Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina  The cereal box story was actually true. I was the top math student in my high school class, but I'd get bored because the assignments weren't challenging me.... |
Fabulous. In high school, my writing skills were just accepted by teachers. After I'd done the first 2 or 3 papers in each English (or Lit, or whatever) class according to specifications, I'd spend the rest of the semester turning in "creative interpretations" of the assignments.
Examples include:
*after reading
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, our assignment was to write a 5 pg "one day in the life of (self)." The paper I turned in was a 15pg short story, with an antagonist (in my head) named "Bad Day." Teacher apparently kept the paper and handed it out to her class for several years, as my little brother ran into it when he took the class 5 years later.
*I once turned in a 3-pg essay that was exactly 1 sentence long, entitled "
Mrs. (teacher) visits the rainforest and finds nothing nearly as annoying as a run-on sentence" (It was a critial review of another teacher's presentation on her trip to the Amazon basin.)
*My re-application to the yearbook committee prompted the principal (who didn't see most of my creative work) to call a meeting for the English department -- "
what are you teaching these kids?" Rather than writing "I was in yearbook last year," as we were instructed to write, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek "Top 10 Reasons (the teacher) is Awesome" list. Pure suck up, very funny; the teacher got it when she saw it, as it included gratuitous use of the word "superfluous," which we yearbook kids maintained as a running joke.
*My Latin "curses" assignment is
still up in Magistra's classroom. Framed. I cursed the teacher, the class, and Latin in general. Excessively, then I burned the edges of the parchment I wrote it on for emphasis. (I was also responsible for orchestrating the group "murder" of Magistra on the Ides of March... in the cafeteria... with ketchup.)
*At Latin state competition, I was lauded for being the only perfomance contestant to use any props... mostly because of the glitter, although "masks" was the theme I was pushing for... with 4 different masks to "become" the characters in the story. (The competition is to write a myth, then tell it in front of judges.)
*When my gifted class published a book, they forced me to be the editor, because they claimed that no else would put as much "flair" into it as me. Fine, bastards, sweet-talk me into taking the monkey work.
I made over 100% in every Eng, lit, and comp class I ever took. I also had a 36 on the verbal section of the ACT. Not to be smug or anything; I just love written expression. Kinda makes me wonder why I didn't try to major in Eng or Lit in college...