A Farewell to...English 9
(In this series of articles, Senior writers of the Flash will write about something in high school at Immanuel that they miss or will miss.)
English is the worst. That is grammar and vocabulary are the things I am worst at, and the fact is, I just find all of that boring. I feel as though Prof. Lau understood that, but didn’t care at all. I still had to suffer through diagramming sentences and learning that people put the weirdest pictures in vocab books. This is not the part that I miss, and trust me, I never will miss that. No, the part I’ll miss is that even through all of that, I still loved going to English 9 every day. No matter what we were doing, Prof Lau always had a smile on his face, and a pun loaded and ready to say at any time. Once we went away from the boring part of English, I became that much more hyped for class. I have some of the fondest memories for the stories in that class, ranging from how The Most Dangerous Game where the most important lesson was, that if you smoke, you will fall off a boat. Or screaming “puppy biscuits” at random times because of Walter Mitty. The stories were fantastic, the teaching was excellent, and my class was, as always, hilarious. Then there was Romeo and Juliet. For those Freshmen reading this article, I have a simple fact of life. Romeo and Juliet in English 9 is either the funniest part of Freshman year, or the most awkward (you will see why when it comes). Again, Prof. Lau used his unparalleled skills for making seemingly boring things entertaining. I had never read Shakespeare before Freshman year, but now I have used some of my precious free time to read some of his plays because of how much I enjoyed Romeo and Juliet. Then there was Great Expectations, an entire quarter of listening to Prof. read a book, and then watching a movie of the book Prof. just read. Not exactly a high point in the year. Now, this was probably more boring for me than most in the class due to the fact that I read the book in three days, and just sat in my desk wondering if the entire class was ever going to finish it. All in all, not a bad book, but when hit over the head with it for a quarter, it loses its luster. There are many more memories that I could have written about, such as the failure of a certain “Pip’s Rap,” and what it felt like when, for eight weeks straight, our entire class averaged over a 100% on vocab quizzes (a record that appears nigh unapproachable). In short, the simple message I am trying to relate to you is, cherish every memory. Cherish all the good, the bad, the seemingly ordinary, and especially the ones that brought you closer to the people who you will spend the entirety of high school with.