CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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How My 7th Grade Biology Project Was Ruined

Thursday, July 06, 2006

this entry brought to you by portishead, "undenied"


7th grade science was focused on biology. Despite that TV often depicts fourth graders dissecting things, it wasn't until the 7th grade that we did-- first a worm, then, awesomely, a frog, although it wasn't alive like it always is on TV, it was pumped with formaldehyde. We also did a lot of molecular studies under microscopes, which I found fascinating. One particular project involved live cultures of paramecium that we were going to look at under the microscope. We were to take a drop of water from a bottle that was kept in the fridge that was filled with paramecium samples and put it on a slide. Then we dropped a special yellow chemical in it to help them show up under the microscope better, then sandwiched it with another slide on top. "Be careful," Mrs. Coverty said. "We ordered slides and they gave us glass ones, so they could break on you, so be very, very careful."

And 45 minutes later, a few minutes before the bell rang and it was time to clean up, I was trying to slide them off one another, slipped, and cut my finger open. It was a pretty nasty cut-- nothing that would require stitches, but it would definitely need one of those giant Band Aids, and it would probably have to be on for a few days. "Oh, shoot!" my teacher said, annoyed when I showed her. "I told you to be careful." I had been very quiet telling her about it because I didn't want my class to know I was the one klutz in class to hurt myself, and it's not as if I was very loved in that class anyway. The bell rang and off to the nurses' office I went, a now bloodied paper towel wrapped around my finger.

At lunch my friend Tim asked me what happened to my finger, and I told him I'd cut myself in science class. "Ah, so you were that idiot," he said. I asked him what he meant. He said that his science teacher, whatever her name was, had to postpone the biology project planned because "some idiot" in another teacher's class had cut himself, so now they had to wait two weeks for the plastic slides to come and no one would hurt themselves. When I cut myself I remember thinking, this isn't so bad. Yes, it was a big cut, but I was out of the nurse's office in five minutes-- it was nothing I couldn't have got helping my mom chop vegetables at home. And yet here I was, singularly responsible for postponing the project for the entire school.

Initially, I was just embarrassed. No one but my friend and I knew I was responsible, so it was not like anyone made fun of me for it, but those words, "some idiot", stuck in my head. On the one hand I understood her frustration-- she was excited about a cool project for her class, and now some idiot in another class ruined it for everybody. But those words-- I was probably the smartest in my own class, easily smarter than anyone in hers (I was in advanced science because my test scores were high, although not quite honors because my GPA was too low), and yet I was derided like I was some meathead goofing around in the back of the lass when it backfired and got hurt. Certainly, I hurt myself due to carelessness, but the words stung. I wasn't just "some idiot"-- this could've happened to anybody. It just happened to me.

As the day went on, though, I began to think about the bullshit politics of the education system. When I was in the sixth grade, I was playing soccer in PE, and was accidentally kicked full force in the stomach. It knocked the wind out of me and I blacked out. I came to, the world slowly fading from a greenish black to full color, and I could hear myself, miles away, gasping for air, until that too came into focus, and I realized I was lying on the ground, a crowd around me. Did coach postpone soccer for the rest of the day? No, he sat me out for five minutes until I caught my breath, and when I was put back in the game, I was woozy and knees weak and I really, really didn't want to play anymore, but he said it would be good for me. Another time, we were playing baseball and an aluminum baseball bat was thrown at my head, again, resulting in a black out. My coach said there was no blood and that I was fine, and I was told to walk a lap around the black top so my head would stop swimming-- and walking a lap felt like punishment to me. Hell, earlier in the year in 7th grade, although it didn't happen to me, a girl I knew named Leslie Johnson broke her leg doing the high jump while trying out for track, but the coach didn't cancel track until they could make it safer-- she was taken to the hospital by the school nurse and the try-out went on like normal.

Now, I'm not saying physical education isn't important, but I will say it's just there to keep children busy. Realistically, keeping children cooped up in a building for 6 hours just wouldn't work, so PE allows kids to work out their energy. But the "education" part of physical education is a bit of a misnomer, because there really is no learning. The individual activities that you do in PE don't really matter, so long as they require physical activity, the school has the equipment to do the desired activity, and that it is performed in a structured, somewhat disciplined way. However, individual lessons in science class do in fact matter. No one is put in remedial 8th grade PE because they didn't learn how to do jumping jacks in the 7th grade. However, a child will be put in remedial science in 8th grade if they weren't taught how to identify the human heart in 7th. But no one would suggest postponing track and field to wait for better safety precautions just because "some idiot" broke her leg.

What perhaps made me the most frustrated was that I, the person who started this whole mess, never made a big deal about it. I never went to the principal complaining that my teacher didn't take proper precautions to make sure I didn't cut myself. My mom didn't storm to the school board bitching that the safety of her baby boy was never taken into heart. All I did was go to the nurse's office and get a Band Aid. Yet here was the school intentionally neutering itself, all because "some idiot" cut himself with a slide.
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on this day last year a worthless entry, with a picture of a naked chick in it. but her boobs are censored cuz I thought it would be funny.
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with love from CRS @ 8:47 PM 

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