One of my favorite teachers of all time had it right - he told it to us the first day of school:
"I want you guys to pay attention to me in class. All of this stuff on the screen is available as a powerpoint on my website, so you need not write it down".
God, if only all teachers were as wise as this one man. Alas, I thought I had seen the last of teachers forcing/urging me to take notes in middle school, but I guess I'm still considered immature as a senior. I have two teachers this very year who get right in my face and say "Make sure you guys are writing this down". Although they dont refer directly to me, they look right into my eyes as they say it, because I happen to like paying attention in class rather than taking notes. Of course, I really have no choice but to comply, because both of these teachers enforce the "participation point" system and are therefore enabled to reduce my grade if they dont feel like liking me.

Then there's this other teacher of mine that makes notes part of the homework. God, I feel like I'm in kindergarten, with my fat teacher saying "OK kids, lets make sure you are good and organized and take notes on George Washington so you can turn them in next week". Under no circumstances should copying something off of a board be considered a gradeable activity. Period. I understand some people need to take notes because they study, that's fine. I'm not like that, I pay my teachers (at least the ones that are willing) avid attention and I let them *surprise* teach me. And when test day comes, all I have to do is look over a couple of minute details in the textbook and I'm ready.

Speaking of tests, I just dont understand how I can get a better grade on a Government test that I knew nothing (I'm not even joking) about and expected at most a 'C' than I get on a simple math test covering topics that I knew last year. I think my math teacher can argue all he wants about how he "taught us all this" and how we had specific examples in class that are exact replicas of those on the test, but in the end when the scores in a troy class reflect a bell curve, something is seriously wrong. I dont think teachers should get away with being excessively stringent in their grading. It's really not fair. What happened to fairness?


If I could do anything in the world, you know what I would want to do? I would want to know what people are thinking after just staring at them for 10 minutes, give or take a few. (Without their knowledge, of course) I want to know what people are feeling without having to ask them, because they always always always lie. Besides, I think there is something deeper and more revealing about the more subtle things we do that actually tells what we are feeling like. For example if I'm covering up sadness with a smile, I might drag my feet without my conscious knowledge. If I could notice all the small details like that and analyze emotions spontaneously (and accurately), that would be truly awesome. Although I can make educated guesses about people right now, they are sometimes wrong, so I am therefore never entirely certain about what I think about other people.

This may be stretching it, but the place I primarily see this passive insight that is most similar to my own right now is in the survey like the one I did yesterday that has gone through 3 of my friends journals. I'm almost certain that some of the people who read this know exactly who they are on my list of friends (btw, I felt really stupid writing without names. I almost feel like telling them), but they are not sure enough of themselves to say it. It can apply to me to, I'm pretty damn sure where I fall on some of my friends' lists, (by looking at myself through their eyes) but I'm sure not going to say where I think that is, because I might ...might...might be wrong, with an emphasis on the slightness of that "might". I want to know for sure.

for sure.
.eljay