I was watching my tape of "Road Worrier" the other day and hadn't noticed before:
The community that they passed: Trent, "If you lived here, you'd be home now." Daria, "Yeah, and bored out of your mind."
It was named "Pickfair Commons." Of course Pickfair was the house that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks built in Hollywood. I understand it's been torn down now but, anyway, a Hollywood tie-in.
Of course when Daria returns from "peeing in the woods" she remarks, "I'm ready for my abuse now Mr. DeMille." This line is apparently borrowed from the movie "Sunset Blvd" with William Holden and Gloria Swanson. The original line was Gloria Swanson's, "I'm ready for my close-up now Mr. DeMille." Mr. DeMille was, of course, film-maker Cecil B. De Mille. There's no apparent reason for her to use that particular line except that it is from a movie. She must be an old movie buff too.
I wonder what other old movies Daria watches? There seems to be even more to her than classic novels, Russian art films, and "Sick, Sad, World." Well Daria, "Here's looking at you, kiddo."
I happen to be watching that ep off of www.daria.org I noticed
that both Daria and Trent do that "eyebrow thing". We have already
discussed on this NG how they do it during the "I packed in my trunk"
game. When Trent and Jesse launch into the "we've got our eye on the
prize/we're artists" speech Daria is thinking something and emphasizes the
point by still raising her eyebrows while thinking. When she jokes to
herself she even smiles :) Trent is busy saying things like "Who knows
where we'll be in five years?" he raises his eyebrows. Just another
observation.
Leave us not forget Mr. Demartino (my favorite Lawndale
teacher..Ms Defoe is cool though too). He is the MASTER of emphazing
POINTS while in discussion with people.
"The one in the WHITE son." (we even get a rare left eye
movement). I like when he gets a double going...like when attempting to
explain to Ms. Barch why the yearbook format had changed moments before
being beaten. Poor Mr D.
As for the Gupty kids: "I am cool and that is it and everyone else
is full of...full of...full of...full of s***"
I kinda like Mr. DeMartino too. He�s a wound a little too tight, and he�s constantly bitching about his impecunious profession, but he seems like he knows his subject and he�s a fairly intelligent, well-educated man, which makes him unusual in the teaching profession. Indeed, some of the dumbest people I�ve ever met were teachers. I�d say that, as a group, they�re not worth killing. Well, some of them ARE worth killing. In fact there are a few I remember from my educational experience whom I sometimes fantasize about showing up with a huge club and fustigating (the word of the day). Hell, bash away �til there�s nothing left but a pile of bloody meat. (�Easy now...focus.") Other people I�ve heard from on this subject fantasize about using an Uzi, but I say use the club--messy, but more cathartic. What an idyllic high school Lawndale must be to have even one teacher of the caliber of DeMartino. As you can imagine, I�m not going to be going to ANY high school reunions. I don't want to even get started on what some of my fellow students did to me. As if the worst thing anyone could worry about was a quarterback telling the whole school you shower in a towel. Crybaby!
And some people say these are the best years of your life. What kind of idiot thinks that? Where�s that club....
I remember, not well enough apparently, a column in the Washington Post by one of the Watergate reporters, I think it was Bob Woodward but I don�t remember for certain. I should have made a note--I should have clipped the article. (If someone remembers better, please advise.) He tells about how he was asked to give a commencement address at his old high school. He he notes that one of his teachers, I think it was his English teacher, came up to him and told him that if she�d looked at his transcript before they�d invited him they wouldn�t have invited him at all. Then, at the commencement address he delivers what I think must be the deepest, most significant statements ever made at any commencement anywhere:
�Relax, life isn�t like high school.�
(I hope I got the quote more or less right.) Yeah! That�s it! Make up a banner. What an affirmative, positive message to give to high school students!
So don�t worry kids, if you can survive high school then you can probably survive anything else that life throws at you. All you have to do then is deal with the pent-up anger. I�m working on it as best I can. Maybe in 20 or 30 years I'll get it. One consolation is that for what I had happen, others have gotten worse--come to think of it that isn't much consolation at all. Now I see my Niece and Nephews starting to go through the same kind of crap. Will it never end?
Y�know, this theme is probably one of the most significant that the TV show Daria presents. A subject for all time. A classic. You know what�ll probably happen? In the future they�ll probably study the TV show �Daria� in high school English classes...�Oh God!�
99% of teachers are mad. Some of them use their madness to deliberately amuse the class (my Physics teacher is hilarious) but most of them are just insane.
At our school, we've got a real Ms Barch. She's called Ms Cope, she's been through a divorce which she doesn't talk about, but she has changed noticeably in her attitude towards the guys in the class since the day she announced to us that we were no longer to call her Mrs Donelly. She is so mean to the guys, even the ones that are perfectly OK. I have yet to work out why she hates me. She says I'm a bad influence on all the hard-working students.
Hehehe. I always dreamt about the Uzi - but you're right - the club sounds a lot more fun. Or that thing with the razor wire with an electric current running through it. That would be even better!
Who cares if you shower in a towel? I can't understand who would even bother telling people something like that. But then again, I can't understand most people I know.
I just starve myself for a few days. That usually works.
On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 22:33:08 +0000, "endless, nameless" wrote:
This is very true. my 4th grade teacher was in the Korean war and had flashbacks in class all the time. another teacher spent a great deal of time teaching us about serial killers instead of english. my 8th grade social studies teacher constantly picked her nose.
LOL, that is never a good sign. The serial killer teacher once announced to the class that he was getting married that weekend. After that he didn't talk about serial killers so much. It seems getting married has the opposite effect on them.
Good work, the chaos you cause among your classmates can help push the final 1% of sane teachers over the edge
I'd have to go with the club on this, razor wire makes a better trap than it does a weapon.
If you really want to give your classmates a weapon against you, shower in scuba gear. just dont forget the flippers. If you really want to take it over the top put an innertube around your waist and take a rubber duck in with you.
- How come those pit bulls are eating your driver but they're not touching that pizza? What do they know that we don't know. -Bill Hicks
My dad sometimes tells us about his weirdy teachers. He was at school in Greece while the world was still recovering from WW2, so they'd employ almost anyone to teach. Apparently, there was one schitzophrenic who would get paranoid that students were trying to drug her and would have hallucinations of them trying to jump out of the windows. There was some guy who would send boys off to get their hair cut if it wasn't short enough, and in History class, the students would bring in local gypsies to dance on the tables to piss the teacher off.
Strange, that. Some teachers you would expect to never marry because they're soo weird, but you'd be surprised.
But the thing is, I *don't* cause chaos in that class! I just sit there half-asleep! Actually, there is sort of a reason why she thinks I'm a bad influence....<cue long, rambling explanation> I start off every year sitting next to my rather studious friend Carla. We do a lot of pairwork in that class, so I work with her in most lessons. Now, once a year, we have these things where everyone's parents come in to school and discuss with the teachers their son/daughter's academic performance, and we all have to go with them. When, for the third time, I was moved to a different place shortly after Parents' Evening, I began to get suspicious. Turns out that every year, the teacher has asked Carla whether she gets a lot done when we work in a pair, and she says, "Oh, I work, she just sits there and does nothing." Huh!
Especially if it has an electric current running through it!
We're allowed to shower with towels anyway. The boys aren't, but we are. Hehe.
I forgot about this in my other reply: my Electronics teacher taught us nothing about Electronics, but he did teach us the following: 1. How to turn the science lab ceiling pink by using faulty equipment when carrying out experiments, 2. How the plumbing in a toilet works, and 3. How to disable burgler alarms so you can break into houses 'safely'. Then that guy got cancer, and the substitue we have is worse. He's a graphic designer and knows nothing about electronics, he makes snare drums in his spare time, and he tells us about it.
Ooh yeah, some intellectual giants in the teaching proffession... like Barb's teacher who said that she thought Ben Franklin was our greatest president, or mine that said that Cleopatra was an "African American"
I feel like that sometimes.... especially with those I personify as "the devil", the current one being the Science Olympiad teacher (not even teacher, long term sub for one semester this year...) who does NOT understand our team and tries to take it over and hates Connie and tells her parents things like "She just eats behind my back" whcih we haven't figured out the point of since we're allowed to eat in class... and wants to kick Connie out of class ("I thought you were just a sub" "But I am IN CHARGE while I'm here"), who caused me and Brian to call each other Brutus and Cassius. But I shouldn't say anything about killing people because I know I'll get in trouble with Mr Morris (principal) who's just dying to discover someone making murder threats.... he probably has spies... Big Brother is watching...
No, it's, like, one of those vicious thingies....
That's scary.
Dagny
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers and More!
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
One teacher who I wouldn't bother wasting any bile on was a senior year English teacher. This teacher spent the year boring the hell out us with slides of her trip to England. I'm not sure just what it was she expected out of me, I never did figure that out, but I got 3 or 4 "F"s that year. Oh well, there goes the four-point-oh. As if I HAD a four-point-oh to begin with. At this point I was seriously wondering if I would be pulled out of line at graduation with a, "Not so fast there!" Consequently I pretty much just went through the motions. When we were supposed to take a paper around to all our teachers, recommendations for college or something, for their signature, she initially balked at signing it. She finally relented and signed, remarking, "You're not college material."
Then one day I got one last chance to get in my shot. During finals we were all standing outside the examination room waiting to be allowed in. She was standing nearby, there to proctor the exam. I stood by and said nothing. Someone asked this teacher something about who she was and then asked, "What do you teach?" I had my moment and I took it, "Ha! She doesn't TEACH anything!" I blurted out. I felt smugly triumphant somehow. She responded with something about how I'd never get into college. Didn't matter, I'd gotten my revenge. What more could she do to me? In retrospect I kind of like to think that if Daria had been standing nearby, listening, she'd have given one of her faint smiles.
I pulled another "F" in English that grading period but I did graduate with my class. Still managed a three-point-something overall as I recall.
In the mail I got an acceptance for college. At least SOMEONE thought I was college material. Based on my English score on the ACT test they offered me AP English. I could skip most of the year of English and take a special AP course in the Spring. Good deal! It was the most productive English course I'd ever taken and I somehow managed to get straight "A"s in it as well. Is life weird or what? So that's what an "A" looks like! In particular I remember enjoying the creative writing class. I've never bothered with creative writing since, but it was interesting. They also offered AP Biology but because it involved extra lab time and with other classes and a job there just weren't enough hours in the day. I had to turn it down. Too bad. It coulda been cool.
Anyway, I pull almost straight "F"s in high school English and get offered AP English in college. It's like---what's that word--when something comes out funny? Moronic!
LOL! I have a similar story. In year 9, I had this teacher who I *hated*. I'd never do any work in his class, I'd just sit there and glare. So, anyway, he contacted my parents and told them how lazy I was, and I got in a whole lot of trouble for never doing any work, being lazy, etc. And then we got the SAT results. I had a level 8, which is the highest you can get on that paper, and that puts me in the top 2% of the UK population for mathmatic ability. Hah!
On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:14:54 +0000, "endless, nameless" wrote:
You can be in the 98th (or even 99th percentile) and still be incredibly, incredibly lazy. I've had more than a few clashes with my teachers over "work ethic" and "unbelievable potential".
Uh-oh, someone just put me in a position of responsibility! The day has suddenly turned sinister...
Absolutely. I get told off for laziness, like, every day, and every time I get told things like "You could get 10 straight A*s in your GCSE's if you weren't so infuriatingly lazy!"
Because I don't do anything in class, I tend get written off as "the stupid one" by any new teachers I get, which means that when they see the test results and I get, like, highest in the class, they accuse me of copying, which is something I have really no need of doing, even if I'm totally unprepared for the test.
On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:28:45 +0000, "endless, nameless" wrote:
Been there, done that.
I establish my intellectual superiority in the first week or so. Then I calmly read a book in the back of the clash and hope noone notices me.
~*~*~Kyle~*~*~ "Am I touched in the head, or just sick!?!?!?!" Uh-oh, someone just put me in a position of responsibility! The day has suddenly turned sinister...
I like to correct the teacher whenever he/she makes a mistake. They get annoyed after about the third or fourth time. It is kinda worrying, though, when your teacher gives the class incorrect information in revision lessons just before the exams.
Yeah, I've heard that stuff before: "Brilliant...," or, " ...that brilliant mind or yours...," or, "You're wasting that magnificent mind of yours."--I just dismissed it all. I figured it was all some sort of scheme to get some work out of me. It only stiffened my resolve to not do whatever it was they wanted me to do, whatever that was I couldn't tell. If they'd just told me what was expected, they might have gotten better results. I just never considered the possibility that there was any difference between me and anyone else. Whatever differences might surface I tried to plaster over, just to fit in--a hopeless cause. I'm not sure it was that or something else but I was never going to fit in, no matter what, so I finally just gave up trying. In fact, I essentially just gave up. To hell with everything.
Then there were the other kids, "Hey don't mess with him, he's a brain!" I identify with Daria on so many levels. I just love this show. Of course Daria is lucky. She's only rejected. Out in the real world kids express themselves physically. Of course nowadays, years out of school and after hours of working out, I've gotten so much bigger that I could easily end these "discussions" before they start. A sound mind in a sound body. It pays to be intimidating.
endless, nameless wrote in message ...
I never did too well in math, I've never really known why. Out in the real world I can do well enough, but in class I just can't jump through the hoops. One correlation: all the math classes have been taught by women. The only class I did well in was Plane Geometry and it was taught by a man. It was easy. All I had to do was prove line a-b is equal to c-d or whatever. No crap, just logic. If it was any easier it would be illegal. Or maybe Plane Geometry is just a crip course and everyone finds it easy. Anyway because of my other math problems I was advised not to bother with Calculus and I foolishly followed that advice. I've always lamented that decision. I've always felt like something was missing. In College I was told by a math instructor I ought to take Calculus. He said it was the easiest course in the department and that my problem was, "You're so damn smart that everything is easy so it makes you lazy." I might have dismissed that advice too except this guy was pretty smart himself, I can usually tell about these things. I could respect him. I've noticed there are more such respectable teachers in College than in high school. (Well Duh!) Maybe I should have taken Calculus, but if it's so damn easy why do 50% of the Calculus students bust out? Actually I have studied a little Calculus, on an as-needed basis. I don't really see the problem, it really does seem fairly easy. A little time-consuming, but easy enough to understand if it isn't muddied by ham-fisted teaching. Someday I'm going to study it, on my own if I have to, not because I have to but because I want to. Just to know.
I usually get "Hey, what did you get for question 3?" I've never been beaten up for being smart, probably because I'm a girl, or maybe because last time somebody hit me I went beserk and my attacker recieved, among other injuries, a nasty scar above her lip despite the fact the girl in question was considerably taller than me and at least twice my weight. I think msot people who know me know that I'm quite violent for someone so quiet.
Sexist! :)
I have heard that soooo many times from my teachers, and it gets more annoying every time.
You know, I hear that a lot too... only I think its true in some ways, I am a lazy bum... but then it'd be followed by "stop being lazy" which is about as easy as telling a non intelligent person "stop being stupid"
Dagny
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697 Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Marx Brothers and More!
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Is it laziness? Or is it that the complete absence of challenge is utterly demotivating? (If I can do this coursework with one cerebral hemisphere tied behind my back, while whistling Stairway to Heaven and juggling three live crocodiles, I'm not going to get *enthusiastic* about it for anyone).
R. K. Henry wrote in message ...
Oh, how the years fall away! It was obvious to the staff that I was going to stay on in sixth form, obvious I was going on to one of the Big Two (pity I'd refused to take an interest in rowing - we always like to see a Blue from alma mater); but would it be to read Classics or Physics? The Head's reaction was indescribable when I announced I'd been offered a place on a Theatre Arts course, I'd be taking up the place at sixteen, and doing A levels part-time alongside the college course, and would he mind filling in this reference for me and posting it on in the envelope provided? Thank you, Sir.
And then, when I announced to my employer that I was giving notice because I was entering the seminary...
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to spend your life doing it! (OK, Alli, this *may* be careers advice! <g>)
Hehehe. That's probably it. I can't work because the work we get given is so boring to me, most of it we've already done before. Like, in French, we learnt those 13 verbs that go with �tre in the past tense or whatever it is, and then, a year later, we did them again and I could remember 11 out of the 13 of them.
Oh good. But my main problem is that I'm good at everything at school (except, like, doing any work) so I have over 10 subjects I can choose to take A levels in. I'm thinking of doing an International Baccaloreate or whatever it's called 'cos then I do 6 subjects, and I don't have to make as many decisions....or something...
Mmm, worth considering; or do five A levels and graded performing exams in music; or try for an early entry to a degree course.
I guess the philosophical part of an IB might appeal: they do a bit of epistemology (calling it the Theory of Knowledge).
Of course IBO (http://www.ibo.org/) do describe the International Baccalaureate as being for "highly motivated" students: be ready to demonstrate your motivation if you apply (I don't know why, but I get the idea, just things you've said, that "Alli is a hard-working and highly motivated student" might not be be the first words to leap onto the paper when your present teachers compose a reference for you ;-) ).
None of this is advice or recommendation! Just reflections and options.
If this is boring other people on the ng, sorry: just send a followup with "take this to email, please" if it's irritating you.
The Daria connection? Hmmm. Post-school choices for people like Daria? (I know, dragons like Daria too - acknowledgments to Spike Milligan).
Not at all ! As a french guy, I'm happy to find someone who writes what I wanted to do... Imagine just having to type your posts in french... Maybe easy, how boring ? The difference between me and you is that I recently made a 'come-out', I mean, I consider myself as someone different. It is not self-eulogistism, but it avoids you getting tempted to enter the mould (you know why I don't post often in english, now ?)... Actually, I think sincerity is the key.
Yes ! Oops, I mean no !!! Difference leads to wealth. Just plan to work in a creative branch, eg Advertising (I know it's stealing money from credulous people, but... it gives you a Poet with a Gun role, got it ?)
Yeah! Fun! You ever have those dreams where you've got an Uzi or something, and everyone you know is lined up against a wall? No? So it's just me, then. OK....
Yeah, I went to a college open day and they explained that, it's sounds interesting.
LOL! That's a good point, you have to do all these extra-curricular things. I guess I could use the fact that I did a lot of Drama in year 7, I was in several voluntary plays and stuff.
Poor Mr. D. He's intelligent, and wants to teach, but he's faced with students who refuse to learn. You'd have a twitch, too. (I'm not too keen on history myself, really. But then I got a bad start...every year in elementary school we started with the Revolutionary War and ran out of time right around the Civil War. And I've never been good with memorization, which is what history tests are all about.)
There are three approaches to this school of thought:
1. Optimistic: They're probably right! 2.Semi-Optimistic: They're wrong...these can't POSSIBLY be the best years of our life. 3. Pessimistic: They're probably right.
Now this got me thinking. A few weeks ago I realized that I really wasn't achieving anything at all in the remedial environment that is the British high school. So I dropped out and started studying from home. My usual depression is already starting to fade. But does this mean that I'm taking the easy road out, and the rest of life is going to seem harder as a result?
Now that's uplifting. I wonder how many times they'll have to explain it, slowly and carefully, to most of the class?
They scarcely need clubbing. If their lives now are such that their school days really were the best years of their lives. Of course, it could be selective amnesia: the sort that makes some adults regard any problem suffered by anyone younger than them as automatically trivial. "What problems can a teenager possibly have?"
One of my constant themes as a part-time school chaplain (I had parish, hospital, Diocesan and National work as well) was to let students in on the secret that the "best years of your life" stuff is a lie.
But I was a fairly unconventional school chaplain. When I introduced myself at a whole school assembly I explained that I wasn't one of those chaplains who wants to be your friend: I said that I thought that, "People of your age [11 to 16] should regard with deep suspicion anyone of my age who says they want to be your friend." I didn't tour the playground trying to join in conversations; I said where I'd be, and when, for anyone who wanted to see me (I took a book to read, expecting to have time to read it, but I didn't: in the end one of the middle school students took on the role of appointments secretary for me, with people seeing her at break time to book an appointment). I declined to take any teaching role; I queued up with the students for lunch instead of going straight to the front of the queue as teachers and visitors were allowed (supposed?) to. I didn't sit at the teachers' table, and I didn't take my tray and, uninvited, join students at a table: I sat at an empty one (curiously, students would then join me).
That was a long digression to explain what I meant by "unconventional"! I don't mean to imply that I got it right, or that chaplains who do it differently are getting it wrong. I don't think I was a "successful" chaplain, whatever that might mean. But some people said I'd helped them, and that's enough.
Back to the point <g>: there was recently a piece in the newspaper (or was it Newsweek?) about some just-published research: every psychological metric available shows people get happier and more contented as they get older. (Higher proportion of happy people, and higher scores for contentment for individuals as they age)(No reference, sorry - didn't take notes 8-( )
Hang in there!
probably
Mmmm, now, how can I get time off and funding for a sabbatical studying "Daria" for my doctorate?
crap.
It will end, and people can do something about it. People who are old enough, and who care about young people's experience of school life, might consider offering to join the governing board of a school or college. (I'm a school governor who's positively looking forward to the day our OFSTED report is published). It ends each year, for each group of leaving students. I wouldn't be fifteen again for all the tea in China! But to answer the philosophical question, I guess it won't end entirely until the Parousia. But I beleieve in that!
LOL! Roll up and see the Amazing Hormone Girl! <g>
You didn't used to be an East German athlete, by any chance?
I only know two endocrinologists' jokes.
(i) What's the difference between a chromosome and a hormone? You can't hear a chromosome.
(ii) How do you tell the sex of a chromosome? Take its genes off.
LOL again! Or *you* could play the hormone card, and make sympathetic daughterly comments about her Time of Life, and how women often mellow when The Change strikes!