Pen of the Gryphon

Pissed off today...

(written Friday, but I have nothing better to say… I am still in this mood, however, so this still applies)

Our history teacher all of a sudden decides that our work is not up to snuff. So Wednesday she dressed us all down with a long lecture about not giving the time, etc. as well as criticizing our writing left and right. She says that she doesn’t want the flowery language; she wants the “buzz words.” She was constantly berating us for our essays being too long and not short and direct. Then, on the flip side of the coin, our English teacher is constantly telling us to sit and write longer.

Our history teacher wants us to be able to be sharp and pick out the main issue. Actually, she expects it from us. But hold on. She’s a lawyer. She’s been trained for years to figure this stuff out. We’re just a bunch of stupid high schoolers, most out of public school (I was homeschooled until last year…) *idiot face* Duuuhhhhh… We don’t know nothing. Honestly, she can’t expect college-level stuff out of us after only 10 weeks of school. I’d love to learn this way of thinking, but I don’t want to be criticized for not doing it if I don’t even know how. I want to be taught first.

I hate to say it, but it seems that my first impression is the correct one for this class. The first day, I sat through the lecture thinking “oh shit.” I honestly thought that I would end up being disrespectful just out of spite. But I through that maybe it would get better… And it looked like it would. But now I am growing pretty POed again…

Just now she said that she was very visual, liking charts and so on and so forth. But in the lecture at the very beginning, she said that she didn’t believe in coddling us by giving us notes on the board. Visual, visual, visual she says, but then all she does is talk at us for an hour and a half.

Now we are examining the chapter and she is generalizing so much. She is “getting to the bottom line.” But then in the tests, she asks us all of these specific questions. When did we ever go over this? Yeah, it is in the book and we are reading the book, but there is a lot in the book that we don’t have in the test and that we don’t go over. How are we supposed to know what it is that we are supposed to know? There is so frickin’ much information in the chapters!

I’m not very good at speaking directly. I always have to give some kooky example, often with dialogue between little parties in my head, instead of just telling it like it is… I have to “show not tell.” It’s why I can write examination essays. I could never go into tech school where you have to be direct and exact. I suck at math. Law school is another no-no. I like to have a little elbow room. Writing can go anywhere. You don’t even have to follow rules of grammar if you don’t want to for crying out loud.

*sigh* I feel the same way about History class as I did about that freaky lady at the corn maze.

I read “Dancing with an Alien” last night. A pretty short book, but it was good. It was simple, but it was haunting, especially near the end. A really good read. I finished it in about 45 minutes. It kind of inspired me to try and write a short story, using very short, choppy sentences to express inner thoughts and feelings. People very rarely think in long sentences or even in sentences at all. It’s just thoughts, fractured words, images, consciousness… So yeah, the style of “Alien” was inspiring. Very short and sweet.

Ha. I probably sound very inconsistent. My last short story I wrote was bare bones, with no elaborations. Very to the point. But I hate writing to the point otherwise. Because when I write to the point on my own, I choose the point. In real (non-fiction) life, there is really only one point to look at. There can be several viewpoints, but it all boils down to the same core…

*sigh* Still pretty pissed…

~SilverGryphon