Got my test back in History. You know, the one I was kind of freaked out about last week? I was mollified by the reassuring lack of pink dashes on the Scantron, but I couldn't tell if I'd done well or not. I mean, clearly I hadn't outright failed, but about the time I started laboriously working out what 245 out of 60 was (it took me ages to realize every question was worth five points) the professor was berating us for being very bad students. Our class average was 55 percent and he was mad. "Come on, people!" he shouted. "I waste all those trees on you with class handouts, I tell you funny stories, and you don't pay attention!"
I was still staring distractedly at my scores. Let's see, I missed seven on the fifty multiple-choice answers, that's not too bad probably, but I missed three on the ten question fill-in-the-blank answers, that's ugly. The professor was ranting at us about "marinating" in his class, and if we thought this test was hard we were going to be peeing our pants when we saw the final, and we'd better start reading every single handout and doing our homework or we were going to have very embarrassing grades. But the weird thing is he was really funny about it. Everyone was laughing sheepishly, except me. I frowned at my score. Let's see, uh, 255 minus 300 is ... fuck. Am I supposed to divide something?
"You!" he pointed at me. "Do you speak French?"
How did he know I speak French? "Yes," I said in English, "That is, some."
"Fine! What is this word?" and he wrote out corvée on the blackboard.
I stared at it blankly for a minute. "It means draft. I think. Conscripted?" What the hell did this have to do with our tests?
"That is correct! You get extra points for that. It means drafted for unpaid labor. Which is all that you can expect if you don't pass this class! You'll be out there building roads for Uncle Sam and wishing you were back in my class studying ethnic history and prejudice. So study!"
I laughed my head off. Man, this professor is nuts, but he's tough and I have no problem with that. I did my best, but I'd better write a killer research paper if I hope to do well in the class. If he thought this test was just a warm-up I am not looking forward to the others. Okay, so 255, 255, that sounds about... like... maybe a... fuck. I am definitely supposed to divide something.
And then we had class so I couldn't continue to wrestle with numbers. I just went home and asked John if I did okay. He said it was an 85%. Whew! I got a B. But how scary that the class average was so low. At least the prof gave us all the points for that stupid Maria Monk question. I was right, he really didn't talk about it at all in class. It bugs me so much when I get tested on stuff that we never covered and isn't obvious in context. I accept that this happens, but I hate it. He also gave us another point for some contestable answer, but I'd gotten that one right.
Then John and I watched Buffy. Man, I am so confused about what the deal is with Spike but I don't care, James Marsters is impressing the hell out of me so far (and for the record Spike does nothing for me, I'm a Xander fan). And I love the human characters having made the transition from post-adolescence to real young adulthood. Plus Anya's got a great storyline this year and Dawn's been fully integrated into the group. This show has such good writing. I can't stand having to wait another week for the next episode.
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