My school experience

I rarely ever look back. I'm not one for regret, and I constantly forget things just by blinking. (I hope I'm neer in a situation where someone goes, "And where were you on the night of May 5th?" Because my standard answer is, "Oh, there's been a lot of blinks since then...")

There are some memories that I hold onto dearly though. Usually memories that have atmosphere of some kind even if they no longer mean much to me. Like what it feels like to sit listening to my record player and watching dust swirling around in the sunbeam above me. Or that time, before I'd started school, when I stood staring out the window staring at a huge tree that was in someone's backyard. It was further away than I ever walked (I wasn't allowed across the street) but I just knew it was close. It was a weird moment where I realized that the world outside was both very near and very far to me.


Anyway, so MedlyMisty has been posting up some interesting and semi-introspective posts over at her LJ. They made me think back on my school "career" as it were. This is not the first time I actually have done this. Actually the first time was for my capstone project for my CSU. While I was doing my research, I very much saw myself. It was a strange eye opener.

You know, I actually started out on the low language track? I only remember taking a test in kindergarten, and after that I think it was all on the recommendations of my teachers.

English is a second language for both of my parents (technically a third in Mom's case), and so I came into school with pronunciation problems. I ended up in ESL by first grade even though English was my only language.

Those were some weird memories! I was the only one who spoke English, and we'd play things like Go Fish. I also remember the teacher showing me how to shape my mouth for the letter "L." Eventually, once I could say "world" and not have it sound like "word" I was given an encouraging little certificate and no longer got to miss PE. Which is what made me the most sad.

As I progressed through school, I still had issues. I was in the lower track for language probably stemming from my ESL days and the assumption that I couldn't do it. I suppose at some point, a teacher decided I could do it, and fourth grade started out with me in the high track.

Now as a kid, I had no idea what the hell the tracks were. I wasn't really thinking about stuff like that. Other kids knew, and I think someone told me, but I didn't really care.

After I'd been in the high track in English for a while, it became clear to that teacher that I had issues. I didn't know what nouns or verbs were, and I was too scared to ask. And he expected us to know. But having come from one of the lower tracks where the emphasis was mostly on getting us stupids to read right, I'd never been taught parts of speech.

So I was booted out of the high track and back to a lower track (with a speech and everything from the teacher to try and make me feel better about it without exactly saying what was going on). In the lower track, we would conjugate verbs out loud as out warm up exercise. I remember my little brain going, "What the hell? Does he think we're stupid?" Only probably not in words and definitely not with curse words.

It wasn't until sixth grade came around, and I had a teacher who actually explained what the hell nouns were. She had us doing things like sentence diagrams. I found I enjoyed grammar, my teachers noticed that I enjoyed grammar, and I was on the high track from then on.

Not that it really mattered. In the end, I never realized that I was in a high track until I got to high school and was in honors English. Even then it didn't matter to me. I've never been impressed by myself. I'm just going to do what I want and like to do and taking cues from my gut on when it's time to move.


Anyway, semi-pointless and weird story about my life, lol. That's kinda what this journal is for.

Truth about myself, my story

I feel a need to write something real and honest and direct and my junk shop is the perfect place to put this because there isn't any pressure or expectations. No one but a couple of you actually read it which is why I have it, lol.

So I was doing a lot of thinking this morning, and I realize that I spend a lot of time inside my own head to the point that I can easily, accidentally, forget those around me. It's very much something I just need to do sometimes, and I was even contemplating taking a vacation from loved ones just to see what would happen if I were to stay in a hotel or something for a few days just on my own with no one I know near by.


That was when a sort of truth hit me about Ruin. This is a story I've really been working on since I was an angsty teenager. It contains a lot of me inside it, and a lot of repeating themes. In a way it had me worried because I could see it, and it was almost like that was all I was writing and all I could write.

Beth brought up the "virgin myth" thing last chapter. I was keen to explore it because it's something I recognize in my own work frequently. An innocent, usually a girl, needing some form of protection.

But then as I really got thinking about it, I realized that the theme that keeps popping up isn't one of an innocent girl needing protection. The theme that keeps popping up is actually someone being in a place she (or he) doesn't want to be in and doesn't feel she fits in, trying to survive like she's treading water.

A lot of the time it deals with someone on the outside looking in or watching something going on around them with an inability to change things.

In these situations, what can you really do? You can't control the forces around you, so your only option is to control yourself and make yourself as close to the person as you would honestly like to be if you could.

So that is the truth about Ruin's actual repeating theme.