Our high school teachers had a big influence on us. They controlled a significant part of our day. They could reward and punish. They could effectively move us towards our dreams or be indifferent to our individuality. I was lucky to have had some wonderful teachers. If you recall any memorable statements about life or the universe that your teachers said, please share.
Great story about the S & G song. When I was in my first year in college in Massachusetts, in the spring of 1963, my wonderful English teacher, Naomi Diamond -- whom I discovered 25 years later teaching at Ryerson, and found out then that she was Canadian, gave us this assignment: walk around the college lake, Lake Waban (about a 2 hour walk) and memorize this 8-line poem by Robert Frost: Nature's first green is gold/Her hardest hue to hold/Her early leaf's a flower/But only so an hour./Then leaf subsides to leaf/So Eden came to grief/So dawn comes down to day/Nothing gold can stay. " I know the poem by heart, lo these many years later (I may have got a couple of words wrong). And I was one of the few people who actually completed the walk around the lake, seeing what Frost meant by the leaves looking like flowers -- and feeling the humus and old leaves underfoot, hearing birds, etc. I had grown up in the city and didn't know much about this. i think the experience not only taught me about truly learning a poem by heart (not just "memorizing") but also how poetry does connect to nature. Like Helen Keller learning that the letters "w-a-t-e-r" spelled into her hand meant the water she was feeling -- but in reverse: the nature really "was" in the words. And "subsides" is so lovely -- I used it years later in a poem about my mother, that also brought in birds in the garden.
another comment by Ellen -- When I met her again in the late 1980's, Miss Diamond was giving reading groups for writers in her home, and I attended several sessions of these groups. It was then that I realised she not only had a fine, brilliant mind, but also was extremely compassionate and caring. (although she did not suffer fools gladly). As another one of her students said in her obituary, she loved words and saw literature as a way to help people empathize with each other in life.
I was the kid who did stupid things every single day and thus has thousands of stories. A couple of my teachers loved me and the rest hated me. Never made it to Florida, but at least I stayed out of North Dakota... EDIT: Just remembered -- I'll never forget my senior year government final. At my school stellar attendance to class could excuse seniors from the final. Thus, in a sort of Spicoli moment, I literally took the gov final in a room by myself. Only senior not to qualify via attendance to class. So I sat with the teacher watching me -- odd feeling -- and bounced through this pointless multiple choice test on things I'd learned from my parents in elementary school. I was almost certainly high out of my skull. At the end I turned in the "scantron" to Mrs. whatever and she graded it while I was standing there for convenience. I got an 87, which I will never forget, because Mrs. government teacher looked down at my grade, looked up at me, shook her head, and said, "Effortlessly mediocre, flagamuffin. Good luck." And I said, sincerely, "Thank you!" and left high school forever. Since then that's been a motto of sorts. I see nothing wrong with being effortlessly mediocre; often the world doesn't deserve effort.
This ties in with an interesting conversation I have been having with kb, I think. In here, scroll down. There is nothing wrong with being effortlessly mediocre for the world. I think it behooves one to maximize the effort put into passions and useful skills, however. Mediocrity in life ... oh, well, I don't think it'll get you far. Scraping by isn't the same as existing and it certainly isn't the same as capitalizing on everything in front of you.I see nothing wrong with being effortlessly mediocre; often the world doesn't deserve effort.
Careful now, you'll have me working 40 hours a week. I am content.Mediocrity in life ... oh, well, I don't think it'll get you far. Scraping by isn't the same as existing and it certainly isn't the same as capitalizing on everything in front of you.
I disapprove of it because I'm yet to find a job that results in me actually working anywhere close to 40 hours a week. Maybe that will change with this next co-op that starts in 2 weeks, but maybe not. It could be different for everyone else, but I find it to be a rigid structure that breeds monotony and going through the motions unless you're lucky enough to have a job you truly enjoy. I think the thing that might be worse than the work week is the work environment. If work was treated more like a normal extension of life then it would be a lot better. If I could have Reddit, Hubski, and music going, along with whatever else that would be great (assuming my work is still getting done), but I've never experienced that.
I am a shark. I enjoy much of the corporate world. I have friends, though, that hate it, find it suppressive, don't understand that there are things they should and shouldn't say at work, don't understand that there are topics they should not discuss. One friend compared it to lying or "not being true to oneself." I have trouble sympathizing, though. We all must learn to moderate our personality to social situations. The personality I present to my parents is not the same as the one I present to my friends and so on, but it doesn't mean I'm lying and it doesn't mean I'm not being true to myself. I'm just modulating my personality as the situation warrants. There are many facets of my being. Of course, it also sounds like our work environments are different. I can listen to my iPod at work if I want. I surf Hubski, Reddit too if it's a really slow day. Wikipedia when I've found topics I'm curious about. I am one of those people who works better when there is more work to do. Give me one task, tell me it's due Friday, and you can bet your ass I'm not doing it until Friday, and Mon-Thurs I'll be on Hubski, Wiki, Reddit, listening to podcasts, writing poetry. Give me five tasks and tell me they're due Friday and I will start them immediately. Then I will only surf and web-browse when I have the time, in a lull point. It may seem weird but to do my best work I need a lot of work to do. I like to be challenged. Like I said, I enjoy the corporate world and its structure. I am far from a standard corporate pawn, and I'm probably not a sociopath, either, but I find there is a certain beauty to it sometimes. That doesn't mean I don't also consider it a cage...but so many things in our lives are cages. Romantic relationships are cages. Your friends tie you down. Work is just the popular thing to resent. Work enables me to do the things I want to do, so I don't really mind work.
Oh yes, I absolutely tailor my personality based on the situation. Most people seem to do that, and from my experiences it results in a bland and usually homogeneous workplace (these are engineering places that I've worked at). Part of the problem is that I've worked in established industries where the companies I was with were essentially boys clubs filled with 50 year old guys who didn't care to try to relate to younger people. The more recent one made it clear that employees weren't really supposed to be doing much other than working or putting on the appearance of working while at work. So if I had nothing to do, I sat there and tried to look busy. The other two were better, but there was still an air about it. I'm exactly the same way as you with functioning better when more tasks are at hand. Even my class grades have historically been better in periods where I'm busiest. I'm much more productive when there are a lot of different things going on at once. I disagree with this. Romantic relationships are cages if it's not a relationship where the people aren't growing together as people and expanding their horizons. A relationship should never be a cage, and if it is it should probably end unless there's an effort to fix whatever issues are causing that. I've never had friends tying me down. They haven't prevented me from going to college, from going to Europe, from investing in my future and exploring my passions. It's a different culture in that aspect due to where I go to college. People are constantly moving to work in different places because it's required of many of our programs. Due to this it's accepted that you may not see your friends for months on end, and most people have learned how to maintain friendships from afar. Work brings much less joy and fulfillment to me than friends, family, relationships, or many other things. I'm not sure if it means I've chosen the wrong profession, but the lack of joy (comparatively) is the major reason that I'm resentful of work.Romantic relationships are cages. Your friends tie you down. Work is just the popular thing to resent.
On the first day of high school, my social studies teacher approached me as I entered the room and gently placed her hands on my shoulders. She looked me in the eyes and slowly asked, "are . . . you . . . the . . . new . . . E-S-L . . . student?" She actually turned out to be a very nice lady and it was (is still?) a very (very, very) white school district, but still . . . . Anyway, by second semester she would sometimes ask me if I wanted to teach the class. I think part of it was because she couldn't get me to stop talking. Another social studies teacher told me that I would someday be a teacher and it turns out she was right, even if I'm trying to become something else. In general, I had a pretty positive experience in school, though I remember teachers always going easy on me and letting me do pretty much whatever I wanted. I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, particularly because I've always learned the most from teachers who didn't just challenge me, but actively went out of their way to kick my ass. Now, I recognize how much extra effort that must have been, but I do value that effort much more. I think that's why I often pushed my own students fairly hard and also why I stressed the importance of acceptable English pronunciation too. I've found that people will quickly look beyond appearance if one sounds like a local, or at least not "too foreign".
I had a teacher that was incredibly influential in my life. Until I moved away from Michigan, we still got together at least once a year and either had lunch or played racquetball etc. I cannot remember any great quote from him, however one thing he did that really stands out is that prior to any big dance at school or prior to our graduation, he would write his phone number up on the chalkboard and tell us all to write it down and that if ever we were too drunk to drive during our celebrations that we could call him and that without judgment he would pick us up because he would prefer that to us driving. It was a sincere gesture on his part, we all trusted him more because of it and he always had our full attention.
I had a high school teacher tell me I would "never make it" in life and would not graduate college because I was getting a C in her class. (chemistry, at a magnet school where I was in the most advanced classes, by the way.) I think we can safely say the joke's on her, the bitch.
In middle school I was failing science. My teacher called a one on one meeting with my parents to discuss this. I was present in the meeting and though they didn't realize it, I overheard my teacher telling my parents that they shouldn't worry about me. She said, "Steven may never be a scholar, but he will certainly be a successful salesman, he can talk his way in and out of anything." -true enough.
My teachers never had that major of an effect on me, unfortunately. At least, not in Middle or High School. I at least get to thank my 5th grade Elementary school teacher for giving me my love for reading and writing. A lot of them were interesting in some ways, though. I had a High School math teacher who had the chance to either go on vacation with his wife to Disneyworld, or invest in - at the time - a little company called "Apple." He chose the former. "And that's why I'm here, teaching you math." I once walked into my driver's ed class - even though I still don't have a license, go figure - to find my gym/driving teacher lying across his large desk, doing one-armed push ups, chanting "hard. over. easy! hard. over. easy!" He was a strange guy, but damn if he wasn't dedicated to self-improvement. My digital arts teacher killed any and all interest I had in digital art. But his crazy antics also resulted in me bonding greatly with the only 5 other kids in the class. My Theory of Knowledge teacher used to work at Wall Street before he came to my school. The dude was loaded, and incredibly intelligent. He said he hated the work environment out on Wall Street, and that teaching at my school was his way of repenting, in a sense.
You had an epistemology class in high school?My Theory of Knowledge teacher used to work at Wall Street before he came to my school. The dude was loaded, and incredibly intelligent. He said he hated the work environment out on Wall Street, and that teaching at my school was his way of repenting, in a sense.