It's currently 9:46 PM, and I'm sitting here, going, God, in ten hours I have two hours of class that I literally detest. Granted, it's only two hours out of the one hundred and sixty eight hours I have each week, but it seems to be two too many.
During the Prize Giving ceremony at my High School last year, I sat there with a hallelujah chorus playing triumphant in my mind, rejoicing in the fact that I would never, ever have to again attend a class that I hated, a class that was an absolute waste of my time. I won't say 'Oh boy, was I wrong' because I've enjoyed six of the seven papers I'm taking at University this year. But paper number seven literally sucks. There is nothing enjoyable about it. "Hahaha", says life. "Shame on you for choosing that paper. That's why I invented Performance Communication, and made it look useful. I wanted to give you two hours of misery per week. Lol."
Life, you are so rude sometimes. So very, very rude.
Because life is rude, it forces us to go to school for 13 years and take a bunch of classes that we literally do not enjoy. I haven't enjoyed class right from day one: on my very first day at school as a bright and cute 5-year-old. This is my school photo from the ragin' year of 1999:
I guess school and I have never been on the best of terms, because I vividly recollect being bored out of my skull as Mrs. Van de Molen taught us to count to one hundred. In an attempt to make things more fun, I played teacher and began teaching the girl beside me a more efficient way of counting to one hundred. I got put in the naughty chair for being disruptive. Great start to school; punish a kid for knowing how to count. Fantastic.
My next memory of hating a class was being split into groups to complete a science project in year 5. My group consisted of a charming girl named Heather who couldn't spell her own name and liked to spit, and a boy called Zion who would read the dictionary during silent reading because he thought it made him look smart. They made fun of my short hair, creatively called me a boy, and in my uncreative retaliation I ran away crying. Mrs Hollinshead came and found me. Later that day I actually tried my hand at a creative response, chasing Heather with a dead mouse, and then punching her. I don't recall if I tried to deal to Zion, but even if I did Mrs Hollinshead put a end to it by acquainting me with the 'naughty chair' again.
My other strongest memory of hating a class was year 11 science. Mr. Crosby would spend half the class standing at the front saying 'boys and girls, boys and girls' on loop while the 'boys and girls' screamed and threw paper and grafittied the desks, and the other half playing braniac on the projector to shut us up. I gave up on attempting to learn anything after about a month and instead acquainted myself with the girl next to me. We then spent the duration of the year having strawberry bubblegum-blowing competitions and gossiping about boys in an attempt to make the class vaguely enjoyable.
Now I think about it, that's probably why my knowledge of science dries up around the year 11 mark.
In the long run, what these classes have taught me is that they only go for a little while, and then they are in your past. And although I have Performance Comm in some ten hours and I'm going to find it mostly ghastly, I might as well make the best of it and pull the best grade that I can.
If you're still in High School you will probably roll your eyes in horror if I tell you that the teachers of your least-favorite class are fantastic. But they actually are. Since you're already in the class, treat your teachers like proper human beings, learn all that you can and leave with the best mark you can manage. While the class seems to stretch out before you in an endless line of suck, before you know it it's in your past and like me you'll be thinking "I should have persisted with year 11 science instead of simply giving up."
That's the attitude I'm taking to Performance Comm tomorrow morning, anyhow. And I hope you take it to your classes, too.
Charlie x
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