Why Teachers Should Think Things Through More Before Giving Me the Assignment

Editor’s Note: Alternatively referred to a “WTSTTTMBGMTA.” Rolls off the tongue better… the following was submitted by a guest contributor who expressly requested that I not add much of a comment here at the start other than, “If you would like to contribute something to the STP blog, then email it to me at qandc@sttimmypro.com.” I will almost certainly post it… And without any further ado, WTSTTTMBGMTA by the one and only Fizzzard (the next italic-y text was written by him too).

This essay was written for a homework assignment. The assignment was to write a five paragraph essay about what you needed to do before the semester ended to achieve the grades you wanted. Well as you will soon learn, I didn’t much like the topic and quickly changed my interpretation of the assignment to tailor what I felt like writing about it. The teacher I submitted this to has this website’s address so he may very well show up and comment.

Fizzzard
1/7/09
Period 7

“What I Must do to Get Good Grades for the Semester” Essay

According to the title this essay is supposed to be about what I need to do to end the semester with good grades. Now if I wrote an essay about that it wouldn’t get farther than “I need to do my overdue English homework.” So rather than turn in a one line essay, I’m going to write one about why writing an essay about the thing I don’t feel like typing out again, is not really possible. I believe that writing an essay about the thing I’m not gonna type out again is not really possible and if written does not produce a good essay.

The supposed to be topic of this essay fits better as a journal entry than a full five paragraph essay. Actually, one of my teachers had the class write a journal entry about basically the same topic. As shown in the first paragraph I can use one sentence to tell what I need to do to end this semester with grades I like. One sentence is probably less than a journal entry actually*, so it is definitely not enough for an essay. So maybe toss in the spare sentence “I should probably do my best in French to get the best grade I can.” but that isn’t so much something I can control as it is something determined by what happens in the class. So there we have two sentences, enough for a short journal entry**. Most likely one written while in a rush or about to go to sleep.

It is good to know what you need to do and by when but this is a history class. It seems more like something that would be done in a study hall or similar class. I think we only do all this non-history stuff in History because it’s a community class and someone thinks that freshman are too stupid to know how to get decent grades. Okay admittedly a decent number of freshman are stupid, most of them even know what they need to do. Whether they do it or not is debatable, but that doesn’t matter, they still know what they need to know, they just might not actually do what they need to. So to Mr. Self-Acclaimed Smart Guy, most of us don’t need this “help” and it just takes time from actually important stuff we could be doing. By all means help the people who need it, but that is a minority, not all of us.

The point of this small task-turned-essay is supposed to get us to do our work and get good grades. Good grades are important, but personally the more I’m told to do something the less likely I am to do it. A slight reminder of when the semester ends interjected into announcements to a class are more likely to have an effect on the listeners. I’m not the only person who hates being told to do stuff over, and over, and over again. Interesting fact, the time taken up writing this essay could’ve been used to do some of the overdue homework.

So the topic of this essay which I refuse to type out after that first time because it’s annoying to does not make a good essay. It’s barely a journal prompt at best. A journal prompt best fit in a class that isn’t History. Even in a journal in another class it still might make someone less likely to actually do the work and get the good grades. So I wrote this essay, which technically does include what I need to do to get good grades, to point out the flaws in the whole idea off writing essays about things that could not possibly be stretched far enough to make a decent essay.

This essay shall be posted on http://sttimmypro.com/ as soon as the person who needs to give me posting rights gets onto Gmail. All comments can be posted there where I will reply to them within twenty-four hours. While you’re there also feel free to read any of the other posts. I highly recommend “Wisdom VS Knowledge” located at http://sttimmypro.com/blog/?p=80 and “Are We Afraid of Technology” located at http://sttimmypro.com/blog/?p=99.*** Oh and if you wanted this double spaced the explanation for why I don’t will most likely be posted on above website whenever I am next asked by a teacher to double space something.

So long and thanks for all the fish. (Sadly forgot that line when I printed the essay and you will learn in a later post of mine why I did not just reprint it.)

Editor’s Footnotes:
*It’s enough for a tweet!
**Or two tweets!
***Also, check out the humorous and thoroughly well-researched “The Straw That… Killed the Humans” and the just as well-researched “I Am.”

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