Ah, the joys of homework. The tears shed, the blood spilled. The screams of frustration when you see a worksheet, the mind-numbing boredom when you have four zillion math problems to do, the confusion when nothing makes sense.
Then we go back to school, crawl in gasping and panting, our clothes torn, our bones broken, our bodies bruised, having barely survived the epic battle with the deadly homework monster. Our teacher looks at us, at the tortured souls before them, then announces, "So tonight's homework will be..." And the cycle begins anew.
Yes, homework can be a nightmare sometimes. Especially when they want you to do math. Or history. Or basically anything that doesn't involve petting kittens and puppies, or drawing wolves while your teacher drones on about a subject, World War II or something. Who knows, you stopped listening after "bla bla bla". (Hmm, maybe that's why you got a C on your last test.)
Algebra
Slope, three-variable equations, thingamabobs, whatchamacallits, and quadratic misery. Just a few things one has to learn in the boring and sometimes frustrating realm of Mordor, I mean, algebra. During junior high, it was the bane of my existence. I seemed to have a pattern with it: I'd get 100% on homework turn-in, bomb most of the quizzes, then do so-so on the tests. Which added up to a mediocre grade overall in the subject.
Man, there were so many things about algebra that I didn't enjoy. The three-variable equations stand out in my head because they took so stinkin' long to do. And the more steps a problem has, the more opportunities you have to forget something or make an error, which throws everything off so you get it wrong and have to start over. There were formulas to memorize, graphs to plot, convoluted nonsense to moan and groan over...
My parents didn't understand algebra, so I usually wound up asking my brother for help when I was struggling to figure things out. Or when he wasn't available, I would sometimes call a family friend who was also a teacher, and good at algebra.
After the initial struggle, algebra became easier in high school. I did algebra 1 and algebra 2, along with geometry, without too much struggle. With three math courses under my belt, I was done, and didn't take any math my final year of high school. It was great. No math that year, no horrid equations...
Charcoal Pencils
In one art class I had, there were assignments to work with different mediums, one of which was a charcoal pencil. Another student at my school had taken the class before and offered to give me one of her pencils.
Now, the pencil gave me was wisely put into a Ziploc bag, because it was no more than a stick of infinite messiness. If I recall, I kept the pencil partially in the bag and held the plastic rather than the pencil itself, because it didn't even have a wrapper. It was virtually impossible to make a light mark, because it came off on the paper so easily. I'd try to make a light stroke and end up with a dark line. I hated that assignment and I hated that medium. And did I mention how messy it was?
Box Knots
In another art class, we were told to make keychains. We had sort of a plastic material in various colors, which we had to weave together in an evil design called a box knot.
Why is it evil, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. The assignment was not compatible with my brain's operating system. It refused to run the program, and displayed many error messages. It did, however, cause another application called Frustration.exe to start running.
Okay, ridiculous PC references aside, I couldn't for the life of me get anywhere with the assignment. I tried to follow the instructions, but wasn't having any luck. I asked one of the other students for help in figuring it out. When they were showing me, it seemed simple enough. Then when I tried to mimic what they had demonstrated... I still made no progress.
I must have asked someone to show me two or three times, and was starting to feel stupid and incompetent. After trying and trying without success, and getting so annoyed I wanted to cry, I finally gave up and decided I just wasn't going to do it. If I got an F on the assignment, so be it. I no longer cared, and was ready to say 'good riddance' to the thorn in my side.
History and Geography
Let's see, where's Hawaii again? I think it's off the west coast. Or is it the east? No, wait, I think that Haiti, and maybe some other islands. And let's see, finding Portugal on the map... it's somewhere in Europe, I know that much. Uhhhhhhhhhhh... (stares blankly at map for forty years)
Then there's history. I remember in elementary school, there was this one ruler we learned about named Hammurabi, who made about a billion laws, and he seemed to like punishments that involved cutting off body parts. And we must have studied Egypt in elementary school, because I remember my friend coming over and us making a model of the Sphinx out of clay and painting it. I also remember accidentally knocking the head off and having to reattach it, because we left it in the middle of the room to dry, and were horsing around.
At one point in junior high, we had to study the US Constitution and learn a bunch of the amendments. We also had to memorize the Preamble and recite in front of the class. I didn't make near enough effort to study said amendments, then ended up panic-studying at the last minute before the test. I also recited the Preamble as required, then promptly forgot it. I think it went "We the people of the United States bla bla something something bla de bla bla." I dunno, it was about twelve years ago.
It seemed like we were always learning about some long boring war, and having to recall which countries were allied with which and what date this happened and who did this. And if we weren't reading about the Battle of the Bulge, we were being told to memorize a zillion places and their capitals. I'd like to submit a formal complaint against Eurasia for having so many countries. Of course, I also have a bone to pick with my own country for having so many states. Let's face it, I hate studying and memorizing giant chunks of information.
Spanish
In the same way I didn't like studying for history and geography classes, I didn't enjoy studying for Spanish either, nor did I put much effort into studying. Trying to remember a bunch of words in a textbook just didn't interest me. (Did I mention I didn't enjoy studying or memorization?) It was also a class I simply been placed in when I hadn't signed up for it, and I wasn't that interested in taking it.
And as an added bonus, there was a lack of textbooks, so some of the kids, me included, had to use a CD-ROM version of the textbook to study, which I hated. It's a lot easier to have a physical copy of the book to take home or to class, and I often found it an annoyance to have to load the CD whenever I needed to study stuff at home.
As a result of my poor study skills, I got mediocre grades. (Huh, just like junior high algebra.)
Philosophy
One year in college, my friend had to take a foundations course. Philosophy was the only one that would fit into her schedule, so that's the one she ended up doing. And she hated it. "Honestly, I'm a very logical and mathematical person, and philosophy is not logical at all."
Based on some of the nonsensical jargon she showed me that looked like English, but was about as comprehensible to me as Pictish written backwards in kanji, I could understand some of her frustration. It seemed like a lot of those philosophers enjoyed writing things in a weird, long-winded, convoluted way that was difficult to make sense of. And she had to write a billion papers on those philosophers and their writings, writings that she either didn't agree with, or that made no sense to her.
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| "Philosophy is not a class you should take if you have any shred of self respect. In fact it's not a class you should take at all. Do yourself a favor and take something else." -Immortalkitten |
Holidays, Weekends, Etc.
One of the most horrid things to happen on a Friday is when the teacher assigns homework over the weekend. You had those days off from school, but you're still doing school stuff, bleah. It's even worse if you had a larger time slot free, like spring break or something, and they assign work to do. Tis the season to be bawling, fa la la la la....
Oh, and then there were the times when we decided to go on vacation. In one instance, we were driving to another state to visit my aunt and uncle. Since I was going to be out of school for a bit, my parents picked up all the evil work the class would be doing during that time. I just wanted to hang out, interact with the animals, and otherwise enjoy myself. I didn't want to sit at the table and do work.
The one that really stood out, though, was when I was eight or nine. My father already referred to my third grade teacher as 'the Homework Queen'. When we decided to take a vacation for a bit, my teacher gave us all the schoolwork and classwork that would be done during my time out of school. It seemed like there was no end to the assignments, and all I wanted to do was play games and go on rides. My parents and older brother took turns sitting with in the hotel room with me while I moaned about homework, and they found it miserable too. After that, my parents decided that from now on, when we decided to take a vacation, they would just go, and the work could be made up later when I got back. No more trying to mix schoolwork and vacation time.
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