Friday, April 13, 2012

Sophomore English Class

In my second year of high school my English teacher was Mrs. Butler.  She had only one lung and did not show up for most of the winter months which meant we had a substitute a good bit of the time.  Maybe that is why we only had to do four book reports a year instead of six.

Book reports were pretty common but she had an unusual format (to me at least).  She had a couple of pages of questions then the synopsis of the book.  This was not too bad or too interesting.  The interesting part was when she told us that by the time the  year was over she would not have to see the handwriting (WAY before typing or computers) or the name on a book report to know who had written it.  I took this as a challenge.

I forget how many book reports I turned in that year but I know I turned in four for me, four for my best friend, four for his brother and one or two more for random people.  I think the lowest score I made on any of them was a ninety six.  That was because I was writing them in "the style of" whomever I was doing the report for.

Now, I rarely ever read the books themselves before the report.  My primary source of information was "Classic Comics" which was a comic book short synopsis of the stories of classic literature.   And, I did a report on "Jane Eyre" by spending about five minutes asking questions of the girl who was supposed to be doing the report.  She did not need my help as she was a good student.  I just wanted to do it for the challenge.  I think I made a ninety-eight on that one. 

One of the books I did a report (of my own) was by H. G. Wells (of War of the Worlds fame) titled "Food of the Gods".  It was a horrible book and I hated it.  I spent ten pages expressing in detail all the things I hated about it.  Mrs. Butler asked me if I hated it so much why did I read it.  I told her that as bad as it was it was the best book on the reading list.  I got a hundred on that report.

Let us say in high school I was not very high on the books on the reading list.  There was no Asimov, Heinlien, Clarke, Anderson, Simak or any of the other great Sci-Fi authors from the golden age.  But I did get to do an oral book report on one of Asimov's "Fantastic Voyage".  It was a story where a Soviet diplomat had a blood clot in the brain and they used a special shrinking machine to shrink a submarine and it's crew and inject it into his blood stream and let it go to destroy the clot.  It was a good book.  Decent movie, too.  The big thing about it was it was a book report for Biology class.

I guess all my teachers were aware of my reading habits since I read in class all the time.  It never hurt my grades as most of my classes were so simple they were quite boring.  Making an "A" was a given.  Well, except for that one teacher who deducted points for missing class.  I always made a hundred on his tests but I was never in class enough to keep my "A", so I got a lot of "B's" in his class.

I had a 3.363 GPA in high school.  I've often wondered what it would have been had I been really motivated and put some effort into school.  But, I did not want to make TOO high grades because I definitely did not want to be Salutatorian or Valedictorian.  I still have a great fear of public speaking and it was much worse then.  My GPA was carefully calculated to keep me as an honor student but to not subject me to public speaking.

LOL, thank goodness for straight "C's" in Spanish.

1 comment:

  1. I often wish I'd actually put forth an effort in school. Like you, I showed up as much as I had to in order to not have Mom hauled in for questioning. I did what I had to and spent the rest of my time reading. Quite a few teachers gave me automatic good grades because I was well-known as one of the smart kids.The only real exception being math and Chemistry (Chemistry was just another math class if you ask me).

    I once got in trouble for reading in class. I apparently started reading and didn't notice when the teacher began her lecture, after taking up our exams. Oops. I looked up when the bell rang and she handed me a discipline form.

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