“What Julia, you're SO smart that you simply read stuff like this?! Pretentious little…”
No no! Let me finish. I have had a similar reading experience before…when I was in first grade.
What?
I know, I know. But listen…before I was in prestigious Hood college classes, such as this one, I was in the lowest reading group in first grade. Why? Because I was small and didn't speak up much.
Nice.
But anyway...I was in kindergarten a YEAR before my town got our shiny new primary school, and instead was in a tiny school with grades K-5 (yes…with kids ages five to eleven).
Not only this, but the teachers were in a transition period between the cramped school we were at and the fancy smancy new school in progress, making the them distracted a best.
“You snooze, you loose” is a horrible saying to use when referring to an educational environment, but that's exactly how it was. Sure my teachers were nice, sure I learned about dinosaurs and how to count by fives, but I had a character trait (and still do) that isn't appreciated as much as it should be: shyness.
I didn't call out in class enough, which made my teachers come to the logical conclusion that I was slow (logically).
I was kept at a low level in first grade and never spoke up in class (because you know, I was six), and it wasn't until my father marched into a parent teacher conference, with my mother hanging nervously on his sleeve and silently begging him to not yell at the kind, young, fresh-out-of-college teacher, that I was boosted up to the highest reading group overnight.
Go mom and dad, right?! Wrong. As I said, I was six, and a smart little thing.I had it good. My afternoon consisted of twenty minutes of “see Spot run” and an hour and a half of SpongeBob and Rugrats. I now had to read “Look how Spot runs to the fence after the ball,” a painful process that always took over an hour, reading word by word by word. It was the first time I was challenged, but what was the point? Rugrats was on and it was time for my chocolate milk. (Seriously mom.)
Fast forward fourteen years (and zoom past the pains of puberty) and here I am, with the cynical arrogance of a liberal arts student. I've read Faulkner, ya know? Well then I get Paradise Lost…I look at the first page…
And oh my gosh, I'm back in first grade again…
Feeling frustrated, trying desperately to cut corners of this text that cannot be read without time, and a great deal of respect.
Respect. It's humbling reading something that is genuinely above your level of comprehension, isn't it?
Humbling and aggravating…
Because my show is still on, and I still want my chocolate milk.
