teacher less than her. And never in my entire school career have I had a teacher for more classes than her. Earth Science as a freshman, General Chem as a junior, and now this. I think I involuntarily shuddered when I heard her voice at the beginning of class. And this turned out to be the most enjoyable period of the day. See, there are only 10 people in the class. I'm friends with three of them, and acquaintanced with several others. So basically every time she says something we all just make fun of her behind her back. It won't stop her being annoying but it at least adds some sinister joy to the period.
Fourth block: Physics II. Hillcrest has a new Physics teacher this year on account of the last two Physics teachers we had not knowing how to teach Physics. His name is Mr. Brown. I don't like him. A swift judgement, this is. He's... well, he seems really conservative, for one. But that describes some of my favorite teachers, so I can deal with that. He's also fairly idealistic, but not in the same way as Loudis. Rather, he has immense respect for us, the students, as adults and as people, and seems to put a lot of effort into not knowing us just as students, but as people. In a way, it's good to know he won't be treating us like little kids. I have some problems with this though. Firstly, we are kids. "Treating us like adults" invariably means "holding us to higher standards", and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, I appreciate being cut some slack every once in a while. Secondly, we are students, and teachers don't seem to realize that there is absolutely no way they can dissolve the teacher-student relationship between them and the vast majority of their subjects. The best way for a teacher to have a good relationship with their students is to be a good teacher. Because, honestly, when they're not teaching, I don't give a flying crap about my teachers. I don't care that he likes Racquetball, or is in the army, or is a devout Christian, or moved a lot as a child, or whatever. I care that he's going to teach me physics.
The other reason I don't like him is probably enough to fill a post of its own, and I won't address it here. IM me or something if you have a burning desire to know.
Lunch: Apparently we have too many people and new lunch ladies who don't know what they're doing. Because today they physically could not serve the lunch lines in the ~30 minutes allotted for lunch. They had to let people stay at lunch late and then write them passes to class. I don't know how they're going to resolve this. But it doesn't matter for me because of
Eighth Third Sixth block: Who the hell knows? "Independent study", according to my schedule. This comes back to that hole that I suddenly had to fill. To make a long story short, it ended up being filled with me being a teacher mentee to Mr. Brown. Damnit. Oh, and seventh block never got filled either.
I got home and related all of this to my mom. Somehow she ended up being absolutely unsympathetic. All she seemed concerned about was figuring out what to do seventh block. Only in her case, she's already figured out what I should do seventh block, and her idea is - wait for it - ...: Read the newspaper.
I'm not kidding. She thinks I should call it independent study of, I dunno, current events, or something. And she totally can't understand why I'm resisting the idea. Somehow I just can't imagine any way of presenting this idea to the school. Plus I don't want to. I suppose I failed to convey this information, because I ended up just getting pissed at my mom and leaving the room.
I'm being a stupid immature teenager, I told myself. I know she's just trying to help. It's not her fault she can't read my every emotional need, considering how hard I try to pretend I have none. I had tried not to let on that she was getting on my nerves, and I think I almost - though not quite - pulled it off. I'm the one with the problem, no need to make it worse by spreading it around. Hopefully she thinks it was just because of my bad day. I need to graduate and not live here anymore. It pisses me off that I can't be mature enough to relate to my parents and being pissed off at oneself is even angstier than being pissed off at one's parents. I, of course, was both. Damn! Everyone gets pissed off at their parents! It's not that angsty, really! ...trying to convince myself of that doesn't help. And so here I am. Doing what angsty teenagers do and posting on my Livejournal. Does the act of posting on one's LJ make one angsty by association? If I pretend it doesn't exist, is that just as good as it not being there at all? I'm starting to hate that word again.
...