Clock

It's a fairly standard classroom. On a northwest corner, which means it has a splendid view of the main green area and a parking lot, and that the sun gets in everyone's eyes if no one draws the shades in the afternoon.

There's a clock, though it is perpetually frozen at 7:15. I've never been sure if that was 7:15AM or PM, though I wonder every time I go in the room. Chances are good no one knows--it's been stopped long enough to be relegated to, "No one considers telling maintenance" status, and chances are good that there had been no classes between 7 and 7 the day it stopped, so even the first class who saw it stopped probably wouldn't know.

I'm the timekeeper, because I always wear a watch, and because I check it nigh-compulsively, so I might as well be. Classes end ten minutes before the hour, so the church bell that chimes on the hour only tells us when class starts, not when it's finished.

The timekeeper is usually more important than I am, I'm told. Someone has class just after choir, and so we have to end at ten minutes before the hour on the dot, or else they'll be late to math, or biology, or whatever else. This year, no one has class after choir is supposed to end, so the whole affair is rather more casual.

Our director doesn't keep us. Or rather, she doesn't make us stay. Every time, she'll ask, "Do you mind staying a few more minutes?" If someone says yes or has an uncomfortable look, she'll dismiss us. If everyone is just looking around, checking for anyone else to have an issue, we'll sing for a few minutes more--five or ten, twenty once when we had a concert the next week.

In an old room, where the sun shines too brightly in your eyes and the clock hasn't told time more often than twice a day for some years, I have my favorite class.

Lasts and Firsts

This is my last blog post written as a high school student.

In fact, while you read this, I'll probably be out of my graduation ceremony, though I might still be in it. I might be in the middle of delivering this speech:

High school is a surreal experience. We enter these woods, just out of middle school, just barely finished being everyone’s elder, and suddenly we’re the young ones again. We see around us people who are already fretting over college or career, who are nearly out of the woods we have only just entered. We see old friends drifting from us or find ourselves drifting from them as we each find new interests and lessons. Now we’re there, coming out the other edge of these woods, again so old and so soon to be so young. Now friends aren’t just drifting apart; some friend we’ve had is going across the country, or we are. We won’t just be yelling at each other across dark woods; we may be shouting across stormy oceans. Skype and Facebook and Tumblr will help, but it is always easier to forget each other when we don’t have to see each other every day.

This is the moment when we all look back, to that first day we stepped on campus, or on the football field, or on stage. Freshman year seems yesterday and forever ago. Just yesterday that we stepped into these woods, forever ago that our life didn’t somehow revolve around what comes next: college applications, or job applications, or service applications, or wondering *sharp breath through teeth*—Did I make the cut? 

Back then, forever ago, yesterday, the seniors were getting stressed about the same things we just went through. That one SAT test they hadn’t taken in time. A huge paper in English class. A mathematics test in something our parents didn’t understand. Juggling extracurriculars with academics. We were going through the woods, sometimes seeing perfectly and walking confidently, sometimes stumbling over tree roots in the dark, sometimes with only the next few feet visible by a torch-bearer, by a friend or a sibling or a parent or a teacher. Wherever we were, however we walked, we’re out of those woods. Now, we’re somewhere much clearer, and perhaps even more intimidating. We can see we’re entering another forest , but we can’t see the forest’s end from where we are. We have to go on faith, leaving torchbearers behind. So out we step. 

And to my fellow graduating class of 2012, remember: Whenever it seems like the world is ending, it isn’t. We’re just taking over.

Which is the last speech I will write as a high school student, though not the first. I may be listening to one of the last speeches I will hear as a high school student. Regardless, if you are reading this close to the publish date, I'm going through a last or a first--last breakfast, first dinner; last day, first night; last song, first conversation.

I say goodbye as a last, and shall greet you next post as a first. See you on the side opposite, readers.

Wanderer

"Wanderer above a Sea of Fog" is something of a mascot in my current English class. We were asked to think on it, and make some questions, and I did. Have been.

This post will be...hm. As self-indulgent as a musing, at any rate. My thoughts around the painting. I will be referring to the man as Herr Wanderer, to differentiate.

The first thing that came to my mind in English class was, "That looks familiar." After thinking a moment, I remembered that I my brother had seen this when he was in this English class--in fact, he wrote a blog post on it.* I haven't reread that post, though I plan to after I post this one.

And I thought: We're plunging into the unknown.

This is the last year where teachers will say, "Oh, you're Chris's sister?" This is the last year I will see many of my acquaintances, and the last year I will ever see some of my friends. Neither of those will be intentional, but...friendship is proximity. That can manifest as proximate--or complementary--interests as easily as physical proximity, but physical proximity plays a part. Sometimes drifting apart just means moving houses.

To a greater extent, I am moving. I am taking the first steps outside my ivory tower. I am school smart; I play the harp; I have good music theory. Those are all skills that can be fun at parties--though the first is usually only fun if brought up sideways--but I have yet to test them in a practical arena. I have been called on to help--with a safety net of (an) adult(s) and my peers at my back. I have tutored--for pocket money. I have never needed something to work out for me. I'm on the ground for the moment, and I can climb back in if I need to, but if I fall, I hit the ground.

I wrote this down as one of my questions, though before thinking of the stuff in either of those latter paragraphs: "What comes next?"

Next, I wrote, "Was the clothing normal for the age it was painted?" Once I was thinking on clothing, I linked to Loki, because I saw The Ring Cycle semi-recently--within the last year--and their Loki, in addition to wearing something superficially similar, also had the same sort of air I felt from the piece. The man clearly stands apart, but looks confident in rough terrain. Once I got a close-up--in the middle of writing this paragraph--I re-thought that interpretation, because of the hair. The tilt of the head and the hair being mussed as it is makes him seem a bit less comfortable, a bit more tired/resigned, but every other angle in his body speaks of firmness to me. And, though this didn't occur to me until I looked at the close-up again, the tilt of the head could also be a reaction to some form of trick gone wrong. Once I've made the link with Loki, I almost have to bring up his house with four doors (so he can see enemies approaching from any side): the painting has the same sort of feel to it, with one man who can see all around. Yet it's worth remembering that sight didn't help Loki, he was still caught. This man's high vantage point helps him as much; for all the possible planning, he's caught in the fog. The wanderer also doesn't look like the type to have a Sigyn, but then, Loki generally doesn't either.

Once I've hit on Norse mythology and have a character called "The Wanderer", I almost must think of Odin. (One of Odin's epithets/forms is the Wanderer.) Given that I've already associated Herr Wanderer with Loki, what associating him with Odin brings to mind is the idea I've read that Odin and Loki were, originally, the same being. This idea makes some sense, given that Loki is the clever one and Odin is the ruler. The idea also occurred to me in the Ring, when Odin is stalling for time while Loki revels in keeping everyone else in the dark while flat-out telling them exactly what they need to know. It didn't work to take them as separate personalities or anything like that; it just seemed like their actions fit together--Odin's "Hold on, I'm sure Loki will come up with a grand plan in a moment," with Loki's delight in pretending to be flippantly speaking of nothing of importance, while he--still flippantly--speaks of a plan. I can just imagine Odin's lines being delivered with suppressed laughter, and Loki's are stalling in their own way, if for another purpose.

The next main question I thought up was, "Is the similarity to The Fool intentional?" There are differences from what I have usually seen--the colors are duller; we cannot see the man's face; he doesn't appear to be about to step off the cliff (unintentionally); the Herr Wanderer has no animal companion--but the basic idea is similar. A man, who appears to (have) be(en) wandering stands on a cliff edge. The painting could be The Fool with a touch of ennui, or a few more bad experiences.

The class came together to discuss at this point. Our teacher brought up how he used "question", and that contained the word, "quest", where we were going. The next few ideas that came up revolved around that basic idea, though given the painting, it's hard to do otherwise: "Why is he wandering?" "Does he have a destination?" "What is he seeking?" which naturally brought, "if anything." "Is he starting or finishing his journey?"--the teacher brought up that one hopes he's finishing, since he's on the cliff edge, to which I thought, Well then, he's probably about to finish one way or another. He could turn around; if he got up he can probably get down, but... Anyway. "What's his purpose for climbing?" "Is he running from something?" "What is he looking at?"

Now that those are out there: The first three are nearly the same, though with different opinions and degrees of certainty about whether he is traveling point A to B, or wandering. "Does he have a point in mind to reach, and if so, what marks it?" There's something about living an unexamined life in there, and also about how you don't need to know where you're going to be doing what you want to do.

Starting or finishing the journey is something of a more complex question than the teacher's words or my knee-jerk thought implied. As I already hinted at, this may be the point where the man turns around. That could signify the end, doubling back as in the classical Hero's Journey, but there are other reason to do it. I can imagine going to my bridge and watching the fog roll one last time before leaving home. I would watch, leaning on a rail, or weight on one hip, breathing and existing in that last moment of home...and then I turn and I start off. On the subject of the implied possibility of suicide, I don't think that makes sense outside a joke. He looks remarkably accepting of life as it is, if not happy about it. My teacher described the German art period this was a part of as being about the dark things, and...yes. This is a man who sees dark. He may be scared--he may not be--but he is at peace with its existence. I cannot imagine him being careless enough to step off accidentally, nor do I see him deciding to jump. Mulling it over as an option, yes, perhaps even as we look at him. But not jumping. Not at this point in the journey.

"What's his purpose for climbing?" feels like the right question to ask to me. It neatly summarizes what is there. Is he, as another suggested, running from something? Is he running to something? Is he seeking something, looking for it? Is he observing, looking at it? Was the purpose observation or discovery? Has the purpose remained static, or did it shift? That is true wandering, to me: one's purpose shifts from moment to moment. A traveler hopes the wind will be at his back and plans that it won't be; a wanderer merely turns so it is.

My teacher was on talking, and I don't know if he would even remember this, but it was a question he spoke that hit me: "How high do you want to go?"

How big a star do you want to be? How quiet a life do you want to lead? How much do you want to help? Forget what you can do for a moment; nearly everything is something you can learn or work around, if you're willing to make the right sacrifice. How high do you want to go?

And, tightly related: How badly do you want it?

I thought of a song to go with the line, as I am wont to do. There's a song in The Protomen called "The Fall". The true lyrics and a scene description are here. What I wrote in my notebook was, "Climb, climb to the top of the world, and know that when you fall, you fall from a height most men never reach." I've never seen The Protomen, and really wasn't even thinking about the scene described when I thought of the song. It was just...in the moment, it was the fear. But even in the middle of the fear, I thought of the triumphant music to the inspiring, cynical lyrics. I will fall. I will get up every time but the last.

These are not reasons to stop climbing. These are reasons to make the fall breathtaking.

* He calls it "Wanderer before a Sea of Mists". To be fair, my teacher called it "Wanderer over a Sea of Fog" and "Wanderer in the Sea of Fog" during the course of the class period. I'm just going off what gets the most hits on Google.

Serial

She was genuinely horrified, was the weird thing.

I mean, yeah. There are bullies at school. Anyone who thinks about it has to know. It's like abusive parents. If you think for two seconds, you realize that someone at your school of a few hundred has to have a problem with them, because they're always there. And yet, somehow, people always act like it's some big shock. I guess it's the same as death. We get to a point where we realize everyone is going to die. But we don't feel it for a long while after. So it happens, we see it happen, and then we get it. And it's terrifying. So you can react a couple ways. One way is to blame the victim: Oh no, it couldn't happen to me. JUSTIFICATION DRIVE ACTIVATED: Because I'm not stupid/mean/stuck-up enough to provoke them. Another is to not quite believe what you're hearing.

So she hadn't believed me when I told her I was being bullied. Or she hadn't done anything, or it hadn't done any good, all of which comes down to the same set of apparents from my point of view, and any question that could clarify is insulting, so there I am. The other student tells on me and we get called into her office. I'm honest, the other student exaggerates, she reacts to the worst in both our stories so I get called a tattler--I'm unpopular in that crowd, mind--and the other student and I both serve a detention. The message gets across pretty clearly: It's not quite useless, but you have to be willing to hurt a little too, and bullying/fighting/freaking without consent isn't that big a deal.

Which all adds up to some words tumbling out of my mouth before I can think to stop them, and so sincere because of that that she can't help but believe they're a true question:

"You care about that stuff?"

See line one. From what I've seen, the woman is not an amazing actor. She can smile and hide her feelings, but any of us learn that, and she uses the same smile I do. The bright, brittle smile that communicates deeper dislike than a glare.

So when she gave me a look that could have been on a poster titled "SHOCK AND HORROR, TONIGHT ONLY, NO WOMEN OR CHILDREN ALLOWED", I knew she honestly cared. Which...well, at first only surprised me, then pissed me off a little. What on earth? The rules as written allow her to give worse punishments for fighting. Why would she be so shocked that I thought she didn't care?

"Of course I care." Again, just so bald-faced honest.

I glanced at Nina, who was sitting next to me and had a layered effect that both Ms. Robin and I had ditched in favor of clarity. Outer, probably what Ms. Robin was picking up, attentive and slightly bemused; inner, mildly annoyed at me. She'd already figured out Ms. Robin cared.

I turned back to Ms. Robin and decided that, in the absence of any useful precedent telling me otherwise, I might as well be honest. "We're in high school, ma'am. We're going to fight. Every day. The only difference is that we touched each other."

"You should keep your arguments verbal."

"Why?"

"Because you could hurt each other."

I paused at that, trying to find some crack in her sincerity. It wasn't there. "Ms. Robin," I said softly, "we hurt each other more if we don't solve it. If we fight physically, I can tell when it ends. I've been in verbal fights that extended several years past their end because one person got over it and the other thought she was just being given the silent treatment. As long as we stay behind the threshold of long-term to permanent damage or weapons, how is this any worse?"

Had it been another day, or a different environment, Ms. Robin might have been secure enough in her worldview to give a long speech that boiled down to, "Because physical violence is always worse than verbal violence." But we had been honest with each other. She knew me to be bright, she knew me to be kind, and she knew me to be, at least for now, honest. She paused, perhaps checking me for sincerity, perhaps the sentence for truth.

Finally, Ms. Robin said something that made me respect her more than I'd ever respected a teacher at that school.

"I don't know."

Portfolios 22 and 23 Poetry: The Dark and Lit Twin

Written as a pair, originally "The Dark Twin" and "The Lit Twin".

The night is closing in.
But it isn’t. Not really. Not ‘closing in’.
That is far too harsh a term.
As the crepuscular time closes and full night comes, she beckons softly.
She wraps you, not in warmth, but in experience.
In the chilled air.
In those little smells that only come at night.
Maybe someone’s barbequing.
Maybe you can smell night blooming flowers.
But always she comes softly, leading you to a new land like a mother guiding your first steps.
A lover holding your hand through tough times.
Some only appreciate those warm summer nights, where the moon is full;
As if her job is to be a quieter day.
She does not work to become like him. She simply is.
She fills the sky with deep velvet, indigo, blue, black; her diamonds spread across,
Winking an eye, showing a flash of armor, twinkling like lightning.

Have you ever cried at the sunset or the stars just because they were?
Have you ever really looked?
Or do you walk only in the light, shunning the dark, shunning the crisp chill, shunning the void of black between stars?



Day breaks.
So much hope, so much love, in each new sunrise.
And then…
“Ugh.”
“Five more minutes.”
“I hate Mondays.”
And just like that, you’ve missed the day.
As surely as you had slept through it.
Just as we miss his twin, we miss him.
Not because we sleep, not because we’re scared:
Because we take him for granted or go out teeth bared.
Because we think of day as less sacred than night—
Just because of a little light.

Homework

This has been bouncing around in my head for a while now. Both homework, and why I haven't been feeling as passionate about stopping it recently. A while back, (before I started this blog,) I was very angry about how much homework we were being given when there wasn't...well, anything to support the argument that the other side could give me. The best argument I ever got was a condescending, "You know, there's never been a double-blind test with parachutes." (Note to debaters: being condescending, regardless of respective ages, levels of experience, etc., only makes the speaker look bad.)

What I have finally come to is this: I have reached a level where I am picking many of my classes. This means that I am 1) in the correct level, 2)interested in most of the subjects I am taking, and 3)getting more free reign, since the teachers know you have to have some interest to be in this level in the first place. This results in it looking like the issue is solved, since it has stopped affecting me as much.

Yet, still, I know it's happening. My classmates, my friends in middle school, all of them are being kept up late by homework.

(Note to people who wonder why these people aren't complaining: A)they are and B)they're swamped with homework.)

This thinking has also led to me thinking about what types of homework I dislike. Because, yes, homework can be useful--but nothing about homework makes it intrinsically useful. Some teachers think it is, leading to:

Homework for Homework's Sake
This is exactly what it sounds like. It is when a teacher assigns homework, not because the class needs to memorize something or the teacher needs to make sure that everyone is caught up, but simply because it is homework.
Negative Effect: Association. This solidifies an idea that all homework is useless in a student's mind, because this homework is useless. Should s/he run into any genuinely useful homework, how much of a chance will s/he give the assignment?
Common Justifications: The arms race argument ("Well, they're doing it!"), discipline, study habits

MOTS
The infamous More of the Same. Especially common in so-called 'advanced' classes that just pile on the work, hoping this increased work load will make it look like more is being taught, or that it is being taught more thoroughly.
Negative Effect: It creates a learning environment in which everything becomes boring, because it is drilled incessantly until it becomes so.
Common Justifications: "[What if t/T]hey didn't understand it the first time!", memory, "They won't practice any other way." (If they already understand, they don't need to.)

Punishment Work
This is when a student does something wrong, be it missing problems on a test, answering a question wrong in class, or stumbling over a presentation. It may be given to an individual student who has done something wrong, or the entire class. I would like to take a moment to separate this from test corrections: Test corrections are when one tells the student to look over the test and figure out how to do the problems s/he did wrong. Punishment work is when, for every problem missed, the student must complete ten problems of the same type. Punishment work may also be simpler, such as writing lines. "I will (not) x..."
Negative Effect: Association, but even moreso than HWFHWS. This is not just something the student does not enjoy--indeed, HWFHWS may be fun if the teacher knows how to work the assignment. This is a definitive "You are doing this because you have done something wrong," and gives the idea that homework--and by extension, possibly all academic work outside school--is a punishment. If you are doing everything right, then you don't need to do homework.
Common Justifications: Discipline, study habits, Spare the rod and spoil the child, "They'll know better next time." (which is a kinder way to say "This'll teach 'em," as far as I can tell).

And then we just have homework in general. If there is not a place for less priviledged students to get access to computers, good art supplies, or whatever else one needs to do the homework assigned, then suddenly we have an ever-growing gap--or, almost as bad, we don't, because the homework has no effect. Or a negative one.


Suggested Reading (for those interested):
The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn ( http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/hm.htm for some information/reviews.) [One interesting bit of information I found in this book was a connection to bloodletting. I seem to have misplaced the book, but he talks about a scientist who decided to perform experiments to see if bloodletting worked. It didn't. His conclusion? Bleed earlier, bleed heavier.]

And...I would give links on the other side, but every time I try I find someone who starts out by calling me (or rather, anyone with my position) a liar. About that insultingly. If someone can find a nice one, please share.

EDIT: Scratch the previous paragraph, the second comment on this very post is suggested reading.