My junior year in high school means that I'm almost at the finish line. The previous year I had started my required foreign language study by taking French. I did pretty well and was looking forward to advancing my knowledge. Unfortunately I was in a classroom of lazy asses! That year we had a new French teacher, Madame Teaver. The previous teacher, Madame Turner didn't come back that year. Madame Teaver was from Germany. What she was doing in Georgia is beyond me! Anyway, because she was A. a new teacher, and B. from Germany, the majority of the class decided to act like we didn't learn the basics in French I. Because of that fact, French II was just a rehash of French I. Of course it was an easy A for me, but I didn't want an easy A. I wanted to continue to add to my knowledge base, but that's just another example of the substandard education I had to deal with.
That was also the year that I decided what college I wanted to go to. Because of its music program, I wanted to go to DePaul University. I figured I'd major in Music Business so that someday I could have my own record label. My best friend in high school was an artist and she decided that she wanted to go to the Art Institute in Chicago. It would've been the perfect set-up. We could've been in Chicago together. Also, she has family that lives right by the Indiana/Illinois border, near Chicago. As luck would have it, I got to go with her to visit them during spring break of junior year. Her mom and her mom's boyfriend drove us from Georgia to Indiana and we all stayed with her grandparents. They were the nicest people. I really enjoyed my time there. We went to Chicago twice while I was there and that cemented my desire to want to attend college at DePaul. Ever since I was a small child I always knew that I would leave rural Georgia to see what another part of the US had to offer.
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Moving on to 10th Grade
In my previous autobiographical entry I told you about the whole frog dissection debacle in biology class, and how because of that my biology teacher tried to keep me out of the advanced chemistry class. Well, there were lots of people that considered that chemistry class a joke because so many people cheated. Apparently, they didn't cheat very well because I ended up receiving the chemistry award at the end of the school year. For me, chemistry was very easy. I have a good memory, so that if I see something a few times, I tend to remember it. The periodic chart was a breeze because of that. Also, if you demonstrate something for me once, I'm usually able to get the hang of it. Anyone that's ever taken a chemistry class knows that it's all about formulas. As long as you know how to plug the numbers in, you can't go wrong.
My chemistry teacher was not a native Georgian. She was actually from Pennsylvania. I think that's why she didn't buy into a lot of the bullshit that went on in my high school. One day I was discussing the dissection debacle with her. Her reponse was "No wonder, Mrs. Kent doesn't like you." And I was like "What do you mean?" She said, "You're the reason why we had to come up with the alternate assignment." I wasn't even aware until that moment that an alternative to dissection was being offered by the science department. It makes me feel good to know that in that regard I was a force for change.
That was also the year that I started studying a foreign language, if you could call it studying...Anyway, I decided to take French because of its connections to North Africa. I know that the North Africans learning French was a result of oppression more than anything else, but it's still a part of the African experience. To say that my French class was a joke is understating quite a bit. Hearing French spoken with a Southern accent is horrible! I can actually speak with a decent French accent because I have a good ear. Singing in choirs helped me to be able to mimic the sounds that I hear. I did very well in my first year French class, but there's no way I would've been able to converse with anyone. I was very much looking forward to the following year, so that I could broaden my knowledge of the French language. Little did I know that it would be somewhat of a retread of the first year's class.
My chemistry teacher was not a native Georgian. She was actually from Pennsylvania. I think that's why she didn't buy into a lot of the bullshit that went on in my high school. One day I was discussing the dissection debacle with her. Her reponse was "No wonder, Mrs. Kent doesn't like you." And I was like "What do you mean?" She said, "You're the reason why we had to come up with the alternate assignment." I wasn't even aware until that moment that an alternative to dissection was being offered by the science department. It makes me feel good to know that in that regard I was a force for change.
That was also the year that I started studying a foreign language, if you could call it studying...Anyway, I decided to take French because of its connections to North Africa. I know that the North Africans learning French was a result of oppression more than anything else, but it's still a part of the African experience. To say that my French class was a joke is understating quite a bit. Hearing French spoken with a Southern accent is horrible! I can actually speak with a decent French accent because I have a good ear. Singing in choirs helped me to be able to mimic the sounds that I hear. I did very well in my first year French class, but there's no way I would've been able to converse with anyone. I was very much looking forward to the following year, so that I could broaden my knowledge of the French language. Little did I know that it would be somewhat of a retread of the first year's class.
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