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Oh, joy! Oh, rapture! Yes, today was the first day to sign up for classes. I'm a bit of a geek in this regard. OK, I'm a huge geek. As I've mentioned before, my friends call me Hermione...as in Granger. As in the class know-it-all from the Harry Potter books. I can't deny the resemblance, at least as far as enthusiasm for school is concerned. My mother, who reads printed copies of this blog (thanks, Aunt D!) might find that funny were it not so deeply frustrating. You see, the poor woman spent the length of my school years trying to motivate me to do some homework. I was deeply anti-school and consistently failed to live up to my potential...I can't number the teachers who told my mum, "Aaron is so frustrating because I know he can easily do this!" I simply didn't do homework that would have been a snap, had I bothered. I've floated some ideas about why I was such a lousy student...maybe I was bored. (I do recall being yelled at for reading Les Miserables while the class was discussing Tom Sawyer...been there, read that five years ago, next.) Maybe I resented having to learn. Maybe I was rebelling against a grandmother and father who were both teachers. Maybe I was just lazy. I'd like to believe I was bored...I was the kid who read David Copperfield in sixth grade. I covertly devoured A Tale of Two Cities during geology and my mother, having attended Parent's Night at the school, agreed that my teacher for that class was duller than dirt...which was appropriate, given his subject. One teacher, a young (and pretty) spark fresh out of college, took the tack of allowing me to forgo rereading Ethan Frome so long as I agreed to write the lesson plan for The Citadel. That seemed to work, though it may have had more to do with her looks than her teaching acumen. Unfortunately I can't escape the notion that I was just plain old lazy. Sure, I'd already read the books we were reading, already grasped the history we were studying...but I also had decided to ignore the math and science and physical education classes. I ignored them not because they were boring (OK, let's face it, they were) but because I didn't do well in them. I guess I didn't do well in those subjects because I found them dull and meaningless...but the point is that I could have sucked it up and done the work anyhow. I could have, as the pretty English teacher had encouraged me to do, looked for avenues above and beyond the literature and history work through which my peers were slogging. I could have asked for help with the math and science that to this day remain a mystery. So there's no help for gym class...well, there it is. Gym and I were never to be friends. Still, I could have done better. The crux of the matter is that to have done so would have distracted me from what I really wanted to do, which was read classic literature (nerd) and play role-playing games (dork). To ignore difficult or unpleasant tasks in favour of what one enjoys and what comes easy...well, that's being lazy. I was enormously lazy. Am I still lazy? Sic et non, yes and no. An acting career has at least taught me that if I want to do what I want to do I'd better work like mad for it. Maybe it's just an expansion of wanting to do what I want to do, only now acknowledging that everything costs. As the harsh dance instructor says in the opening credits of Fame, "You want fame? Well fame costs. And right here's where you start paying for it....in sweat!" If I could do high school over again, I'd sweat a bit more. Not that I'm unhappy with where I am, but it would be nice to understand (shudder) algebra. OK, that's a lie. Algebra has no attraction for me. I'd rather gouge out my eyes with a rusty fork than sit through an algebra class. I'm going back to my book. |
