On playing the game (in essays)

High school, like a lot of things, is a sort of game. It has rules and umpires and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. However, you generally win a lot more often if you play by the rules and don't argue with the umpire. No, I'm not talking about cheating.

A few weeks back I got the results of an out of school essay competition that I and one other person from my school had entered. She was shortlisted; I wasn't; fair enough, I got over it and moved on. But then I started thinking about why.  It's in a subject I'm good at; the essay was heavily edited by both me and my teacher. Now, ok, yes, it's possible it just wasn't as good as I thought it was, or else everyone else's was simply better. But the current theory between the three of us is that I maybe should have picked a different topic to write about. Why? Well, because I spent an entire paragraph criticising the whole idea of the organisation running the competition. Yeah, probably could have thought that through better.

 Another story: the other day in lit we were discussing with our teacher (read: putting off work) one of her students from last year, who had failed the exam. The reason he failed was because he chose which question to answer in the exam solely on the basis of: "My teacher put this question in the exam to challenge me to prove her wrong. Quick! Prove her wrong!" (And, by the way, that question had previously been on exam papers and still is.) He devoted the whole essay to arguing about philosophical ideas and why they were wrong, rather than analysing how they appeared in the text. That made it just a little difficult for the marker to pass him, since he hadn't actually answered the question.

The basic moral of these stories is that while you can and will have your own opinions in high school... you probably shouldn't, at least when you're writing essays. Yes, even if the question asks for your opinion. Generally speaking, there's only two of three options of 'acceptable' opinions. This is just a case of 'give them what they want, and no one gets hurt'. No matter how damn awesomely you can write an essay about how the GFC was a conspiracy by space aliens and llamas, no one cares if what you were asked to do was discuss the effects of government policy on the recovery process (or something like that, I don't do economics so it was just the first thing I thought of... oddly.)

Now, to be fair, there are exceptions, and there are teachers who will let you get away with doing things like this. I'm lucky, in that, with most of my teachers, if I can give them a good enough reason why (even if it is crap and they know it, but they generally give bonus points for entertainment value so...) they'll let me change questions (although obviously not during in-class essays, but those are so broad, you don't really need to.) Case in point: the other day, discussing my research project with my history teacher, he said offhandedly, "Oh, and by the way, I don't really care if you go into the present, or whatever. Just so long as you make it interesting."  And really, can you blame them? Thirty plus essays to read on the same general topic, of course they're going to want something different after a while- just don't piss them off.

Essentially: Give your teachers what they want, or you probably will fail.

(Side note: my best friend and I made our history teacher swear the other day. But in a good way.)

Introducing...

High school- a weird, kinda trippy mix of friends and study and -apparently, fire. I mean, given that we're in Australia and all, you'd expect that last one, which makes me (and everyone else in my school) wonder- who had the brilliant idea of having a fire alarm that no one can hear?

The other day: walking from my English Literature classroom across the whole school to the library, turn a corner and see the oval- swarming with students and teachers?
Me: "Uhh- miss? I, um... think we were meant to have evacuated. About ten minutes ago."
"Huh?"
Blank looks exchanged amongst us all. "So, um... 'bout that fire alarm." "Do you think we should maybe go over?"
Because you see, only about three classes had actually heard it. The rest had heard from people running into each classroom and yelling, "FIRE!" The building we'd been in still had about four classes in it.
I think the best part about this story is that my teacher (henceforth The Literary One) decided not to even both assembling with everyone else, just to skip it and keep going to the library, she cared that little.

But this isn't even the first time this has happened. Last year in the middle of summer, one of the science teachers came into my classroom and said, "You guys do know that you were meant to have evacuated about twenty minutes ago, right?"
Worst part of this? There was a fire both times. It wasn't even just a drill. To be fair, they were small and contained and very quickly put out, but all the same.

 High school. Surviving it is sometimes harder than you'd think, which is saying something, since I'm pretty sure that most teenagers are having enough trouble just with your standard homework-exams-performances-friends-evilteachers mix.

Likewise, surviving Australia is... probably not as bad as most people think, but still at times a challenge. Like check out our dangerous animals.

Luckily, I have experience in both, and am here to provide... maybe not help, but at the least, commentary and funny stories, on surviving high school, Australia, part time jobs, and life in general.