![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaE-mail conversation with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
columbina has me wondering about a lot of things. I'm going to write more about some of them in a bit (that is, not today), but until then I'd like to ask a slew of questions. Answer some, all, or none of them, as you like.
Did you have a good high school experience? (For those of you outside the US, this question applies to your schooling in your late teen years, somewhere between 14 and 18 for the typical student.) What do you think is most wrong with the way your schooling at that age was conducted? Do you have anything you think was institutionally most right with how your schooling was conducted? (By institutionally, I mean that "Ron Gabriel, my ninth and twelfth grade English teacher, is so awesome" doesn't count unless the school specifically nurtured his awesomeness. Which it didn't. Rotten bastards. You do not use a person's disability against him. This is not acceptable human behavior.)
Do you have stronger, less strong, or similar feelings towards grade school? Junior high/middle school? If you went to college, college? If you went to grad school, grad school? If someone says "your school," which one do you think of? (That presumes that you're not currently working in any capacity at a school that's becoming "yours.")
Did you have one best year of your schooling, where you were learning the most and figuring out the most about yourself? Did you have more than one? Did you have one worst year? Did they correspond with best/worst years otherwise, or did you separate out your school life and your outside/home life?
Was there a time in your schooling when you really enjoyed the books assigned to you to read? What kind of books were they, or, if you remember, what books? Did you otherwise manage to find good books to read, mostly, or did you go through dry spells in your reading life when you were younger?
My high school was a wretched experience, as growing numbers of you on the friendslist know firsthand. I think the most offensively wrong thing about it is that no one in charge actually seemed to care whether individual students were learning anything or not. There were a lot of wrong things competing for the honor of most wrong, though, and total orderings etc. etc. I don't think RHS did a lot right, institutionally, although there were individual teachers who did their best in a very flawed system.
I have stronger feelings towards college because my alma mater, for all its flaws, was mine: I chose it, and I chose my major. I was stuck with Blumfield Elementary, Ralston Middle School, and RHS. Gustavus I chose. If you separate out Gustavus Physics from Gustavus Adolphus College, it is the closest thing I have to blind patriotism.markgritter and timprov are still bringing me out of "My Department, Right Or Wrong," ("My Professors, Drunk Or Sober" actually might have applied from time to time -- certainly more often than that general sentiment applies to my mother). Whenever I'm reading something where people give their countrymen sanctuary just for being fellow exiles or what have you, the way I get into the mindset is to imagine that it's some Gustie physics geek. Or maybe a Gustie gamer geek. Just a Gustie isn't enough. Aaaaaanyway, I have pretty vivid memories of grade school and junior high, but it's not as much a hot button as high school is. And grad school sucked but is not a very important chapter in my life: I forgive people who don't know me very well for forgetting I was ever in it.
My seventh grade year was probably my best year of schooling, but I've had better years of learning or of personal growth. I had Marylyn Bremmer and Mr. Lesch and Mr.Fishhead Troutman, and scottjames and I were doing all kinds of geeky fun stuff that actually had something to do with school and not just, y'know, making our own geeky fun. My middle year of high school -- since I skipped one and clearly had a freshman year and a senior year, you can call the middle one sophomore or junior, as you like -- was probably my worst. Other years have had their low spots, to be sure, but the middle year of high school was the most consistently bad. Well...my grad school year was bad, too, but I did quit, and I wrote Fortress of Thorns in the meantime, and I think I learned quite a lot of unrelated stuff.
It occurs to me that 12 and 15 are my "resonant ages" for writing YAs. Huh. I'd known 12 -- 12 is my year, my mental age and all that. (Making me, from my understanding of previous con panels and conversations, younger thanpameladean but older than sdn.) But I hadn't spotted 15 as my worst year, which it was. Huh.
I enjoyed the books Marylyn assigned my seventh grade class. Mythology. Ray Bradbury. Mark Twain. "Julius Caesar" with Marylyn doing recitations for us. I'm not sure how much of that was Marylyn herself -- I might fling myself into who knows what, for her sake -- I'd give the woman a kidney, heaven knows I could give her a bit of Sylvia Plath if it would make her happy -- but part of Marylyn being Marylyn herself was that she had us reading The Illustrated Man and not some illustrated abridged nonsense. I never really had a gap in finding books I wanted to read. Seventh grade was also a year in which books I wanted to read totally exploded, because I heard the news that there were genre labels that would give me a much higher probability of giving a damn, and off I went. No wonder I reach for 12 when I want to write books.
But 15 has its promising bits, too; I'll have to think on that.
Anyway. You?
columbina has me wondering about a lot of things. I'm going to write more about some of them in a bit (that is, not today), but until then I'd like to ask a slew of questions. Answer some, all, or none of them, as you like.Did you have a good high school experience? (For those of you outside the US, this question applies to your schooling in your late teen years, somewhere between 14 and 18 for the typical student.) What do you think is most wrong with the way your schooling at that age was conducted? Do you have anything you think was institutionally most right with how your schooling was conducted? (By institutionally, I mean that "Ron Gabriel, my ninth and twelfth grade English teacher, is so awesome" doesn't count unless the school specifically nurtured his awesomeness. Which it didn't. Rotten bastards. You do not use a person's disability against him. This is not acceptable human behavior.)
Do you have stronger, less strong, or similar feelings towards grade school? Junior high/middle school? If you went to college, college? If you went to grad school, grad school? If someone says "your school," which one do you think of? (That presumes that you're not currently working in any capacity at a school that's becoming "yours.")
Did you have one best year of your schooling, where you were learning the most and figuring out the most about yourself? Did you have more than one? Did you have one worst year? Did they correspond with best/worst years otherwise, or did you separate out your school life and your outside/home life?
Was there a time in your schooling when you really enjoyed the books assigned to you to read? What kind of books were they, or, if you remember, what books? Did you otherwise manage to find good books to read, mostly, or did you go through dry spells in your reading life when you were younger?
My high school was a wretched experience, as growing numbers of you on the friendslist know firsthand. I think the most offensively wrong thing about it is that no one in charge actually seemed to care whether individual students were learning anything or not. There were a lot of wrong things competing for the honor of most wrong, though, and total orderings etc. etc. I don't think RHS did a lot right, institutionally, although there were individual teachers who did their best in a very flawed system.
I have stronger feelings towards college because my alma mater, for all its flaws, was mine: I chose it, and I chose my major. I was stuck with Blumfield Elementary, Ralston Middle School, and RHS. Gustavus I chose. If you separate out Gustavus Physics from Gustavus Adolphus College, it is the closest thing I have to blind patriotism.
markgritter and timprov are still bringing me out of "My Department, Right Or Wrong," ("My Professors, Drunk Or Sober" actually might have applied from time to time -- certainly more often than that general sentiment applies to my mother). Whenever I'm reading something where people give their countrymen sanctuary just for being fellow exiles or what have you, the way I get into the mindset is to imagine that it's some Gustie physics geek. Or maybe a Gustie gamer geek. Just a Gustie isn't enough. Aaaaaanyway, I have pretty vivid memories of grade school and junior high, but it's not as much a hot button as high school is. And grad school sucked but is not a very important chapter in my life: I forgive people who don't know me very well for forgetting I was ever in it.My seventh grade year was probably my best year of schooling, but I've had better years of learning or of personal growth. I had Marylyn Bremmer and Mr. Lesch and Mr.
scottjames and I were doing all kinds of geeky fun stuff that actually had something to do with school and not just, y'know, making our own geeky fun. My middle year of high school -- since I skipped one and clearly had a freshman year and a senior year, you can call the middle one sophomore or junior, as you like -- was probably my worst. Other years have had their low spots, to be sure, but the middle year of high school was the most consistently bad. Well...my grad school year was bad, too, but I did quit, and I wrote Fortress of Thorns in the meantime, and I think I learned quite a lot of unrelated stuff.It occurs to me that 12 and 15 are my "resonant ages" for writing YAs. Huh. I'd known 12 -- 12 is my year, my mental age and all that. (Making me, from my understanding of previous con panels and conversations, younger than
pameladean but older than sdn.) But I hadn't spotted 15 as my worst year, which it was. Huh.I enjoyed the books Marylyn assigned my seventh grade class. Mythology. Ray Bradbury. Mark Twain. "Julius Caesar" with Marylyn doing recitations for us. I'm not sure how much of that was Marylyn herself -- I might fling myself into who knows what, for her sake -- I'd give the woman a kidney, heaven knows I could give her a bit of Sylvia Plath if it would make her happy -- but part of Marylyn being Marylyn herself was that she had us reading The Illustrated Man and not some illustrated abridged nonsense. I never really had a gap in finding books I wanted to read. Seventh grade was also a year in which books I wanted to read totally exploded, because I heard the news that there were genre labels that would give me a much higher probability of giving a damn, and off I went. No wonder I reach for 12 when I want to write books.
But 15 has its promising bits, too; I'll have to think on that.
Anyway. You?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 07:49 am (UTC)Nothing truly awful happened to me at school. For the longest time I didn't believe those books and movies about kids being tormented at school; that just didn't happen around me. I was just grindingly unhappy. It was (and is) a small public school--my graduating class was ~115--and barring a few transfers, the classes had been together since sixth grade (and some longer; I went to the largest of three grade schools, which fed into one middle school, which fed into the high school).
This was good for the usual cited reasons, small classes and such, and especially because it meant they couldn't be too fussy with who got to do what: the cross-country team was the track team was the Scholastic Bowl team was the jazz band was the pit band, etc.
This was bad because it meant that by the time you hit high school, everyone knew who you were, and that was that. Dunno if this is where my terror of getting stuck comes from, but it did some cementing for sure.
The most wrong thing for me was (I assume) another casuality of the school's size. Limited honors courses, and if that was honors, I can't imagine what the regular classes were like. Not much at all by way of electives. And I don't want to blame the teachers, exactly, because they weren't doing anything wrong. (Or I don't want to blame most of them. The guy who spent a week on comma placement worksheets in a senior honors English class? Blame!) But there wasn't enough done right for me, and I was desperately bored. The only time I was a) given stuff that was hard for me and b) made to work and understand it was in physics, senior year, and man. That was my very favorite class.
Some of this--I don't know. Looking back, I wish I'd taken more responsibility for my own education. To a certain extent? Yes. My fault. But at the same time, I was a kid, and it seems like it's asking a lot for a kid to take that kind of responsibility in an institution (my school, not necessarily all schools) that doesn't encourage or reward, let alone demand, it. I needed more. We all did.
Best thing. Having trouble thinking of anything. Individuals, yes. That physics teacher. And my cross-country coach. And cross-country in general. But they're not really what you're asking about. I will say that my sister went to the same school--was a freshman when I was a senior--and had a totally different experience. Of course, we're different people, so there's that. But it does sound like there are some newer teachers doing a fantastic job.
"My school" is college. Not the choosing thing in my case, since it was less a choice than "I don't want to go, but I'm too busy freaking out to find anything else useful to do, so I guess I will." But it was a different place, with different people, and that mattered more than what place and which people they were, because I was different to them, too. I kept changing--still keep changing--but just getting out was superhelpful in getting my feet back underneath me. College was the first place where I started feeling that people saw me. It--the philosophy department in particular--was also the first place where I ran up against that blend of stuff that I could grasp and stuff that was just out of reach, and profs who seemed interested in helping me grasp it, and helping me figure out how to help myself. Heady and addictive. Me? Hooked.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 02:26 pm (UTC)If I gather what you're saying, I agree. I wish high school could have spent more time guiding toward possible careers. Take a whole year just to show us the possibilities, even. I don't think much would be lost.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 03:46 am (UTC)I'd like a good career guidance program, for sure. But I'd like more for schools to really teach how to think and such.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 03:51 am (UTC)