Hello again. So I know I promised Back Story Back Story: Part Three today, but I just don't have time and I don't want to rush it. I guess I'll just talk about my exams today.
So first I had my English 9 test. I have never liked English exams. They always have too many subjective questions. For instance, one asked how to properly combine two sentences for the best clarity. The thing was, there were two or three sentences that were grammatically correct. One that may be clear to me may not be to someone else. In this case, I usually just pick the most dumbed-down answer and move on. That's what I don't like about English in general. The question is basically asking "Okay, so you know what YOU want to say, now can you tell us what WE want you to say?" That's why I like math and science more. There's always just a definite answer.
The following is directed towards the NCDPI-- HOW DUMB DO YOU THINK HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMEN ARE??? There was a definition of the word trundle, which I can understand, and some people may not know what a trundle bed is. The description was somewhere along the lines of the following: Trundle- A bed that is on wheels that rotate and allow the bed to move... blah blah blah. Wheels... that... rotate??????? They let the bed move? AHHH! I AM SO CONFUSED!!! I had no idea that wheels rotated!! State of North Carolina, where would I be academically without you?
So first they expect us to read their minds to get a subjective question right, then they have to explain to us that wheels rotate? Please, make up your mind!
You've made me laugh out loud. :-) "Wheels that rotate..."
ReplyDeleteMegan, you write just like your Aunt Tracy. (And that's a GREAT thing.) Had blogs been around "back-in-the-day"... this is SO the kind of thing that she would have said.
I am thoroughly enjoying your blog. Thanks for letting me come into "The Glass Door".
Love you BabyDoll
(Yes, I know... yuck, Mom, did you really have to say that... well, maybe someday I'll start my own blog about the first time we called you "BabyDoll".)
LOL...I feel quite similarly about your choice of preferred and not so preferred subjects. I was (am?) a math/science geek myself. I loved English and Art and Literature and such things. I did very well in them overall, too. But the first few weeks of any semester were spent figuring out what *this* latest instructor wanted. Fluffy? Pragmatic? Dreamy? Literal? What was their way of looking at the world, so I could try to view the world that way, write about it that way, and get an A that way. ;) It was just a pain in the rear, even though I became pretty good at it.
ReplyDeleteSo many people would argue that such courses were not at all graded subjectively which is hogwash. Of course they are! You can't possibly be objective about someone's style or art expression. I'll give you spelling. And maaayyybe grammar, but that morphs into a gray zone when you get into poetic expression. There's no way "style" and such can be objective, and that was very frustrating at times.
My biggest "aha" moment came about when I was on the speech and debate team. We would stay after school and practice, frequently hearing others practice while we waited. There was a boy in the class ahead of me that wrote GORGEOUS poetry. I can't even recall the subjects let alone the words, but I remember so many of us--our debate coach included--sitting and listening to him recite these intense words. They stirred up such thought, such emotion, such imagery... We would be mesmerized by the language and all it brought out in each of us. We literally would sit--a bunch of geeky high school students, generally more of the math/science crowd--and have our jaws hang open as we were caught up in the awe of the experience.
Mr. Cardoza, our coach, was just the same and would guide this boy through better presentation of his poetry and prose. The boy gave more of a deadpan read of much of his work, and I remember Cardoza coaching him through one particular phrase and how he really needed to emphasize it in some particular way because it meant "this deep thing, and that deep thing, and then all together these other things and you need to express the depth of it all and...", so forth.
The boy stood there and looked back at him, confused. He said it didn't mean all that. It just meant what he wrote. That was all. It had been something simple, heck if I remember what it was now, but it may as well been "roses are red, violets are blue." We all sat there interpreting something like how the roses symbolized life and love and the redness the passion and life blood that courses through us all, while the violets were the softer and delicate side of us all with blue reminding us to the depths of the ocean waters where all life began in peace and...blahblahblah. And he just stood there saying "no, really, I just saw some red roses that day, that's all." It was really something that simple.
It forever changed my view of literature and poetry and all the arts, wondering if so many of these great writers and deep thinkers and expressive artists were all just like him, writing down thoughts as basic as a grocery list and then some fool would come along and find deep meaning in that banality.
I'll take my "there's only one answer to this math problem" tests any day. I'll keep the prose and poetry and art to myself for me to enjoy without a grade attached to it, thanks. :)