1.2 Million Keystrokes
I’ve typed another 200,000 keys in less than three weeks. For me, that’s pretty good. Of course, there’re other WhatPulse members who type that much in a single day. Ouch. No wonder the leader right now has over twenty million keystrokes.
I probably will lose my momentum soon, since I finished a major English project yesterday that required much typing. But, though I felt relieved to finally get the English thing (I had to write an epic) over, I was then smothered with more projects in Spanish (we have two going right now). Sra. Nasr is a great teacher, but she loves projects, especially those that require presentations or speaking, a little too much.
Other than that, she rocks. I’ve never met a teacher who knew their students so well, or who was on such good terms with so many kids at the school. She’s almost like a student herself. And my other teachers are all right, but they just don’t come close to her. Mrs. Young, my PE teacher, lets us play ping-pong almost all the time, with occasional runnings of the mile, which have been labeled, “NASCAR”.
And Mrs. Kulinski is nice as well, though she can be strict. Then again, Mrs. Kulinski is rarely even at school any more. She had some kind of emergency surgery not long ago, and that and illness has kept her absent. She has a new aide this semester, a sort of teacher-in-training, who teaches for her. I don’t think she’s even taught an entire period (for my class) this semester. It’s almost like she left or something. I dunno.
Then there’s Mrs. White, who doesn’t tolerate talking in class well, which is bad for her, since my period is full of 8th graders from the middle school. I ask, why didn’t I have the option to take geometry in 8th grade? I mean, my math grade in middle school was only a steady 99%, but I guess that just isn’t good enough. More likely, I was overlooked.
After lunch I have Mr. Fogelson for social studies. Of all my teachers, he seems most knowledgable about his subject, which is great for a first-year teacher. He has his moods, I guess, because some days he’s perfectly happy and others he can be a bit gruff. But he’s a good guy overall.
After “Fogey” is biology with Drechsler, who is the look-alike sister of an English teacher at Sonoran Trails, whom I never had. The CSHS Drechsler is really…hyper. She even admits that she acts half her age (she’s 28). But as for actually getting us to learn the material…she isn’t that great. Her teaching methods just don’t make much of an impression on me, I suppose. And there’s my general hatred for science. That might be a problem.
And biology is my worst class when it comes to jerk children (see better definition in other entries), and people who are just plain stupid and annoying. So I have to put up with them. They don’t really bother me at all, they just are almost unbearably dumb. It’s hard to keep from screaming at them. And I’ve pretty much stopped answering questions in that class, since people just stare dumbly at me when I say anything as if I’m incorrect (a rare occurrence).
It’s weird that I would hate science when PHP is so science-like. Each script is like an experiment, and when you test it you log the results in your mind and try something else to get what you want. It’s endless guess and check. But according to SitePoint, my standards of coding are all wrong. Really, they’ve only served to confuse me with their articles on OOP (object-oriented programming) and Access Control. Not because I don’t understand the scripts, but because I don’t understand why the way I do it is wrong. Quite frankly, I like my methods (literally!). I don’t see any reason why they should be rewritten differently. They’re OOP, but supposedly they’re just not OOP “enough”. I dunno.
Oh, and before I go boil myself in the shower and fall into bed, I forgot one teacher, Mr. Trapani, who will most likely be reading this tomorrow. Now he’s probably thinking that I’m going to flame him for some reason or another, but not now, not today (though perhaps some other time). I actually pity him, because he’s been given a job that one person cannot do easily. He has to put together a video announcements show, manage the technology lab and the website, and do everything else that normal teachers do, like input grades and such. That isn’t fair.
In a perfect world, he would have one person to teach video technology, one to do web development, and he could do everything else. He needs an aide, or something. Then perhaps he’d have time to get the web development stuff going. I mean, the school website might soon get knocked offline because he doesn’t have time to pay the bill or figure out why it wasn’t received. There’s something wrong here.
This is where I come in. I am supposedly his child prodigy, the one who will get everything working correctly for him. If only I didn’t have to take PE, then I could be in one of his classes. Actually being there for more than half an hour each morning would be helpful when I’m trying to “reform the system” here. But there seems to be no real way around that, since my parents can’t drive me for zero hour, and first hour is not a very productive period for me to be in. Sixth period is the holy grail, and that’s Spanish, as I said before. So it’s a no go.
And I could just continue sending him lengthy emails stating what is needed, but what is needed most is someone to do what I’m asking. Some of it, like setting up a development environment on the network server, I could do if I was able to come in second period and talk to his networking guys about it. I’d prefer to have a separate Linux server for development, just for the sake of Linux’s extra PHP features. But the network server would be easier, since everyone would have access. So we’ll see how it goes. I must die now.
Eggplant.