2 posts tagged “school”
What set you apart from the rest of the kids at school?
Submitted by jks.
I was the only kid to get in trouble for reading in reading class. I read constantly, and it was always upsetting my teachers... I'd read ahead, I'd finish the book and go read something else... it varied, but my reading got me in trouble.
I also had a large vocabulary that I didn't have the sense to use wisely. I had a teacher mock me in front of a class for using the word "prosaic" to describe her class. I guess a smart-ass kid saying her class was unimaginative and dull was a bit more than she was willing to take.
What is the most interesting class you have ever taken?
Submitted by Melissa.
The Michigan History class I took several years ago takes the cake. The professor taught Michigan history for over 30 years. He'd lived it and breathed it so much that he made it come alive. He was funny and engaging and just amazing.
Funny thing: he never, ever took his suit jacket off - even one day when something was broken and it was probably over 80 degrees in the room... still, he wore his jacket.
The first day of class, he told us to write it all down - it would be on the test. All of the tests were essay. It could have been brutal... but he had a loophole. If you answered the question by talking about the "American general this" and the "British general that," he couldn't prove you didn't know their names. If you called them by the wrong names, you'd get dinged. If you got the chronology out of order, you'd get dinged. But you didn't have to remember anyone's names. You didn't have to know if something happened in March or April and in what year. You had to know what happened, and why, and be able to explain it and make sense of it.
That was the first history class I'd ever taken that was both that exacting and that understanding.
I took a lot of really interesting classes, actually. It's probably the biggest reason I don't have a degree right now - I took classes that interested me, not classes that met requirements for a particular course. The Irish drama class, the "film as literature" class, the 15 weeks I spent reading mystery novels for credit... great stuff. Good memories, unbeatable knowledge. I really, really wish I could afford to go back... not just to get the degree I'm not too far away from, but to take more interesting courses from amazing instructors.
