Writer's Block: Life's lessons

[mijan]

[Error: unknown template qotd]

There are three who vie for that title.

To Professor Kuribayashi - If you want to teach college-level English, you need to learn to speak the language first. No, it wasn't your accent. It was your atrocious grammar and piss-poor grasp of the intricacies of the language. To teach a subject at the college level, you need to be an expert in that subject. And NO, not everything in every story is symbolic of a penis or vagina.

To Ms. Vail - I was SEVEN years old when you marked me wrong on a damned "months of the year" assignment, in which I wrote: "In February, I like to look at buds on the trees getting ready for spring." You wrote in big red letters, "NO YOU DON'T," and you docked ten points. Obviously, you were laboring under the assumption that buds don't appear until later in the year. Yes, I still remember this. And now, at the age of 30, having earned 4.0's in several college botany courses, I can assure you that YES, it is very possible to examine buds on the trees at any point during the winter. They're small, but they're quite visible to the naked eye. And yes, I did enjoy looking at the buds on the trees when I was a kid. How does it feel to know that one of your 2nd graders knew more about basic botany than you did? Oh, and by the way, you still owe me the ice cream sundae that you promised to any kid who finished the entire SRA box of reading exercises. I was the only kid in the class who finished the whole fucking box, and I still want my ice cream, dammit! That sort of shit scars a kid for life, you know.

To Ms. McIntyre - You had no business teaching a health class. Seriously, no business. You couldn't even read and understand the basic nutritional labels on food products. You couldn't do basic math. And fuck, you seemed to be laboring under the assumption that drinking a single alcoholic beverage in your entire life makes a person an alcoholic. You were an embarrassment to the teaching profession. And no, I'm not sorry for correcting you in front of the entire class... multiple times. My classmates deserved accurate information. Really, vegetable oil isn't made of fat? You were a piece of work. Stick with sewing and home-ec. At least you knew how to sew a pretty skirt.

Comments

[gmonkey42.livejournal.com]

"And NO, not everything in every story is symbolic of a penis or vagina."

LOL, oh college.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've had a few professors in college with some weird ideas about things... but Tomoko Kuribayashi had a somewhat disturbing obsession with sexual symbolism in literature. This was the gen-ed English class I had to take, even though I was a bio major. However, I was a READER growing up, and my mother was an English teacher herself. (Note: My mother did not speak English as her first language, but she's completely fluent, and qualified to teach it. I have no problem with someone who is ESL teaching English, but they need to master it first.) Anyway, for my first story analysis paper I wrote, I did an in-depth, thoughtful piece digging into social symbolism, power dynamics, and so on. I got a B-, and the comments in the margins boldly pointed out that I was missing the sexual symbolism. And during class when we discussed the story, her entire analysis of the story centered on sexual symbolism and penetration. It was kinda disturbing, especially as this was technically a Catholic college and I was still a virgin at the time.

However, despite being a virgin, I wasn't a prude. So on the next story, I decided to do an experiment. I wrote a bullshit paper. I didn't put much real thought into it at all. Basically, I wrote a litany of sexual symbolism in the story. I looked for sex imagery and symbols in EVERYTHING. The whole paper was bullshit. And I got an A.

At that point, I knew the class was a joke, and I continued to write bullshit sex-symbolism papers and got a 4.0 for the class.

[imagines.livejournal.com]

I love this story like you can't even imagine. Second only to "PURPLE BUGS."

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

How many of your gym teachers were fat? How about coaches? It's sort of like teaching math when you can't add.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

None of my gym teachers were fat. Only one of my coaches was ever fat... and I strongly disliked her. She only got the job because of small-town politics, and she sucked. But yeah... really stupid.

[aliciajd]

My worst... Mrs. Marshall, my 7th grade science teacher who sent me to the office when I raised my hand and questioned her assertion that when you open a can of tuna, you should not scrape the fish from the sides of the can because "doing so will give you botulism".

The plus side of this was finding out that my parents were willing to go to the line for me when it really counted. The principal was a little stunned to find Lt. Colonel Deats in full air force flight uniform complete with stern attitude in his office at 7am the next morning. He was on the way out of town on TDY, but I was important too. ;D

[mijan.livejournal.com]

Seriously??? Botulism? Oh good grief. That's awesome that your parents stuck up for you like that! :D

[aliciajd]

Generally, my parents took the line that the school was right, so just suck it up. Dad came from a long line of teachers and actually taught 5th grade for 15 years after retiring from the air force. But, this one brought out the tiger in my dad.

It helped that all the witnesses said that I had been very polite and deferential when asking my question. I just caught her stupidity and she couldn't handle it.

[lurkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, Good Goddess! I remember SRA. It was brand new in my school. That's where I learned the art of skimming for content.

My bad teacher was the one in third grade and I can't recall her name. When doing times tables, I made the observation that multiplying by five was the same as multiplying by ten and dividing by two. Her response was, "Just memorize the table!"

[mijan.livejournal.com]

Wow, she should have been applauding you for your insights! That sort of observation by an 8-year old is a sign of advanced intelligence, as well as being an excellent learning point about how multiplication and factoring work. She sounds like a horrible teacher.

And yeah... SRA... catering to the short-term attention span fostered by modern education. :p

[solan-t.livejournal.com]

You have inspired me to actually answer one of these.


That first one though. Ugh. That reminded me that my High School English teacher had a disturbing love of "Catcher in the Rye".