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| If you know me personally, you know that silence means only one thing – despair. Thus, given the almost 10 month absence of blog entries, you can guess how my new job has turned out. I had the misfortune to accept a position at a school that hopes to be a “lighthouse district,” leading the way in test scores and standardization for all surrounding school districts. Let me bring you up to speed on the way things work when you’re gunning for the spotlight… Aspiring Lighthouse District High School enrolls a burgeoning population of 1700 students, and still has classrooms to spare. We pride ourselves on our 20.3 average ACT composite score, and encourage responsibility in our students by forbidding our teachers to require too much effort or giving too many low grades. Our school mission is to ensure that our students will meet or exceed state and national standards on standardized tests such as the ACT, SAT, PSAE, and MAP assessments. Here at Aspiring Lighthouse District, we emphasize standardization in all aspects of education. Whenever possible, our teachers are ordered to deliver the same lectures and give the same assignments, including projects and exams. In this way, students at ALDHS are sure to get the exact same quality of education, regardless of the interests or strengths of either the teacher or the student. To further ensure quality control of education, we administer the same tests from class to class and year to year. This way, we can acknowledge both that some teachers are better at teaching to the test and that this year’s students are indeed smarter than last year’s. Very few teachers stay in the district more than a few years, which the schools attribute to their moderately isolated location in the far suburbs of Chicago. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the constant disrespect and devaluation of a business-like, top-down administration. After only a few months in this suffocating atmosphere of reprimands and less-than-constructive criticism, I took the porcupine's effective, if unfriendly, strategy – head down and quills out! Needless to say, I haven’t made much in the way of new friends this year… | | |
| Dearest teenagers of the outer suburban area: I feel your pain. You are lost and disoriented between the western cornfields and eastern strip malls. You are disenfranchised, disrespected and unloved. You can’t even drive yourselves to a bowling alley or a movie theater, where you might do some legal loitering. May the world pity you. Nonetheless, you strive to rise above your circumstances to a life of petty crime. I commend you on your inspiring ingenuity. I am sure that no one has before broken into unguarded cars to steal CD collections, nor will anyone attempt such a brave feat again! Please accept my hundred and some CDs as a contribution to your early morning adventures. PS – Please enjoy my Spanish-language music collection. All twenty of those discs come to you directly from Spain for your listening pleasure. | | |
| I have now lived in the new apartment for six days, and have already spent more time organizing it than I ever did the last one. Of course, one week after the last move found me on a Caribbean cruise with the family, rather than witness my poor brother’s struggle with post-appendectomy complications. Regardless, I have shelled out more money in the past three days than I usually do in three months. I have visited Linens N Things and Bed Bath & Beyond five times each, taken three trips to Kohl’s, a drive out to the nearest IKEA (40 minutes away), and made countless outings to Target. As a reward for my $500+ spree, I now have a beautifully organized bathroom and a bedroom well on its way to a feature spot in Real Simple magazine… The real trick will come tomorrow, when I rent a truck and the use of my still-intact baby brother to achieve my ultimate dream: wall-to-wall bookcases right up to the ceiling. | | |
| I have just returned, with mixed feelings, from the emotional roller coaster that was my first screening of the fifth Harry Potter film. As with most film adaptations of very involved stories, many of the light-hearted subplots had to be subtracted from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix just to make the film fit an acceptable time limit. Sadly, some of the most poignant scenes were reduced to a few lines of exposition, while the wizarding duels and action sequences were given their full due. I don't suppose I would have it any other way -- except, perhaps as a mini-series directed and produced by Joss Whedon -- but somehow the action is undermined by the lack of depth throughout. As with each of the other films, I spent the first half hour in complete frustration over the actors' refusal to replicate the way they perform within my own imagination. After that, I settled for determining what had been added, subtracted or otherwise modified until I finally succumbed to the cinematic allure. It was most frustrating to see the characters and subplots that, rather than having faced complete obliteration, were reduced to extras, references and tedious exposition monologues. I suppose, in reality, these references and cameos were meant more as a reassurance that the characters and subplots still do exist, but that viewers have to pick up a book if they want any further information. Which is what I intend to do... again. | | |
| Two hours and thirty-six minutes remain before the opening of Harry Potter’s fifth cinematic installment. While I have not been overjoyed with the bastardization of the tales thus far, I am nonetheless an uncompromising enthusiast of all things Harry Potter. Despite the very real possibility that the character will appear and act nothing like my interpretation of J.K. Rowling’s books, forever destroying what little contribution my imagination makes to the saga, I will most likely screen the new film once, if not twice, before the week is out. Ten days, two hours and thirty-six minutes stand between the general public and the seventh book in the Harry Potter series. In preparation for the big finale, I am immersing myself in Harry’s previous adventures by re-reading all six of the previously published works. I have six hundred pages to go in Harry’s tumultuous fifth year, which is contagious in its boredom and frustration. At this rate, however, it’s unlikely that I’ll be reading the seventh book anytime within the next two weeks. Unless, of course, I continue to procrastinate in packing up my apartment… which brings me to… Twenty-five days, ten hours and thirty-five minutes remain before the Great Moving Fiasco of 2007. I have surveyed the mountain of empty boxes stowed away from previous moves, and have discovered that, in the past six years, I have not stayed in any one apartment longer that it has taken J.K. Rowling to write a new adventure for her troubled young Brit. Unfortunately, I spend more time reflecting on conclusions such as these than filling any of my beautiful boxes. Mostly, I spend my time walking in and out of the rooms which need packing, only to plop down once more upon my bed and read another fifty pages. | | |
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