September 06, 2008
Interestingly, the word 'recess' in the title could accurately be taken in two different ways for this story. It could mean the far back reaches of my psyche. It could also mean the break from normal work or routine to do something generally considered fun. Of course, if it is the second definition the control function of my brain is a bit sadistic...
This popped into my brain this afternoon, and I could swear I wrote about it before. However, I could not find it when I searched the site. Since I am not opposed to repeating myself, here it goes...
I have written at times about my nightmares, which have thankfully been absent for a while, so I do not know why this rose to the surfaces of my psyche today. To preface the detailing of this recurring nightmare, I have to tell what really happened when I returned from Germany as a foreign exchange student. I had a brief meeting with the guidance counselor at my high school, who informed me that the second school in Germany that I attended had given them evidence of my time there, if not grades. She could work with that, but she needed something from the first school. I told her that there was no way that school was going to provide a single piece of corroborating evidence that I ever set foot in there. They hated me. The feeling was mutual. Up until that year, I had skipped school one year. By the way, I got caught, and was punished with detention... which I never finished.
My German was extremely weak at first, and the teachers were rather intolerant of my poor German. Frankly, I do not blame them for that. I would have been as well. However, it wasn't improving any sitting in class all day with no tools to figure out what they were saying. After a few weeks, I found Olivier; the French foreign exchange student that spoke German fairly well (six years in school), but spoke very poor English. I learned German mostly from him. It was just a matter of taking the time to point to things, say the words, and we started figuring out how to communicate. At the same time, my host mother said she thought it was ridiculous for me to go to school every day. She encouraged me to skip school, walk around town, go into a cafe' with a newspaper, and figure things out on my own. I did. I didn't agree with my first host parents very often, but I think that worked. Getting back to topic, I was absent from school about once each week, but that didn't seem to be the school's biggest concern. They did not find me particularly involved in the classroom, and were disgusted that I never showed for P.E. This has always made me shake my head because I wasn't signed up for P.E. there. That was clear on the first day that I went to the school to sign up for classes. Nevertheless, the sum of all these difficulties resulted in them saying they felt like they had never had a foreign exchange student (I was supposedly their first). I suck... move on.
Back to the Guidance Counselor: at first she said she had to have something. I informed her that that was fine. I had already been accepted to Missouri's premier technology school, I had stellar ACT scores, tons of scholarships, and I was sure that I could ace the GED that day if necessary. Strangely, in the face of my obvious lack of concern, she said it wasn't really a problem. I had had sufficient credits to graduate by the end of my junior year, and she could write something regarding my residency in a school that would be acceptable. I went on to college. I excelled through my undergraduate degree, decided to keep going, and after nine and a half years finished a rather respectable academic career culminating in what I believe was a well-deserved bestowmant of a Ph.D. degree.
Unfortunately, deep in my brain, I must still harbor some concern that none of it mattered if my high school decides to cancel my diploma. It sounds ludicrous, but that is the only basis I can find for this recurring nightmare I have. It comes out once, sometimes twice a year, and seems to linger over a few nights. The dream is slightly different each time, but only in location and requirements, but they always have the same theme. I am back in high school (sometimes junior high). It is bad enough to have to relive that time of my life, but in these nightmares, I am my current age. Sometimes it will be near the end of the year, and I know I am supposed to have attended English or History, but I can not remember attending a single class or taking a single test. The worst ones are when I find myself in a math or science class, and lose my temper. I will (almost) politely inform the teacher that I have had more classes in this subject and know more than the instructor. I further point out that my time in that class is a waste of my time. Being so much older and towering over the other kids made it even more humiliating when I went to my locker between classes.
I wake from these dreams in a horrible sweat, frustrated, angry, and deeply concerned that my degrees have been discounted because of a single meeting back in 1988 that a contemporary decided was unacceptable. After a few moments of waking up, becoming aware of my surroundings, and accepting the absurdity of the situation, I usually chuckle to myself. There were times throughout my education where my self confidence in what I knew resulted in some of these situations actually happening. I always got math and science. I am sure that some people/instructors considered it arrogant, and they may have been right. I disagree. I knew what I knew, and I also knew when we were moving into something I didn't get, and I wanted to absorb it. It didn't take much, but if an instructor was incompetent or not informed enough, I was not afraid to push the boundaries, and at times told him/her that they were wrong. Good teachers (in my opinion that means someone that recognizes that different approaches to relaying information are necessary for different people, and that maybe the students are even more versed than they in some segments of the material) were very accepting, poor teachers would either cower or attempt to ridicule me in order to achieve dominance. Mr. Greer in fifth grade tried to humiliate me like that. I felt bad for about an hour, and then decided he was just an ass. I think I got my A in the class, but he had some comments about my behavior. That was fine. I forced a professor into a corner in college from my seat in the back of the class with my glare and the controlled timbre of my voice. Strangely, I don't think he ever hated me, he just didn't like me in his class. He practically admitted publicly that he didn't like me in his class.
Then there was the coach that was teaching science in junior high. He started talking in class about things that would be best classified as astrophysics. He made a couple of mistakes. I don't remember them both precisely, but I remember one was the classic description of other star/planetary systems as solar systems. I hate that. It is a pet peeve of mine. It happens all the time, and I suspect that it has practically become acceptable, but I refuse to accept it. There is only one Solar System: ours because our sun's name is Sol. The others are called stellar systems. I think the second one had something to do with incorrectly identifying the differences in galaxies and universes.
At any rate, I couldn't stand it. I raised my hand, he called on me, and I explained the whole order and nomenclature of the cosmos. He didn't get mad. He didn't ridicule me. In fact, I think he thanked me. He then went on to ask how I knew all of this. I told him the truth, and frankly did not realize at the time how relevant it was to my growth, development and future. I told him that I read it somewhere, and I just remembered it. He may not have known everything about his subject, but I to this day feel like he was a good instructor.
Yes, I am aware that my daughter is just like me in a lot of these characteristics, and I have already begun steeling myself for the parent-teacher conferences where it will come out. Give me your best shot...
Will sleep well, I am sure...
This popped into my brain this afternoon, and I could swear I wrote about it before. However, I could not find it when I searched the site. Since I am not opposed to repeating myself, here it goes...
I have written at times about my nightmares, which have thankfully been absent for a while, so I do not know why this rose to the surfaces of my psyche today. To preface the detailing of this recurring nightmare, I have to tell what really happened when I returned from Germany as a foreign exchange student. I had a brief meeting with the guidance counselor at my high school, who informed me that the second school in Germany that I attended had given them evidence of my time there, if not grades. She could work with that, but she needed something from the first school. I told her that there was no way that school was going to provide a single piece of corroborating evidence that I ever set foot in there. They hated me. The feeling was mutual. Up until that year, I had skipped school one year. By the way, I got caught, and was punished with detention... which I never finished.
My German was extremely weak at first, and the teachers were rather intolerant of my poor German. Frankly, I do not blame them for that. I would have been as well. However, it wasn't improving any sitting in class all day with no tools to figure out what they were saying. After a few weeks, I found Olivier; the French foreign exchange student that spoke German fairly well (six years in school), but spoke very poor English. I learned German mostly from him. It was just a matter of taking the time to point to things, say the words, and we started figuring out how to communicate. At the same time, my host mother said she thought it was ridiculous for me to go to school every day. She encouraged me to skip school, walk around town, go into a cafe' with a newspaper, and figure things out on my own. I did. I didn't agree with my first host parents very often, but I think that worked. Getting back to topic, I was absent from school about once each week, but that didn't seem to be the school's biggest concern. They did not find me particularly involved in the classroom, and were disgusted that I never showed for P.E. This has always made me shake my head because I wasn't signed up for P.E. there. That was clear on the first day that I went to the school to sign up for classes. Nevertheless, the sum of all these difficulties resulted in them saying they felt like they had never had a foreign exchange student (I was supposedly their first). I suck... move on.
Back to the Guidance Counselor: at first she said she had to have something. I informed her that that was fine. I had already been accepted to Missouri's premier technology school, I had stellar ACT scores, tons of scholarships, and I was sure that I could ace the GED that day if necessary. Strangely, in the face of my obvious lack of concern, she said it wasn't really a problem. I had had sufficient credits to graduate by the end of my junior year, and she could write something regarding my residency in a school that would be acceptable. I went on to college. I excelled through my undergraduate degree, decided to keep going, and after nine and a half years finished a rather respectable academic career culminating in what I believe was a well-deserved bestowmant of a Ph.D. degree.
Unfortunately, deep in my brain, I must still harbor some concern that none of it mattered if my high school decides to cancel my diploma. It sounds ludicrous, but that is the only basis I can find for this recurring nightmare I have. It comes out once, sometimes twice a year, and seems to linger over a few nights. The dream is slightly different each time, but only in location and requirements, but they always have the same theme. I am back in high school (sometimes junior high). It is bad enough to have to relive that time of my life, but in these nightmares, I am my current age. Sometimes it will be near the end of the year, and I know I am supposed to have attended English or History, but I can not remember attending a single class or taking a single test. The worst ones are when I find myself in a math or science class, and lose my temper. I will (almost) politely inform the teacher that I have had more classes in this subject and know more than the instructor. I further point out that my time in that class is a waste of my time. Being so much older and towering over the other kids made it even more humiliating when I went to my locker between classes.
I wake from these dreams in a horrible sweat, frustrated, angry, and deeply concerned that my degrees have been discounted because of a single meeting back in 1988 that a contemporary decided was unacceptable. After a few moments of waking up, becoming aware of my surroundings, and accepting the absurdity of the situation, I usually chuckle to myself. There were times throughout my education where my self confidence in what I knew resulted in some of these situations actually happening. I always got math and science. I am sure that some people/instructors considered it arrogant, and they may have been right. I disagree. I knew what I knew, and I also knew when we were moving into something I didn't get, and I wanted to absorb it. It didn't take much, but if an instructor was incompetent or not informed enough, I was not afraid to push the boundaries, and at times told him/her that they were wrong. Good teachers (in my opinion that means someone that recognizes that different approaches to relaying information are necessary for different people, and that maybe the students are even more versed than they in some segments of the material) were very accepting, poor teachers would either cower or attempt to ridicule me in order to achieve dominance. Mr. Greer in fifth grade tried to humiliate me like that. I felt bad for about an hour, and then decided he was just an ass. I think I got my A in the class, but he had some comments about my behavior. That was fine. I forced a professor into a corner in college from my seat in the back of the class with my glare and the controlled timbre of my voice. Strangely, I don't think he ever hated me, he just didn't like me in his class. He practically admitted publicly that he didn't like me in his class.
Then there was the coach that was teaching science in junior high. He started talking in class about things that would be best classified as astrophysics. He made a couple of mistakes. I don't remember them both precisely, but I remember one was the classic description of other star/planetary systems as solar systems. I hate that. It is a pet peeve of mine. It happens all the time, and I suspect that it has practically become acceptable, but I refuse to accept it. There is only one Solar System: ours because our sun's name is Sol. The others are called stellar systems. I think the second one had something to do with incorrectly identifying the differences in galaxies and universes.
At any rate, I couldn't stand it. I raised my hand, he called on me, and I explained the whole order and nomenclature of the cosmos. He didn't get mad. He didn't ridicule me. In fact, I think he thanked me. He then went on to ask how I knew all of this. I told him the truth, and frankly did not realize at the time how relevant it was to my growth, development and future. I told him that I read it somewhere, and I just remembered it. He may not have known everything about his subject, but I to this day feel like he was a good instructor.
Yes, I am aware that my daughter is just like me in a lot of these characteristics, and I have already begun steeling myself for the parent-teacher conferences where it will come out. Give me your best shot...
Will sleep well, I am sure...