Cool Cherry Cream

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

It's about time I write about my life, because those are always the most exciting posts, non?

Sunday was a fun day. For some reason, I volunteered last Thursday to put together the Powerpoint slideshow for my group's project on existentialism in Creative Writing. I think I can now confirm it that everyone does indeed do projects on Sunday night. Teachers should just stop giving assignments on any day but Friday and have it due the next Monday. There's no reason to give more time for anything. I feel that having five separate people send me their things on Sunday is enough to confirm this fact. Of course, this was my hypothesis all along, so I accounted for the fact that Sunday was going to be a work day, and thus, it all worked out, and all was completed at 7:30 Monday morning.

We need a little back story here before we actually get to the presentation on Monday. Thursday, which was our last day in class, due to some random but awesome P.A. day on Friday, is a day of the week, in order to prevent a sentence fragment. One of the kids in my group had approached the teacher on Thursday to ask about his mark, because apparently his friend is doing much better than him but also doing less work. Obviously, this doesn't make sense. The teacher seemed to be yelling at him about it, and then she called up his friend and some other kids in the class to talk to them. She yelled a bit at them too and told them not to tell people their marks anymore. She then proceeded to interrupt class and tell everyone not to pull that kind of crap and not to reveal evidence marks to other people in the class.

And now, back to the present. Well, past. But what you call the future is actually the present so you guys are way behind.

We do the project. All goes well, except for the mandatory projector and television malfunctioning, thus delaying us a good ten minutes or so. And then the teacher asks us to go back up to the front of the class. She proceeds to ask us, in front of the class, whether any of us have done this topic before. You see, she gave us a list of literary genres to study, and existentialism was not on the list, but she had mentioned it before, and we thought it sounded interesting, and thus chose to do that topic. Naturally, students not conforming to the natural way of things must be some form of cheating, so she automatically assumed we've studied existentialism in another class and are going to use our notes from that to do her project.

This is a problem for several reasons. Firstly, she had no reason to ask us in front of the class, to take up class time with an issue between us and her. And secondly, she has already asked us this — repeatedly!

We reiterate, that no, none of us have done this topic before, and she then asks us questions about existentialism, which she later claimed was to make sure that we really knew what we were talking about. And, no surprise to us, but probably to her — we did. She wanted us to do badly, to stumble and stutter and not have any idea what she was asking, but we knew our material. What a great quality in a teacher, eh? (Excuse me, my Canadian is showing.)

And we must of course explain the highlight of this debate, when Jenny wonderfully saves the day. The student teacher (who is hopefully marking our presentations and has hopefully knows how to think for himself and not be corrupted by corrupt teachers) asked us something about the theme of an existentialist story, and I think everyone immediately thought "…theme? WTF is that!?". I don't remember what I said, but it was hardly an answer to his question, but it sounded good and so we moved on to something else. Beautiful.

Despite our teacher's best efforts to fail us, I think we did rather well.

Today she tried to implicate us in a crime by asking us about a TV that we apparently took from another teacher's room while a substitute was there and then didn't return. It turns out it actually was a girl not in our group who got the TV and said that the teacher had told her to go get it from that teacher. And our teacher of course denies having anything to do with it. But hmm, what student in the class would think to go to that particular teacher for a TV? And the student teacher doesn't even know that teacher, so why would he suggest going there? Who does that leave, I wonder…? And then there's the fact that the TV eventually did turn up… locked in the English office. And who has the key to the English office? It couldn't possibly be the department head, could it?!

Anyway, Monday was nice, once that was over and done with. All I had to worry about was my peer tutoring lesson the next day, aka today.

So, fifteen minutes or so into class and my peer tutoring teacher hasn't shown up yet. I was afraid this had to do with the fact that I didn't physically hand her the lesson plan, which was to be handed in a day before you did your presentation. I instead left it in her mailbox, figuring she would get it by the end of the day. Long story short, went to look for her, found her, asked her if she had my lesson plan and said she was just going to check her mailbox now. "The lesson is tomorrow, right?" Umm, no, it's umm, today. Umm, yeah, this period. But no big deal, honestly, because all is solved now. I'm kind of through with worrying about things and getting mad at people, because what's done, newsflash!, is done.

So I did my lesson, which I was really worried was going to take five minutes rather than fifteen after I finished reading through the worksheet in two minutes. When I was done, I went to the teacher and she said it was good, and I said I thought I was way under in the time department, but she said it was fine. I wasn't sure if I started at 9:06 or 9:16, and I finished at 9:21, so I'm hoping the former. Either way, she told me I had gotten 90%. I lost marks because I, shocker, went too fast, as I always do. She said I was like the Energizer bunny, which I have a feeling a teacher has said about me before. She also said she really liked that I put the pronunciations of the verbs (in French) on the sheet, which I commented on during my presentation because I noticed that a lot of students were really nervous about reading out loud in French. The teacher I'm peer tutoring for commented on it as well, saying it was a really good idea. I mean, I know I'm a genius, but it's nice to hear people say it every once in awhile as well. Especially when it's something that you feel is particularly genius, you know?

And so all is well in Jenny land. My two presentations are over and now I can relax… ah! And next week, I just have a feeling, I might have an adventure… an INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURE! MWHAHAHA!

And although I absolutely love that as a cryptic ending to this post, I have still more to talk about. Yesterday, I happened to be watching TV rather than working on my peer tutoring presentation, which is hindsight worked out okay, and I just so happened to catch the beginning of this TV show called "Paradise Falls". I was planning on changing the channel, but then something caught my eye. One character had found out that another character (his grandson, as I later learned) was gay and so he got angry and yelled at him and punched him. There was nothing particularly important about what I just told you, but I did anyway. The important part was this guy punched this other guy and it was absolutely hilarious! Now, as I'm retelling this hate crime, it really doesn't sound all that funny, but trust me, it was. It was one of those obviously fake punches with a reaction from an obviously terrible actor. It was at that moment that I knew I needed to watch this show. I was not disappointed. Terrible, terrible acting! Just when I thought all the bad actors were just boring actors, I found some that were actually entertaining in their bad acting!

Soon afterward, I discovered the reason for this acting. You know those establishing shots they show you, when a scene changes, so that you know where the next scene is taking place? There was this nice shot of a lake and trees and… a rather prominent Canadian flag. The few episodes I've seen since have also had more of these glaring Canadian-isms. Multiple Canadian flags, a Canada pennant on the wall, references to the loon… but best of all, this old woman found a grave vandalized and was convinced it was "those Americans!" that did it.

Needless to say, I don't think Canadian shows are up to the same standards as American ones. But then, further research made me realize it wasn't just some old show… it was a soap opera. A soap opera! So I guess I can excuse their Canadian-ness, since I think this behaviour is rather typical of soap operas.

My only complaint? The show is just too darn short! I'm not used to half an hour shows anymore…