My relationship with mom has gotten better. All I had to do was put more effort into Chinese, and help her out, like, the instant she calls for help. Oh, and snap at her less. Which is hard to do when you’re frustrated and all you want is to be left alone, but if you breathe correctly and use a lot of sheer mental will, you can be as calm as you want. Well, up to a certain point, of course…
DAY BLUE SEMESTER SUMMARY
BIOLOGY
I’m still struggling with trying to stay awake in class, but I’m doing better than before. We covered the fine details of photosynthesis and cells (All the stuff I remember touching in seventh grade, but more in-depth now that it’s high school, and the course is actually called Biology), listened to Mr. Ward’s stories about his farming childhood and how he was on an ace baseball team and got drunk once because he drank two-month old root beer (Which, of course, is impossible now because they took pretty much all of the potentially harmful alcohol out of root beer)…
But, unlike Ms Allen, he rambles on for only a little bit before returning to that day’s classwork, and the stuff that he talks about it actually RELAVANT to Biology. Like the root beer thing. It was totally appropriate to talk about that in class because we were studying alcoholic fermentation in cellular respiration.
Danielle and I both like Mr. Ward. She says he’s like a good ol’ grandfather-like person, which I completely agree with. The other reason why I like him (Besides the fact that he actually teaches us) is that he’s both intelligent AND fun at the same time, which isn’t uncommon for me, because I hang out with thirteen-year-old geniuses (*cough* Jason *cough*) all the time, but he’s a TEACHER. And he’s OLD. Well, he claims he’s thirty and extremely buff under his dress shirts and trousers, but that’s like, the worst, most obvious lie ever.
I somehow always break down physically during his class. On the first couple weeks of school, I had a cold and a cough. Mr. Ward told the class to be careful and not catch the “Zoey disease”. Then, my neck snapped and I had to go to the nurse because I couldn’t move it. Then my nose started bleeding for no particular reason (Mr. Ward said it was the dry weather that caused one of the veins in my nose to break) in the middle of the class. Oh, and there was the stye in the corner of my eye, which nobody noticed until MR. WARD POINTED IT OUT.
It doesn’t help that I have another stye now, on the top lid of my left eye. And guess what Wikipedia said?
“While a stye is technically a pimple and can be popped, doing so is not recommended without technical expertise[5] due to their proximity to the eye.”
I HAVE A FREAKIN’ HUGE PIMPLE OVER MY LEFT EYE?!
Oh well. At least it said that the bruising can be helped with a warm cloth (Like all pimples!), so I’ll try that later.
Anyway, Danielle even pointed out that I contract pretty much every minor physical condition during Biology. And no one else does.
INQUIRY SKILLS (IS)
Ms Smith hates me. There’s no other explanation for why I’m afraid of her and why she picks on me in class. Well, everyone’s afraid of her, but I’m one of the few that actually have a REASON to be fearful
The upper classmen say that IS can be like an extra study hall period, but I don’t get how anyone could sneak in a little homework here and there when Ms Smith is constantly watching our backs and barking at us all the time.
And after I mistakenly called Sven Alkalaj a Muslim when he was really a Jew (Stupid, STUPID me for not looking at my notes and seeing that his ancestors were all great members of Sephardic Jewry), she snapped at me during my oral presentation on Mr. Alkalaj and for the rest of class, plus during all of the next IS class. She called on me to answer about, oh, every other question, when I’m sure I made it pretty clear that I was doing what I was suppose to do by writing down a lot of notes on the presentations.
Surprisingly enough, she gave me a 9.5 out of 10 for my oral, with only .5 off for the not-knowing-that-Sven-was-a-Jew part. But combined with my essay, a horrible 8.5/10, I barely managed to scrape an A for that assignment. I didn’t think my essay deserved that low of a score, but eh, as long as I get an A on my semester transcript for IS, I’m happy.
We watched a great lot of disturbing videos on the Holocaust (Including the Academy award-winner “Genocide”, the segment of Oprah Winfrey’s show on her and Eli Wiesel taking a trip to Auschwitz, where Eli Wiesel was imprisoned during WW2, and the memories of this one woman who was forced to go on a death march, like thousands of other Holocaust prisoners), which I could’ve avoided because Ms Smith said the other option was to go to the library and work on another assignment, but when I finally realized just how sweet of an alternative that was… ’twas too late. I was scarred for life.
So, for the remainder of the semester, I put up with the rest of the video because, well, how much worse can it get when you’re already mentally scarred?
Then I heard from Apurva that we were watching more disturbing videos for the second semester, which will be about Model UN and Civil Rights. I didn’t see how that would be particularly disturbing… unless Ms Smith plans on launching into the whole Darfur thing as a sub-topic for Model UN.
I will run if we go into more genocide studies.
FRENCH
Everyone keeps saying how Mrs. Chestnut doesn’t teach us anything. What I think is that if they just stop TALKING to each other during class, maybe they’ll think differently. I rarely ever study French at home, and I’m acing most of my quizzes. Hmm. Why do you think I’m doing so well when I’ve never touched French before in my life? Oh! I know! Maybe, just maybe, (le gasp) Mrs. Chestnut is actually teaching? And I’m actually THINKING during class instead of babbling incessantly with my friends?
Of course, sometimes I can’t listen because Eric Li (Who, by the way, is in NO WAY related to me) keeps on stabbing me in the back with his pencils and gunning his feet on my chair, and I have to turn around to tell him to either stop or he’s going to find himself on the ground with a French textbook lying on his head.
Eric isn’t all that annoying, though. He can be nice when he wants to be. Even when he’s taking apart all of my mechanical pencils and pens behind my back and complaining that I should buy writing utensils that come in more than three pieces.
CREATIVE WRITING
Erm. The people in this class are… rather special. But all of them are cool. I mean, they all like good literature and writing (Some even like drawing! Yay!), and they’re all active participaters in the class (Well, except for this one kid, who I suspect got into this class because there was no other elective for him to join).
Plus, they’re funny. Especially the guys. This class reminded me of the good, funny times I had in eigth grade.
And now I miss middle school and all of its good times.
Besides writing a bunch of short stories about murder and bunnies, we participated in NaNoWriMo (I clocked in at 11:45 PM on November 30 with my 50,000 words), which half the class failed in because they couldn’t reach the 30,000 word goal that Mr. Stanton set for everyone.
And there was this one day where I came to class and discovered that we were left alone with no teacher or substitute. Elise immediately rushed up to Mr. Stanton’s chair and declared that she was the boss now because Mr. Stanton told her that whenever he’s not around, she would be in charge.
Elise and Mr. Stanton have a close bond because Elise is the reigning champion of our county’s annual Poetry Slam, and Mr. Stanton is always giving her booklets and tips on writing.
But anyway, Elise took the boss thing way too far, because when this one other girl (Whose name I keep forgetting) went to the classroom computer to put on some music for all of us, she thought that music girl was stabbing her in the back by trying to run everything in the class instead. They started arguing and BSing each other in front of everyone, and all us quiet students were watching in amusement, thinking how stupid and immature these two girls could be.
Although music girl was immature, there was no other description to describe the state that Elise was in, except that she was acting pretty much like a bossy five-year-old who was throwing a tantrum because she couldn’t get her way. Really, she even spewed out the, “I will not tolerate this bullshit because I’m just too respected, [Insert name of music girl].”
How immature could you get? Danielle said it was cowardly, which I sort of agree on, but I thought it was mostly child-like. Elise even pulled Lorne (Who she is so OBIVOUSLY crushing on, because she’s practically throwing herself onto Lorne) outside and barked at him about how the class was “disrespecting her” when most of us weren’t out of our seats for the entire class period.
It was pretty hilarious, though, because Aaron gave us the signal to settle down so we could hear what Elise was ranting about, and Elise was clearly throwing a tantrum towards Lorne, who was just respectfully abiding by the norms of the classroom and minding his own business. Even though we all wanted to hear more of their conversation, we couldn’t help but burst out laughing, because it was just too precious!
Elise apologized later, claiming that the crisis that was going on in her life were clearly affecting her actions. Music girl apologized, too, and the two of them reconciled.
Oh wait! Now I remember music girl’s name! It was Brandy!
SEMESTER EXAMS
I aced the math exam with flying colors, and got A’s on everything except for IS and English, which I have no clue what my grades are because I haven’t received them yet. And I have to say, for someone who claims that they’re on top of things 24/7, not being able to grade an exam by Friday when we took the test on Tuesday is pretty sad, Ms Smith. Mrs. Allen has a reason not to tell us our grades because we took her exam on Friday, the last day of school.
But she said that she would call anyone if they made a D or lower on the exam.
I haven’t gotten a phone call, so I’m hoping that I scraped at least a B on the English exam. That would give me my A in English on my semester transcript.
January 7, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I promise that if I become a teacher and become a Ms Smith, I’ll try to do better than that Ms Smith does. =P
To be fair, though, aside from all the snapping, she doesn’t sound that bad. Perhaps I’m biased, because in my classes 85% and 95% would always have been perfectly acceptable grades (VH and OUT respectively, I believe).
And while watching horrific documentaries sounds bad… well, she DID give you the option to do something else! You can’t really blame her for that.
But yeah, the snapping sounds excessive (and mean). Do you know WHY she doesn’t like you? I mean, you clearly don’t like her, either, but if you decided to be nice and cheerful to her, she might change her tune. For me, it’s always worked – even teachers EVERYONE hates usually like me, because I’m usually nice enough. Of course, if you already do make sure you’re friendly, or if she hates friendly people, she’s just a psycho. Ignore her. =D
In years 7 and 8, the only Science we got to do (for two years!!) was biology. Most boring thing ever! This year, we did physics as well as biology (but no chemistry… unless you count nuclear physics), and it was much better. I can’t stand biology. Ew =( Your teacher sounds good, though – a little like Mr Willems, but older. Mr Willems has grey hair and is mostly bald, but he’s not even forty yet. XD And everyone who’s ever had him seems to think he’s exactly like their dads… WHICH IS TRUE. My dad and him both loooove physics and haaaaate biology.
Hahaha at your dissing of Ms Smith’s marking skills. I’d say three days might not be long enough for some teachers, but if she claims to be able to mark quickly and efficiently… well, that’s where your criticism is fair.
January 8, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Oh, really, I don’t talk to teachers all that much, but I never snap at them or anything. I don’t kiss up, though, like half of the students do. I just smile a lot, and use a relatively friendly tone.
And yeah, Ms Smith really isn’t that bad, but I just thought that she probably had PMS or something those few days and couldn’t put up with little mistakes.
I couldn’t help but rant about it, though.
Ms Smith says she’s the ultimate wedding planner, the ultimate organizer, blah blah blah. Of course, she was just exaggerating, but still, you’d think that someone who makes their students write in planners and all will try to set an example.