21 V 2002 - 23:36 - trivialis39

i am irritated because my school is running us through hoops so it can look good for its curriculum review. also so that we can learn things, but i think mostly the curriculum review. and while i do not think this is so unreasonable for a school whose accreditation and therefore reason for existence depends on the favor of both CAIS and NAIS (the california and national flavors of associations of independent schools, respectively), i can't help being slightly annoyed by it, especially as i'm the one who has to fit it all into my brain somehow. five sections of my math book! in one and a half weeks! covering matrix algebra, three-dimensional space and vectors, polar form of tilted conic sections... the fun just doesn't end at my school. coming up soon: the second world war in forty minutes, the self-taught history of the period from 1940-1945, and forty-five minutes each on Rothko and Cage. sometimes my school's priorities make me wonder. which is not to say that i don't think cage is important. he is. his theories spread like wildfire in the twentieth century and inspired the revolt of neo-classicism. however. spending more time on him than we did on the entirety of the second world war i find a bit questionable. also, we didn't cover the end of the war in class and spent ten minutes on a brief overview of the cold war. wheeeeeee.

at least we have good textbooks and good teachers. but i'm just saying that maybe, maybe we might plan our pacing a little better.

hmm. school seems to be driving me gently up the wall. since i never took first year latin at UHS, bill, i can't tell you if it gets easier. i can tell you that my class got through second year latin pretty much unharmed, but considering that she tells us how terrible your class is, maybe you'll have difficulty with it. if it's any consolation to you, the setup of our program basically ensures that you will be able to forget a good deal of your grammar for third year latin and come through unharmed, since, poetry! and all the rules of grammar are broken in poetry.

speaking of latin, we watched a movie today in class (I, Claudius). you have to understand something about our latin teacher: she just doesn't do movies. there are latin students who have taken the language for four years, and not once in those four years has she shown a movie. until now. this is further evidence for my theory that our teacher has been replaced by a sophisticated form of pod alien and is now a PodPerson. she's been sick and missed classes, she's let us out early, she's even cancelled class, and now a movie. i'm telling you, i don't know what the world is coming to these days. she also confessed that she didn't know how to work the vcr today. alex asked her if she even had a television at home. it turns out she does, but she only recently got a vcr and is just learning how to use one...

oh, but bill, i forgot to mention, even our class was supposedly a week behind schedule all year last year. so i think you'd better be prepared to study well, work hard. reach deep down inside yourself and find that puritan work ethic we all know is there.

bre. thank you. that's all i'm going to say because, well, that's all i really can say.

my mother is making me unhappy, but that's a long story. the short version is: she thinks doing [insert here] will allow even more gayness to rub off on me. we can't have that, can we? of course not. everyone knows the contagion must be limited to the select few.

sometimes i wish i had something more satisfying to bury myself in. i don't.

it's hard enough to deal with hormonal swings and mood swings without having to reason with her as well. and she wonders why i don't tell her anything. hmm. could it be because...

no. not going there.

also: "follow your heart, always!" but "do what will get the colleges to look at you. like tutoring children for community service!"

rants about how often i'm just ignored aside, i do like the store where i volunteer. but apparently i should just give it up to tutor children, which i hate because for some reason i suck at explaining concepts to anyone but my friends, and i am not good to children and they scream and jesus god was i the only quiet, attentive child out there? (one might point out that, since i didn't need tutoring as a child, it would make sense that other quiet, attentive children wouldn't need tutoring. shh.)

how the hell did i ever think i would be a parent? i'm not worthy to take care of a bloody houseplant.