For the record, this is from last year. I'm considerably happier with my classes this year.
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Period Two: English
I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE my English teacher. She is a horrible old hag named Mrs. {D-berg}, whom I refer to as Devilberg. The name sticks amongst my friends.
Devilberg teachers nothing. She will start off a "lesson" with good intentions, but will talk about her life in the Stone Age until the bell, then assign us homework we don't know how to do. Pointless, useless crap. I take to finding clever excuses to retreat to the library. She claims to be all-knowing about excuses and yet, miraculously, never sees through one of mine. I congratulate myself as I half skip to the library.
Devilberg is not only a horrible teacher, she is a hypocrite. She claims to disapprove of memorisation and yet we were required to memorise a 50-line soliloquy from Shakespeare, and 20 lines from Medea (I cheated on the latter and got away with it, even though she acts like she has the eyes of Mad-Eye Moody when it comes to cheaters). She denounces busywork but we get it every day. And whenever someone challenges her in any way, she goes ballistic. I am fortuante enough to sit in the back with Robert. We talk throughout the whole period, occasionally writing notes when she notices our voices. Everyone stops paying attention to Devilberg after three minutes- and we have a six-minute passing period.
Once Chris, who was in her third hour class right after us, got up the guts to tell Devilberg that she was off the subject and politely asked if they could get back on the topic. I'll bet ten dollars I could hear her shouting from my third hour just down the hall. That's what you get for speaking up.
I am like a porcupine in her class; stroke me the right way and you're fine. Stroke me the wrong way and you're sunk. I spend the year sending Devilberg not-so-subtle hints that she is not high on my Teacher Appreciation Week gift list. Even by the meat of the second semester, she doesn't seem to get it. I doubt she even does now.
At parent-teacher conferences her fake little laugh makes me want to puke. On her. Fortunately my dad has borne the brunt of my horror stories and is on my side. We get through her with my nausea quelled. An excellent example of control over instinct. I take a deep breath of Devilberg-fume-free air as we exit the room.
The work is absurd. Vocabulary every other week, random assignments from time to time on what we're "reading" in class, and two final exam projects, one each semester. First semester is an autobiography. Second is a playacting skit thing. The first was total hypocrisy- "Be as creative as you want, just write in third person and talk like this and don't do this and blah blah blah." The second was slightly better. In partners, we picked an author each and adopted their POV, and put on a "Meeting of the MInds" sketch. I was George Orwell. My partner, Mandy, was Sylvia Plath. Our skit ended in Mandy commiting suicide and me dead by marshmallow following a marshmallow war. We couldn't use guns. And marshmallows taste good. It was a rousing success.
I ended the year with a high B. My best acting ever.
