I hate school. Not hated. Hate. I hate school with an intensity and immediacy that cries out for the present tense. Everything they made me learn, I learned it under protest. I learned it under duress. The fact that they thought they could impinge upon my off-time with "home work" and my vacation time with "summer reading lists" rankles to high heaven. How dare they! The presumption.
I tell you I never read half those "summer reading list" books. It didn't matter. They'd test you on it at some point, within the first couple weeks of when you got back, but I was always able to suss out whether it was going to be an essay test, or multiple choice. If it was an essay test, well okay, I'd flip through the book in a cursory manner for five minutes tops, just to get a very broad sense of the overall plot and tone, and what sort of character names were involved. Then on test day I'd answer the actual questions in an oblique manner using my infallible plotting sense: I can almost always tell what a half-decent author would do with any given situation, because there's usually only one best direction in which to push the plot.
And if you're inclined to be surprised at how broadly that kind of hunch can be applied: don't be.
On the other hand, if the test was to be multiple choice, I wouldn't crack the book at all. Multiple choice tests are my bitch. I can beat a multiple choice test in seven languages, and I only know 1.4 languages (rounding up very generously on my remaining francais).
I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it at all! It's not cheating. Those jerks have the nerve to try to dictate what I do on my time? They are the ones out of line. It still burns me up, all these years later! MAN, I hate school!
Mind you, all of this is retrospect talking, pretty much. At the time, I was fine with school. I thought school was OK. It was all I knew! I had no real basis for comparison. It's only as I go through life, and I've picked up some worldly experience and some perspective, that I realize just how far out of line they were.
Oooh, it rankles.
I tell you I never read half those "summer reading list" books. It didn't matter. They'd test you on it at some point, within the first couple weeks of when you got back, but I was always able to suss out whether it was going to be an essay test, or multiple choice. If it was an essay test, well okay, I'd flip through the book in a cursory manner for five minutes tops, just to get a very broad sense of the overall plot and tone, and what sort of character names were involved. Then on test day I'd answer the actual questions in an oblique manner using my infallible plotting sense: I can almost always tell what a half-decent author would do with any given situation, because there's usually only one best direction in which to push the plot.
And if you're inclined to be surprised at how broadly that kind of hunch can be applied: don't be.
On the other hand, if the test was to be multiple choice, I wouldn't crack the book at all. Multiple choice tests are my bitch. I can beat a multiple choice test in seven languages, and I only know 1.4 languages (rounding up very generously on my remaining francais).
I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it at all! It's not cheating. Those jerks have the nerve to try to dictate what I do on my time? They are the ones out of line. It still burns me up, all these years later! MAN, I hate school!
Mind you, all of this is retrospect talking, pretty much. At the time, I was fine with school. I thought school was OK. It was all I knew! I had no real basis for comparison. It's only as I go through life, and I've picked up some worldly experience and some perspective, that I realize just how far out of line they were.
Oooh, it rankles.
Comments
College was fine.