(no subject)

Conversation w/ 'rents earlier tonight (last night?), while watching The Fellowship on cable (not that we don't have it-- but it was on tv anyway, so of course we picked it up in the middle).

**Legolas starts to pick a fight with Boromir at the Council of Elrond**

Me: Legolas didn't really have much of a character in this movie, did he?
Mom: No. He looks pretty.
Me: Yes, he does, doesn't he?
Mom: That's his job in the whole thing.

**we turn simultaneously back to the screen to stare**

Dad: This is payback for me flirting with your mother outrageously in front of you earlier, isn't it?
Me: Yes. Quiet Dad. Pretty boy watching now.

teachers & teaching methods that stick

"I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada."
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer

School: Well, had first day of winter quarter today. No PoliSci, but there was Psyche 1, English/writing 2, and Lit:Shakespeare.

I think my lit teacher's gonna be good. She seems nice, approachable, looks to be intelligent. Probably is fun in class.

My EWRT-2 teacher I'm not sure about-- she was very softspoken; had a hard time getting a solid first impression of her. But I think I'm going to like her cirriculum, so that's good.

Now, my Psyche teach-- I know I'm going to like him. I already do. He came in with a very Season1 Giles-y suit jacket, but when he opened his mouth that impression faded fast. He's a loud, confident speaker, and has the kind of sense of humor I enjoy listening to in conversation. I think his class will be hard, and I can tell already he's going to be quite strict to his rules, but he doesn't have a lot of rules so it won't be a big thing to adhere to them. He's the kind of teacher who doesn't take shit from his students, but talks/lectures in a way that makes his students like him. If he's the same the rest of the quarter that he was this morning, I'm going to have a lot of fun in his class.

He actually reminds me of an older, male verison of my 11th grade English teacher (who quite being a lawyer a mere two years before). I've noticed stuff like this before-- the teachers that impress me the most on day or hour 1 usually end up being my favorite throughout. And they're all of similar type: quick, witty, knowledgable, strict, thorough, funny, and v. much in control of the classroom.

I had an AP english teacher last year that-- for however nice, smart, and well-trained she was-- had no concept of how to run a classroom. We walked all over her. Some teachers seem to have this impression that "Oh, you're the AP students, you really must care about learning." Well, yeah, we like to learn. But we were also a bunnch of bored teenagers, and no matter how much we liked analyzing literature and arguing about it, there was no way the collective "we" wasn't going to talk our way out of doing anything hard if we had the chance. And our teacher spent so much time talkign about what we were GOING to do, that we never got around to DOING anything.

At first it was kinda fun, not doing much in class, but soon it just got boring. AP English became my super-easy class, in everything except the reading assignment.

This teacher had her own teen children (one of which I was sorta aquaintance-friends with), so you'd think that raising them and years of teaching would give her some insight into how to handle a classroom. But she was terrible. And it's really sad to know that you have a wonderfully kind & fair person who loves their job, when really they suck at doing it. It was one of the few times I've had a bad teacher who was bad because she was too nice, not because she was mean or unfair.

What do guys think makes a good teacher? For the ones who are long graduated-- do you remember what it was that made the good teachers stick out in your mind, over the bad teachers?

icon madness

Well, I've got some new icons. The legolas icon, which you see here, is one I made tonight. My first Lord Of The Rings fan art. The caption is just what his face seemed to be saying to me (increduility)... I considered several variations on the same theme, then just went for something simple. And plus, its a nice pun, because who wouldn't want to? If someone wants the icon, they can have it.

The other one is a Spike icon I picked up, that someone made as part of a group, to the lyrics of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" on buffy_icons.

I now have about 50 icons saved that I haven't used yet. I love them all though, and want to use them all, all at the same time. I know that would not leave much space for actual writing in my journal--- but who needs to read my journal anyway, when they could spend the whole time look at Buffy icons, 89% of which are Spike-centric?