I got to a Catholic Private school, so I doubt many bad things happen as do at other schools. However, in my Religion class, all juniors took an anonymous survey about sex and drugs, and apparently half the class has some involvement in drugs, while a very small fraction has commited sexual acts. Which at first made me feel left out! I mean, all this sex and drugs going around, and I'm being left out of all this! Of course, I don't really want to be a part of that...
One problem I had this last year was my English class. The teacher and I just didn't match. That shouldn't matter, but he spent a very small amount of time teaching us English and instead spent most of the time either persuading us to take his view on random subjects he would just introduce, telling gruesome stories of his past, informing us of every problem in the world like terminal diseases and cases of rape, or just criticizing us all as though each student was exactly the same. And he would do all this with pauses that were too long. He would spend class periods talking in Spanish and Norwegian for no apparent reason except to prove he could. I really thought he ought to see a therapist, because there never seemed to be a central point to what he talked about, except to get things off his chest.
One time he started class by having us analyze a poem by Ben Jonson(sp?), but as soon as we started, he spent forty-five minutes talking about how we would all grow up to be overweight and uncomfortable with ourselves. And he was smiling as though he was counting on it. It was so sickening that I had to raise my hand and start analyzing the poem, to the rest of the class's disappointment (because they don't care much for English, apparently). So basically I stood up and started shouting the meaning of the poem for about five minutes, until I slowly lost blood sugar and sat back down as others continued the discussion of the poem's meaning.
It's true that I overreacted, and I don't give the teacher enough credit: he was a decent teacher when he set his mind to lecturing us about English, which happened at some point almost every period. But really, he could've spent more time teaching English than relating random childhood experiences. In the end I stopped expecting so much from him and learned to deal with his shenanigans by making some sarcastic comment to myself or vocalizing some joke to ease the tension in the room: he would get too far into some of his bleaker stories. I probably should have accepted him the way he was than hoped for him to change. After all, I control my own attitude more than anything else. But it sure felt good to shout the meaning of a poem to the whole class.
Wow, that story is filled with so many hypocritical holes. I ended up with an A- too, so I shouldn't complain. Too late... 9_9 Anyway, he wasn't my favorite teacher, but I got through the class and probably learned something in the end. Isn't that what's important?
