I used to get yelled at constantly for reading in school. My math teachers were really pissed. Weird, right?
Actually, my english teachers yelled at me too. I’d always finished the book they assigned and moved on to something else. And they really wanted me to re-read along with the class. I didn’t (and still don’t, truth be told) see the point. All they did was get me in the habit of re-reading a section once I finished it, which I sometimes do to this day. It slowed down my reading considerably, but it does come in handy when I’m editing what I’ve written. So, I suppose in the long run, this did serve a purpose, although perhaps not the one they’d intended. (They were always talking about working with the group, which as a writer/blogger, I still have limited use for. I always wanted to tell my teachers, “Well, let’s all be a group and compromise, then. I’ll try to slow down if the rest of you hurry the hell up!” I had a wee bit of a temper in my youth. While I never actually said that out loud, I did get in trouble occasionally. I never got in fights, or anything, but I forgot and ran in the hallway sometimes. I actually picked up a Sherlock Holmes book for the first time during lunch detention. Everything led back to books for me.
Math is a different story. At twenty-five, I still haven’t had a single day in my life where I thought, “Oh, thank the Lord I took all that algebra!” I know I will at some point, now that I’ve said that. That’s how these things work. You curse your high school, and, next thing you know, some dude in a ski mask has a gun to your head and says, “Alright, listen up! If you can solve for X, no one gets hurt!” That’s Karma, I guess. Until that happens, I’ll probably go on wondering how much more I might have learned if they’d just set me loose in the library and left me alone.
theoccasionalmeatcleaver 