Disappointment Galore
Oct. 20th, 2007 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
niriniaThe Norwegian school system has always been a disappointment, from the moment I learned how to read, multiply, divide and conjugate "to be", I have been disappointed. Talent is a thing to be shunned, it is scary, appalling even, and must be handled accordingly. Boring my way through conjugations I had known by heart for years, I told my teacher so, and spent my final year of primary school English classes playing silly games, alone in a computer lab.
When I was miserable, for the better part of primary school, no one saw a thing. I did my best to conceal it, but I cannot have been that apt. They must have seen the girl in the corner, and what went on behind the smiles. No doubt, I was an insufferable know it all, I was the teachers' pet and used words bigger than I was, but someone must have seen something. I sat through parent-teacher conferences, withdrawn and lying with a straight face. Everything was fine, perfect, absolutely "honky-dory". What kept me going through mundane classes was the thought of Upper Secondary, where I was sure people would be interested in the classes they took, there would be challenges and interesting conversations. Need I say I was hugely disappointed?
I would love to know the number of mind-numbing exercises I have done over the course of my schooling. Progress comes, inevitably, and it is on to Upper Secondary. A year and a half of boring English classes, the first year with a marvellous teacher, sadly intent on teaching me how to conform, the half of the next with the worst I have yet encountered. It ended in me taking two years worth of English classes in one, with promises of University-level English thrown around.
Imagine my rapture, someone saw my need for a challenge, and took it to heart. I had the most fun yet in those six months of classes, and stunned an examinator with my knowledge and locution. Again, inevitably, I am disappointed, those university lectures I was promised seem to have evaporated somewhere along the line, and I am stuck doing nothing. If I ever have children, there is no way I am putting them through the hopeless educational system in Norway.
When I was miserable, for the better part of primary school, no one saw a thing. I did my best to conceal it, but I cannot have been that apt. They must have seen the girl in the corner, and what went on behind the smiles. No doubt, I was an insufferable know it all, I was the teachers' pet and used words bigger than I was, but someone must have seen something. I sat through parent-teacher conferences, withdrawn and lying with a straight face. Everything was fine, perfect, absolutely "honky-dory". What kept me going through mundane classes was the thought of Upper Secondary, where I was sure people would be interested in the classes they took, there would be challenges and interesting conversations. Need I say I was hugely disappointed?
I would love to know the number of mind-numbing exercises I have done over the course of my schooling. Progress comes, inevitably, and it is on to Upper Secondary. A year and a half of boring English classes, the first year with a marvellous teacher, sadly intent on teaching me how to conform, the half of the next with the worst I have yet encountered. It ended in me taking two years worth of English classes in one, with promises of University-level English thrown around.
Imagine my rapture, someone saw my need for a challenge, and took it to heart. I had the most fun yet in those six months of classes, and stunned an examinator with my knowledge and locution. Again, inevitably, I am disappointed, those university lectures I was promised seem to have evaporated somewhere along the line, and I am stuck doing nothing. If I ever have children, there is no way I am putting them through the hopeless educational system in Norway.
