Unlike many kids, I love school. School is a magical place where you get to see your friends. I just hate my classes.
But before we talk about classes, let me explain the schedule.
My Freshman year we had class from 7:45 AM to 2:05 PM. The schedule was beautiful because when it hit 2, class was done! You were cleaning up and almost out the door. But by Sophomore year the District trolled the teachers, parents, and students and added 25 minutes to our schedule, cut our hall passing time by 2 minutes, extended our classes to an hour and a half each, even though it's been proven that kids need a break every 45 minutes, otherwise they can no longer concentrate on the subject. They still didn't give us more lunch time. Our lunch is 30 minutes, which is legally, the bare minimum you can have for lunch break. And on top of that they added this thing called a citation. It's basically a detention, but you got it for being late to pretty much anything. How do you get rid of a citation? You pay $5 or go to a 30 minute detention. And no, you could NOT serve more than one citation a day. If you were absent without an excuse, you had to serve 3 detentions or pay $15. It improved attendance greatly, but it became problematic for any one who didn't serve them. If you don't serve a detention, the fine doubles.
Now that I've explained citations, let me tell you a little bit about my school's size, and what ridiculous rules they added this year. My school is four floors (and there are two flights of stairs you have to go up in between each floor), and it takes about 3 minutes to walk from one wing of a floor to the opposite wing on the same floor. Our hall passing time is 5 minutes, and some people just don't walk as fast as I do.
The new rule this year is if you have three unexcused absences (a citation for each) then it's a no-grade for the quarter. Yes, that is equivalent to failing. No longer can you just pay up to get out of detention either. And to put the cherry on the cream of it, we no longer have our warning bell that says, "Hey you have a minute, get to class!"
Naturally, I am an attentive student, and very punctual about being on time, but what does this say for my unfortunate friends? I have friends that 'sluff' or ditch if you'd prefer, and they're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble this year.
Now lets talk about my classes.
On my A-days I very unfortunately start with Chinese III. Freshmen year's Chinese was easy, all I did was pretend like I was taking notes, then I'd draw. I think the highlight of that year was watching, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and making fun of how they flew off. 戴老师 was an awesome teacher. She had fun with us, and she'd often pat my head because my hair was blue.
Sophomore year was ridiculous. 江老师 did NOT know what she was in for when she came to America to teach high school students. (By the way, if you haven't guessed by now, 老师 translates to teacher.) We really tried at the beginning, but then we caught on to the fact that she knew nothing. So my friend decided to start messing with her. On occasion he'd jump up and yell, "THEY'RE TRYING TO SPREAD DEMOCRACY! I MUST STOP THEM!" and he'd run out of the room to go talk to his friends. When he came back he'd say something along the lines of, "We only want communism. Democracy is bad." Halfway through the year she gave up on us. I eventually stopped trying too, and sat in back texting and playing Pokemon with some guys.
I remember on several occasions she would tell us Chinese folklore. Whenever it involved dragons one of us would ask, "Do you believe in dragons?" She would tell us that dragons did not exist. We acted very offended and some of us would yell, "DRAGONS ARE TOO REAL!"
The story I remember in particular was one where a goddess was lonely, so she created people out of the yellow clay from The Yellow River, and that's why Asians have yellow skin. It was probably the second funniest thing a teacher had ever told me.
This year is just plain bull. Our teacher has been living in America for about 10 years, so we can't mess with her. We're actually
learning. For the most part it's just learning mindless chants and songs. It wouldn't be so bad, except for I don't sit next to anybody I like. That and the nerdiest of all nerds turns around and talks to me about
Minecraft and how much better Macs are then PCs and to be honest I'm chillin' here like, "Lol say whaaaaa." But on the inside I'm thinking, "Bitch, you insult PCs one more time, I swear to god I will knock your teeth out."
My second period wouldn't be so awful, except for, even though I'm American, and whiter than anybody I know, I don't know my history. You can imagine how awful "U.S. History" is for me. We could spend an entire quarter on the Constitution and I'd still only know three freedoms from the First Amendment. The teacher is a cool guy, he sucks with instructions though. Everything he says is overly complicated. Instead of saying, "Take notes on the timeline, maps, and picture." he's all, "Code this stuff guys! Look at that picture of Thomas Jefferson and write a summary of what it says man!" He probably says some other crazy stuff that I miss. One of these days he'll make us jig for the whole school. Why? Because he's just that random. One time our homework was to make a rap, poem, or song about the Constitution. I didn't do it, but the best one I heard started with, "What's up 'cuh?" What is "'cuh"? I'm still having a hard time figuring that one out.
Anyways we then move onto Zoology. Why I took that class, I have no idea. We had to work with mealworms. Those little jerks jump! I made my partner, Luz, pick it up for me. I'm such a wuss. Zoology is otherwise relatively boring. Being the dirty-minded teenage girl I am, I had a lot of fun last time whenever my teacher would say, "And so the sperm is going to penetrate the ovum and then it will become a Zygote." Every time he said, "penetrate" I grinned to myself. But that is probably the most fun I'm going to have until we dissect a frog. (Which is about as much fun is I had in Biology, freshman year.)
We get to lunch, and I often forget my lunch, as I no longer get free lunch from the school. So lunch consists of me walking up to friends and saying, "I forgot my lunch, do you have food to feed me with?" I love my friends. They make it so I don't die.
We continue on to Symphony Orchestra, with probably one of the coolest teachers ever. She is 53 years old, and the biggest ball of energy. She treats me like a granddaughter, even though I'm about 10 years too old to be her grand-kid. If it wasn't for her, Orchestra would have fallen apart.
There's really nothing to say about this class. She made me sit 3rd chair violin, (which is a compliment, considering who she stuck on 5th chair.) I sit next to the violas, which isn't too bad, except for I talk to 2nd chair viola more than 1st. Love them both, just get along with 2nd chair better.
Unfortunately for me, being 'advanced' at violin forces me into the musical, whether I want to or not. (I use advanced loosely because I'm honestly not that great, and I can hardly sight read.) So I have to stay after school a few days out of my week for an hour and fifteen minutes just to practice music that's hardly a challenge. There's one song where we have a 72 measure rest. I mean seriously, what is this crap? Also, for those of you wondering, the musical is Aida. So far my favorite piece we play in it is #10, I've got a headache, which says, "TACET" on it, which means we don't play. (We have several TACET pieces, this one is just the most ironically named.)
B-days are a completely different story. Chemistry is my first period, and I got "lucky" and got the teacher who does nothing but talk about himself instead of teach. When he IS on topic it makes no sense. He lets us sleep in his class and pass notes. Actually, I don't think he even notices. He's always too busy telling us about his 3rd ex-wife, or how a tendon in his finger couldn't be repaired because glass broke and cut it. I personally just don't give a crap one way or the other, as long as I can pass notes to Katie.
Call me weird, but I love Language Arts. It's a class that actually makes me think, and the teacher is way chill. Plus in my line of sight, when looking at the board, there is a really cute German exchange student. (Whom I asked to homecoming and am awaiting his response! NERVOUS!) So class is awesome, and then more awesome with that bonus.
Third period is Financial Literacy, and it's another class you can't say much about. Most people hate the teacher, but the teacher loves me, so I don't mind her. I think the only annoying part is dealing with a kid who doesn't know how to work computers properly if it's anything outside Microsoft Word. And even then he has issues.
We get to lunch, and it's the exact same thing as the other lunch, but with different people.
Fourth period is Pre-Calc. I sit there, take my notes, but never have any clue what is going on. Good thing I have such great math partners and my best friend (WHO IS AN UBER SMARTY PANTS) is in that class.
That's my school life in a nutshell. Sorry my writing withered through the rest of this post, I've been writing it for about two hours (in between checking facebook and eating Del Taco) and it is now 9:30 and I am tired. Good night!
