Thursday, November 13, 2008
Blargh, false alarm. Turns out that the secondary/adult English class won't start til there're enough students to form a class. Primary class starts next week. I'm still not quite sure how to teach them.
But anyway. So Cynthia came over on Tuesday night, and we pretty much spent part of the time reminiscing on our secondary school days. (Fuck, do I feel old.)
I don't really recall much about my class really- secondary school was one long blur of tediousness interrupted by my occasional bit of social life (mostly outings with fellow cosplayers and etc). I slacked a lot, rushed my homework, was on vaguely friendly terms with most of my classmates, and I think to them, I was The Girl Who Likes to Draw. Like, a lot. Which was fine by me anyway.
So yeah. Then Cynthia mentioned that one of the popular girls in class- she commented sometimes that my art was nice, but Cynthia was of the opinion that she was partly condescending too. If you read between her lines, it really said "Yeah, so what if you can draw well? You're a nerdy wallflower without any real friends and
I'm popular."
On hindsight, maybe it's a little harsh to say that she thought that way, but I can't help but feel that she had been condescending on some level- as blur as I was, I'd like to think I'm not perpetually oblivious to like, everything. I don't think I really care though. Maybe in some weird Jungian subconscious way, I
do care, but consciously? Well, not really.
I think secondary school popularity contests (whether or not they are consciously treated as contests or not) are really quite lame and juvenile, but I guess at an age where everyone's struggling to find their self identity and prove their worth, popularity is an inevitable stick to measure it by. Which is... kind of sad.
Still, I guess everyone grows out of it sooner or later. You certainly don't see much of that crap in poly, or at least, I haven't come across it.
I used to think that only stereotypical American schools were like that. You know, with the jocks and the nerds and geeks and misfits and whatever else labels they have for themselves. The jocks were at the top of the caste system, while the geeks and nerds were considerably nearer the bottom, and that sort of thing. It seemed that Singaporean schools never had that kind of discrimination, because popularity seemed based on something else that I never quite identified. Was it general coolness? Or maybe it was because a group of beng-wannabes decided they wanted to be popular. I never knew, and I'm okay with not knowing. But I think I'd really like to know anyway, so I guess I should start asking around, starting with Cynthia. |Db
