Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Mmm, English.

Right now I am eating a heavilly tortilla-based meal. 2 quesadillas with refried beans and cheese, and a scrambled egg burrito. My mom made me a scrambled egg burrito and now whenever I have Any tortilla-related food, I think of "Through painted deserts", a book by donald Miller. In it, him and his friend have a conversation about what they would like to eat most. At first, Miller's answer is "Eggs and them flour tortillas", a quote from a song that he listened to. Now whenever I think tortillas, I think "Them flour tortillas", and the companionship they represent, as someone else is making him eggs with not just any flour tortillas, it's them flour tortillas. Those ones he especially likes. Anyway, they're tasty. I had my english and Applied maths exams today, that was pretty intense. Question 3 of the App maths paper was crazy annoying, I messed up one part of it and it quickly turned into a swirling vortex of madness, beckoning me into it's swirling void like some sort of crazed miner gazing into the emptiness of a mine shaft. Effectively, I got irritating circular maths, like this:

3x=15x/5
3x=3x
0=0

Except more complicated than that. You spend 5 minutes of work to find out that yes, truly, zero does equal zero. Thank you for that, mister applied maths paper, I had no idea. I did well on most of the other questions though.

English was allright, though I think I may have used stupid words. Or really awesome appropriate language. We'll know soon enough. 

Why is it called "English" anyway? I was thinking about this today. Back in the states we called the class "Literature". It was the same thing: studying poetry, reading and discussing books, and learning more about the written language. But "oh-ho!" You might say, "They're all in english!"
This is not quite true for our class, at least. We're watching "Il Postino" an Italian movie for a film analasys. And Shakespeare was originally Ye olde english, which is almost as good as a different language altogether. I do not say this in a "Hububhubub, America < Ireland" Sort of way, I mean, what I learn in english and what they teach is so much more than just words and why our language rox and whatnot. It's almost like a nature class, where they just say "Hey, existance is pretty cool, isn't it? Here's what a bunch of dudes said about existance. they said it very prettily, here's how to understand it." We need a new word for this class, I think, because it's so much more than English. I'd wager they study similar things in other countries and perhaps they name it after their language too. My proposed word? "Awsinium".

I wish my exam was like this. I get a page, and something to talk about, and go to town. Maybe the exam's supposed to be like that and I missed the point, who knows. I was supposed to write an article for a newspaper on why the gap year was wicked awesome, and I think it may have kinda dissolved into "HAY U GUYS IT'S AWESUM, YOO GET TO GO OUTSIDE AND THERE'S NEW PPL AND YOU EXPAND YUR HORIZONS AND STUFF 'N THAT'S WHAT LIFE'S ALL ABOUT, RIGHT?" I'm not sure though. I either did good, or bad. Not great, not horrible, not average, but good, or bad. Like I said, we'll find out!

Also, Rorshach inkblots are totally cool. Get some ink, fold a paper in half, drip some ink on that bad boy, smoosh the paper together, and BAM! Instant art form that actually looks pretty decent. 

-"My Knife, where is my knife, I kill man who took my knife" - Alexandra, a quote from my english exam.

4 comments:

Nicoley said...

Ha what you described sounds more like philosophy than English, which, btw I'm fine with as a name for the class.

Just finished Wuthering Heights. I'm kinda confused as to how I feel about it though.

I answered the Q about rights on the paper...it descended to a barely comprehensible lecture about how our rights are assured and others' aren't. All I really recall is that I didn't do too hot. I even said 'Everyone has the right to be a child'.

I then realised that makes very little sense. Kinda like a right to be Peter Pan.

Phiasmir said...

Haha, careful now, we'll get a bunch of middle aged men showing up at UN demanding their right to be a teenager again! I'm sure you did fine, you always do in english!

Nexus loves Wuthering Heights to death!

Anonymous said...

the difference of 'literature' and 'english' is you spelling of honour and colour.... and you ridiculous use of a 'z' in realise :P

Phiasmir said...

Haha, I'm bad at spelling. But neither terms were really right, in my opinion