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Entering my second year of high school, how would I fare?
My Sophomore year of High School promised great things. All but two
classes were mostly based on knowledge of subject matter, not pages
of hand written endurance, and my computer programming ability
sky-rocketed to surpass anything we had ever found in a magazine.
Oh, and those two classes? The same teacher taught
both. They were English focused, one quarter long only classes.
'Horror and Fantasy' was taught by the original eighth grade teacher
from Middle School, though I had the new English teacher that year so
I actually hadn't met him previously, just knew of him. 'Horror and
Fantasy' started out with a week of discussion about what horror was,
versus fantasy. Horror was pretty straight forward, but Fantasy, he
had to clarify, was not the Kings, Elves and Hobbits which had
come to swamp the term, but any story set in an unrealistic
location where the story is to take place. The brief example he gave
us was: A guy walking across a desert, we don't know why or where
he came from, comes to a giant featureless wall blocking his way.
With no door, but not wanting to stray from his intended path, he
doesn't know what to do.
With that as the example story, the grist left in the reader's lap
was 'What do these images represent?' Perhaps the journey across the
desert is the course of life and the impassible wall the barrier of
death? Or perhaps the story intends for us to not get too fixed in
our ways and except a change of course when there is no other choice?
Etc.
Now with the twin genres defined, the class plan would have us read
three books of our choosing from a list, then write a one page report
of what we read. The Final would be a secret until the last weeks,
but focus on what we'd learnt during the class. As I enjoyed
reading, this class was great for me as it gave me a reason to stray
from my normal focus on Science Fiction, and a single hand written
page about every two weeks was perfect for me as well. When the
Final came, we were told our grade for the class would be based
purely on what we got as our score on the Final. And for it, we had
to write a four page paper choosing either Horror or Fantasy
and define and discuss the genre and its meaning. This seemed simple
enough and even though it was four pages with only three days to do
it, I had polished my one draft writing skills to an art and had no
trouble completing it in time. I chose Horror.
We turned in our papers and had a day to ourselves and he would give
the papers back with our grade the following day. When that day came
he returned our papers with a surprise twist, he said one of us had
written a paper saying that Horror and Fantasy were one and the same
and he had found it so convincing that he had decided it was the
only right answer and any one of us who didn't have that as the
conclusion of our paper had it wrong. In this case, that girl got an
'A' for the class and the rest of us a lowly 'B'. The premise
that he had set-up beforehand for the paper had been chucked-out and
for those of us not psychic enough to know he would do this ahead of
time, we were screwed. This shocked me as I had otherwise
enjoyed the class up to this point, but I hoped this was just an
aberration and things would go better in the English class I had with
him next quarter.
'Basic Composition' was just that. He was going to teach us how to
write well. He felt the best way to learn how to write was to have
us write and then he would read our papers and mark everything wrong
with them, and that's how
we'd learn. This didn't sound promising, but my one
draft writing style hadn't found detractors during the previous
years. He wanted us to do a two page paper on any topic we chose and
do an outline, rough draft, then a final draft for him that first
week. I picked my topic and turned in my 'final draft' on Thursday.
He rejected it because he required the outline and rough draft along
with the final draft. oh. I said I hadn't realized that and
I'd bring those in from home tomorrow. At home that night I did the
trick as I had in eighth grade English where I made a shorter, poorer
version of the paper in pencil and made the outline based on my pen
draft. It was more than I normally could do in a night, but I pushed
off all homework for other classes to get it done and turned
everything in that Friday. I reflected that I could probably squeak
by with this class given the format each week. The Monday when he
returned our marked-up papers, he told us that he now wanted us to
do this every two days. I assumed, given the quantity of
paperwork involved, he would only be wanting the final draft. Nope,
he wanted it all,
once every two days and I knew I was screwed.
After two weeks of killing myself to get this amount done once every
three days, he
wouldn't even look at them as there had been too much time between
the papers. An 'F' was guaranteed and so I went to the guidance
counselor's office to withdraw from the class and, as it was a
required class, reschedule it with another teacher in one of the last
two quarters of the year. The counselor refused to let me do it on
the basis that he was sure I wasn't going to do that badly in the
class. I assured him I would, so he offered the compromise of
waiting until after the quarter and he'd contact me then if it was
going to be a problem. Fine, I agreed. The end of the
quarter came as well as the 'F'. I didn't hear back from the
counselor.
All other classes went well.
Math was again with Zack Hatch: 'Transformational Geometry'. The
'Advanced Algebra' students from the Freshman year of High School got
to chose one of two geometry focused math classes, Zack had put in a
recommendation for me so I could skip up from 'Intro To Algebra' and
join the geometry level this year. Given how well I liked the
previous year with Zack teaching, I chose the Sophomore year class
that had him. And it went great; again I was at the top of the
class, and this time when he sang my praises in front of the class it
was with the kids who were already deemed to be pretty sharp.
The daring optional class I took this year was 'Spanish I'.
In eighth grade we had the chance to take a language class of
'French' or 'Latin' instead of having a study hall period. I took
'Latin' as I knew it was often used in science circles and I was
still fantasizing that I'd be involved with the space program one
day. But after the first quarter of 'Latin' class in eighth grade, I
showed up on the first day of the second quarter and the teacher was
surprised I was there. She told me I was no longer in 'Latin' class,
hadn't my parents told me? No. Well, I was no longer
taking 'Latin' class. I asked why, the teacher wouldn't tell me, she
just asked me to leave so she could start teaching the class.
So now, two years later, I again signed-up for a language class.
'Spanish I' was a nice mix of learning & writing, listening
& understanding, and thinking & talking. I did very well as
I excelled at understanding the language and translating back and
forth. In many ways I saw it as a computer language to learn, except
you used it with people rather than type it in on a keyboard. Sure,
I stuttered occasionally when speaking Spanish, but understanding the
language was the teacher's focus. I was so thrilled by my first year
of the language I signed right up for 'Spanish II' the following
year.
In fact, my Sophomore year of High School had gone so well I
enthusiastically signed up for all the courses I could for Junior
year. I even found I could squeeze in the 'Civics' class intended
for Seniors into my schedule. The administration intervened, saying
I should take a different social studies class and hold off on that
one until my final year. I pointed out I was already taking the
other, shorter social studies classes but, as I had a free period all
year and there was still room available for 'Civics' after all the
Seniors had signed-up for it, I wanted to take it. And why
couldn't I take it early?
They didn't address my question, instead pointing out that I could
use the free period for study hall time. In the previous two years,
I hadn't used study hall time for study but instead playing with the
school's computer, so I hadn't seen any need for a study hall. But
then, on reflection, I decided to relent and take study hall instead.
It would give me time to play more computer games at
school.
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