kkscatnip

Man, the whole "starting to write journal entries again" thing is harder than I expected it to be. I really have gotten into the habit of closing up completely when bad things happen or I am feeling bad; it is going to take some working for me to start opening up again the way I used to.

( ramble ramble ramble )

In other news, I have started using Plurk again. Does anybody else here use it?

I'm reading a book called Blind Passion by Penny Brandon, and I'm having a lot of trouble reading it because it's just boring. I can see what the author is doing, but the delivery seems to fall flat.

And I think it's because of the way she keeps switching POVs to let us know what both the characters are thinking. The story is less compelling when there's no unknown factor, and it also takes the focus off of a certain aspect of the story and places it on every aspect and that's just too... unfocused.

It really sucks, because the author is a good author and the writing is technically good and the editing is good so far, but like-- the story can't hold my attention, because I can't figure out what story is trying to get told and I feel like I know everything that's going on in it. There's no conflict or anything yet, either, which makes me D: because I think that might perk my interest despite the lack of an unknown quantity.

I guess it's just a good lesson for my own writing, about story-telling and making sure I know what story I'm telling and telling it in a compelling way.

My fever when I woke up this morning was near 100 and after Advil has gone down exactly a degree. My normal temperature hovers around 97.8-98.0, so you can go ahead and add half a degree for a more accurate reading of what my temperature is making me feel like. (Urgh, I'm getting all migrainey too, which means even typing is loud and I have tinnitus going on above that.)

My mom also runs a degree lower than normal, too, so it's not just me. My brother's temperature is pretty normal, though, but then-- he doesn't share the low-blood-pressure problem that my mom and I have either.

Blaaah feel like shit. Okay, time for discussion/introspection; I'll start with a statement: I'm not a going-to-school type of person. Let me say first that I did well in grade-school, and mediocre in middle- and high-school. I was in the gifted program at every school I attended; it was not doing the homework that made me get mediocre to completely dismal grades.

But I did not graduate highschool. This is partially due to my getting sick for eight months during my senior year, and my teachers recommending that I just get my GED, but there's more to it than that. Even before that, I didn't get the best grades, although I was obviously smart (on both Academic Quiz Bowl and Academic Decathlon teams) because of the reason already mentioned: the second I was outside the classroom, I lost interest in my studies.

I just plain didn't do my homework, unless the homework was just reading. I read every single page of every text book I had from middle school on up (although not always when I was supposed to be reading such-and-such page to such-and-such page, because usually I was past that point already); my thirst for knowledge was that strong. I always did just fine on tests, though, heh.

So it's not that I don't want to learn things, because I do. I enjoy learning things so much that I still have a sort of hungry thirst for information. It drives me to do things like read 400-page books on the Ottoman empire or on Healing With Water or on whatever other subject happens to take me while I'm at the library or online ordering books.

But I don't enjoy learning at other people's paces. It's not that I think other people are stupid, because I don't. I know plenty of other people who are quite intelligent. It's that other people can't hyper-focus and devote eight hours in a row to nothing but avidly reading a book.

And I don't enjoy getting tested/graded on how well I "learned". It's not that I don't do well on the tests-- I do, pretty uniformly, actually-- it's that I think the idea of grading students on their performances discourages the performance as a rule. It's for these reasons that I gave up my dream of becoming a teacher in the traditional sense and dropped out of college.

One of the books I'm reading right now is called Land of the Spotted Eagle, by Luther Standing Bear. It's an auto-biography, but it's fascinating because it details the life of someone raised in a Native American environment not on a reservation. I'm going to type up some choice passages from the book, regarding his early education (and education in general in the Lakota tribes of the time):

[Lakota] education could not be confined to a certain length of time nor could one be 'finished' in a certain term of years. The training was largely of character, beginning with birth and continued throughout life. [...] There was no 'system' no 'rule or rote,' as the white people say, in the way of Lakota learning. [...] Children never had to 'learn this today' or 'finish this book this year' or 'take up' some study. [...]
Never were Lakota children offered rewards or medals for accomplishment. No child was ever bribed or given a prize for doing his best. [...] The achievement was the reward and to place anything above it was to put unhealthy ideals in the minds of children and make them week. [...]
In the course of learning, the strength of one small mind was never pitted against the strength of another in foolish examinations. There being no such thing as 'grades' a child was never made conscious of any shortcomings. I never knew embarrassment or humiliation of this character until I went to Carlisle School and was there put under the system of competition.

I'm not entirely sure I'm getting across what I want to get across but--

I'm not a going-to-school type, because I'd rather learn the lessons as life sees fit to teach them, rather than as whatever ideal the professor/state/federal government decides is best to teach.

Not to knock those of you who are going-to-school types, because somebody needs to or there'd be a shortage of doctors, nurses, teachers, et al, but it's just not for me. I toy every so often with the idea of going back, but I always end up at the same conclusion: even were I to maintain enough interest in my classes, I would be limited to what I was supposed to learn and nothing more and I just don't want to live that way.

/end ramble