Inertia

A good friend of mine is celebrating his birthday today. Living two hours away, he isn't the easiest to get a hold of, but we've made arrangements for a phone call and I'll check in then.

I do hope his day went well, because the end of the month seems to be boiling over for me. Bubbling with anxiety and frustration, I've been either lagging behind in conversation (huh?) or exploding into a variety of insults, sarcasm, nihilism and two-syllable responses that would turn a cynic's pyrotechnic display green with envy. I did homework in the cafeteria at lunch. I broke my father's compass. I blew up at a friend who meant me no harm. I poured kerosene on an inferno of a disagreement, just to watch the chain reaction that ensued. I swore. I rolled my eyes.

Basically i was a perfect brat.

The only time I meant to be a self-centered, class A specimen of jerk was in ELA, when our sub (the real, more intelligent, more experienced and much more respectable teacher is on stress leave, and hasn't been at school for several weeks) announced that, rather than follow the lesson plan which stated we would wrap up our curriculum with a short lesson on poetry, we would ignore the instructions we were left with and we would 'learn' to write resumes.

Teacher have it in their head that the key to being successful in life is having the ultimate, ungodly power of a long-winded resume. And, hey, I'm not saying it isn't important to have one, but I do think it's more important that we get through school and learn the things we are supposed to be taught rather than jump ahead three years and write these unfathomably perfect resumes. And it's not like we haven't learned it before: we were given the exact same assignment just last year, and another time two years before that. We're also to receive a credit for taking a course on it a year in the future. If these resumes are so marvelous, so desirable, why do I have to write a new one every two years (which I never use, mind you - I didn't have to so much as mention a resume for either of my two past jobs)?

Needless to say, I found the whole thing ridiculous, and she's a terrible teacher (especially in English: she butchered the point of The Tell-Tale Heart and she completely ignores my questions). So myself and several others made a point of bitching and moaning over the whole thing. I whined that I wanted my old teacher back whenever she turned to leave, and I corrected her so loudly it's a wonder the whole school didn't hear. I rolled my eyes while she struggled to get us to quiet down. I heard she's been taking over a math class as well and has been bullying a girl in that class, including failing her on an assignment because she had activist beliefs that conflicted with the rest of her war-hungry group.

I dislike her, but the school has very little staff and no one to replace her with, so even if I complained, and even if she had done something to justify the complaint, she wouldn't be so much as talked to about it. The same goes for the creepy old sub who harasses the girls. Until there is public knowledge of it and reputations are at stake, nothing is going to happen.

Here's to tomorrow being brighter, at the very least.