Friday, February 25, 2005
Animal Sciences Drama Queen
The first time I saw her, I thought she was that stereotypical dreary, literary type. She had just the kind of pale, lifeless face that one would assume hides from behind dusty books of 18th century sonnets and tragedies. In class, unless she was talking, she passed her time frowning at everyone she laid her big eyes on.
She sat next to me on the third day of class, when we had to bring in 2 copies of our first essay for peer critique. I cringed a bit when the teacher said, pass the copies to your left, because that meant Missy would get her hands on mine. When we started the peer critique, I heard Missy scribbling voraciously over my paper. Geez, I thought to myself, she's hardly read the first two lines and she's already got something to say?! I thought she was probably all thinking to herself how my writing isn't boring enough, not verbose enough, not tragic enough or lacking rhythm.
I was a bit relieved when I learned that the first thing she wrote on my paper was, "I like this in the 1st person, feels more personal." She wasn't as bad as I thought. Although she took the liberty to criticize me and question me a little, she managed to sprinkle in a few compliments. I was cool with her, that is until I got to this one line. I was writing about my personal feelings regarding the pressure to get into "good" colleges. Missy scoffed at my feelings, declaring in writing, "this is dramatic and unbelievable" and a whole bunch of other negative things.
Whatever. Who's she to tell me how I feel? Throughout the next two weeks of class Miss-attitude continued to grace us with her lovely frown. I half convinced myself that she was just the type of elitist literary snot to go on and judge everyone other than Shakespeare as inferior, so I didn't let her get too much on my nerves.
Then on the fourth week of class our writing teacher decided it was time for us to go around the classroom and introduce ourselves. I was half paying attention as people mumbled their names and one random un"interesting fact" about themselves. Then it came to Missy and she announced she was studying Animal Sciences. Animal what?!? I wanted to do a rewind and check that fact. All my silly theories about her went flying out the door.
It came to pass that we had another writing assignment to write two 250-word paragraphs about two separate words. In one of my paragraphs I wrote about happiness, using one of the techniques the teacher suggested (contrast). So, I built this analogy about my miserable, long nights that are like endless battles to finish my school work. And I contrasted that with happiness.
The teacher seemed to like my paragraph because on the next class she handed out an anonymous collection of four student paragraphs -- two she liked and two she thought needed improvement. Somehow my happiness paragraph made it into the collection. For once I had something to be a little happy about.
We spent part of the next class talking about these four paragraphs. When we came to happiness the class fell silent. Ok, sometimes nothing means nothing bad, I hoped. Then Missy decides to open her mouth. She muttered something about vivid imagery and then went on her rant. "I think this is just so dramatic and unbelievable!" Deja vu. That girl just won't get off my case. "I also have a lot of homework, this just so exaggerated. I have no sympathy, blah, blah, blah" she just went on and on I had to tune it out!
Reader feedback is valuable. I appreciate constructive criticism. But if someone is going to criticize my feelings, and my "emotions" or whatever shit, they need to get their head right! I mean fine, say something, but have some respect, yo!!!
Suddenly it clicked. There was this girl last year in my dorm who was also an Animal Sciences major. We had a lot of mutual friends so I just couldn't avoid her, but she seemed to be just that same blunt, impulsive type. She displayed pictures of her dogs on her desk while her roommate had pictures of her family on her desk. She'd display this utter carelessness about anyone, or anyone's problems, but if she heard about the smallest thing related to an animal she'd become all animated.
I'm going to stop before I start sounding stupid, but maybe you've caught my drift by now...
She sat next to me on the third day of class, when we had to bring in 2 copies of our first essay for peer critique. I cringed a bit when the teacher said, pass the copies to your left, because that meant Missy would get her hands on mine. When we started the peer critique, I heard Missy scribbling voraciously over my paper. Geez, I thought to myself, she's hardly read the first two lines and she's already got something to say?! I thought she was probably all thinking to herself how my writing isn't boring enough, not verbose enough, not tragic enough or lacking rhythm.
I was a bit relieved when I learned that the first thing she wrote on my paper was, "I like this in the 1st person, feels more personal." She wasn't as bad as I thought. Although she took the liberty to criticize me and question me a little, she managed to sprinkle in a few compliments. I was cool with her, that is until I got to this one line. I was writing about my personal feelings regarding the pressure to get into "good" colleges. Missy scoffed at my feelings, declaring in writing, "this is dramatic and unbelievable" and a whole bunch of other negative things.
Whatever. Who's she to tell me how I feel? Throughout the next two weeks of class Miss-attitude continued to grace us with her lovely frown. I half convinced myself that she was just the type of elitist literary snot to go on and judge everyone other than Shakespeare as inferior, so I didn't let her get too much on my nerves.
Then on the fourth week of class our writing teacher decided it was time for us to go around the classroom and introduce ourselves. I was half paying attention as people mumbled their names and one random un"interesting fact" about themselves. Then it came to Missy and she announced she was studying Animal Sciences. Animal what?!? I wanted to do a rewind and check that fact. All my silly theories about her went flying out the door.
It came to pass that we had another writing assignment to write two 250-word paragraphs about two separate words. In one of my paragraphs I wrote about happiness, using one of the techniques the teacher suggested (contrast). So, I built this analogy about my miserable, long nights that are like endless battles to finish my school work. And I contrasted that with happiness.
The teacher seemed to like my paragraph because on the next class she handed out an anonymous collection of four student paragraphs -- two she liked and two she thought needed improvement. Somehow my happiness paragraph made it into the collection. For once I had something to be a little happy about.
We spent part of the next class talking about these four paragraphs. When we came to happiness the class fell silent. Ok, sometimes nothing means nothing bad, I hoped. Then Missy decides to open her mouth. She muttered something about vivid imagery and then went on her rant. "I think this is just so dramatic and unbelievable!" Deja vu. That girl just won't get off my case. "I also have a lot of homework, this just so exaggerated. I have no sympathy, blah, blah, blah" she just went on and on I had to tune it out!
Reader feedback is valuable. I appreciate constructive criticism. But if someone is going to criticize my feelings, and my "emotions" or whatever shit, they need to get their head right! I mean fine, say something, but have some respect, yo!!!
Suddenly it clicked. There was this girl last year in my dorm who was also an Animal Sciences major. We had a lot of mutual friends so I just couldn't avoid her, but she seemed to be just that same blunt, impulsive type. She displayed pictures of her dogs on her desk while her roommate had pictures of her family on her desk. She'd display this utter carelessness about anyone, or anyone's problems, but if she heard about the smallest thing related to an animal she'd become all animated.
I'm going to stop before I start sounding stupid, but maybe you've caught my drift by now...
