3 Dec 2011

A disastrous Physics lesson

Looking back over my school books, I remember a two hour Physics lesson that was pretty bad for the class and teacher. Now, before I tell the story it is important to know that while Physics is on, so is HPE (Health and Physical Education), OP Hospitality, Media Studies and so on. So in the 'rare' cases of being bored or nothing to do, we the Physics students would advert our gaze to the window and see the Media students watching a movie, so we would watch it for a while before we had to work again.

Anyway, this particular lesson was really, really, really bad. Two HPE students didn't have a permission form signed, so they were placed in our class for the two hours. That itself would not have been bad, but HPE students never do any homework, or work, the only thing they do is sit there and be a class clown or find some way to disrupt the class. The two students that joined us were the worst of the lot. We (physics students) were seriously focusing on quarks, leptons, gluons, electromagnetic waves (I'm just going to stop right there...) but the two HPE students were shouting in the back of class about how pointless it all was, questioning pretty much everything and tore down a few posters. When our teacher moved and separated them into the back room and outside, it only got worse.

Here's a list of what they did within the thirty minutes before being lectured for the remainder of the lesson and sent to detention;
1) They opened the door to the back room and talked to each other
2) Touched everything in the back room
3) Knocked over stuff in the back room
4) One of them thought I wasn't looking and through the fume box raised his middle finger at me
5) Got some of the media students that were on a break to join them
6) Run to their original spots when a door was opened
7) Get yelled at by the Media teacher
8) Get lectured by the science assistant
9) Dropped a power generator (I think that's what it is called)
10) Pretty much snapped Jessie's (a boy by the way) old physics assignment in half
11) And I'm pretty sure they did even more but I can't be stuffed to remember it

So after the two hour lesson, the 20 minute lecture and the many phone calls to office, four physics students stayed behind to pack up the room and chat. Me, my friend Owen, Luke and the genius Jordan (There was a saying in our year... "If Yatesy can't do it, then the rest of us haven't got a chance").
Our teacher was upset about the whole lesson and said, "I forgot that people like that existed."
"How?"We all responded in our various ways.
"I only teach physics to the senior school. Those who choose to be here"
"Well hopefully you'll never have to see them again" I responded, really wishing that I'd never have to see them again too and then remembered that I only had to tolerate it for three more weeks.
"In England we have a system to sort students into depending on their intelligence, why isn't there one here?" Our teacher commented about the education system we have set up.
And there wasn't even a moments pause when Jordan responded,
"It's called discrimination here"
Thus there were high-fives between the four students, we said a quick bye to the teacher and swiftly left the classroom, still laughing.

Now that I'm remembering the Physics lessons, I remember what Owen used to do in pretty much every second one. He would start a fight/discussion with our teacher about the teaching method or the formula being used or something. Owen wasn't really picky about what, he just had to have some fault with it. It was pretty lucky for the teacher then that I was in the same class and sitting next to Owen. I sorted out the fights by telling Owen to back off the subject and that if he becomes a teacher, then he can have his say (and that is never going to happen).

Oh, and then there was the Electromagnetic Spectrum song that Daniel would sing every lesson and the Quark song and the Pi song and some other song or five that I will never look up (or if I do, only to terrorise people). And in our first term, we did medieval physics. If anyone remembers my first post, you'd remember that I have an aversion to ball sports. One physics lesson, we had a prac, I was taking a break from testing my Mace (Yes. A hand-made Mace) and showing Owen something on my I-pod while some of the other physics students were sitting down close by, when all of a sudden a ball came flying out of the Pinbarren (our undercover basketball/netball/handball court) and went straight into my leg. Then everyone close by heard the sound of the impact, and Owen had even inspected himself incase he was hit. 

A few moments later, everyone looked at me, but it wasn't because I was crying out in pain or on the ground or nursing a wound. They looked at me because they had deduced if they were on the sidelines, and Owen wasn't hit, then surely it was me that was hit. Instead, I picked up the ball and tossed it back to one of the kids in Pinbarren like I wasn't hit. Truth is that it was me, but I didn't even feel the ball make contact with my leg. I had been kicked/kneed/punched/had other balls thrown at me in the same spot several times, so I had grown some kind of pain tolerance on that leg. For that lesson I was hailed as some kind of demigod. As fun as that lesson was however, it ended and I inspected my leg to find a huge purple bruise. So much for being a demigod huh? It's weird though, as fast as the ball was and as loud as the impact was, you would think that I would have felt or noticed it? Or at least tried to move out of the way? I guess some part of my brain knew that the ball was heading my way and if it missed the first, it'll hit the second. I don't know though, the whole incident was pretty weird.

Anyway, I guess that gives people a rough idea about what happens in our physic lessons, and that's not even going into detail about the breaks, or the maths, or the discussions or the five people that would hover around Owen's laptop every second Tuesday during the lesson to watch the countdown for the next episode of Red vs Blue. 

Ok, I think that's it for now! Have a nice day everyone!