Frogs and Vocabulary

So, a couple of interesting moments today...

First of all, here's a rundown of my classes just for kicks:

1st Period: Personal Choices:

All right, I'm sure some of you are scratching your heads on this one. Well, you're not alone: I've had to explain quite a few times what exactly this class is about. No, it's NOT about making a PERSONAL CHOICE of whether you want to stay in this class or not. No, personal choices has to do with communication skills and the decision-making process... and we watch a lot of LIFETIME movies. Okay, so we've only watched two: one I actually liked a lot, the other not so much. But you can't like them all, right?

2nd Period: Geometry 2:

If there's one good thing I can say about this class, it's that it's INFINITELY better than Algebra II. If you didn't read the article on "Rodney's" Blog, I HATE ALGEBRA 2!!! Polynomials, absolute values, radicals, OH MY!!!

3rd Period: Auto Maintenance:

This class is alright, but not my favorite. Most of the time we sit at the computer and watch videos to answer questions on these assessments. Although we did have an actual lab assignment last month, taking apart an engine and putting it back together. Man, that was a hard assignment (do you know how many parts a simple engine has?)

4th Period: Special Needs P.E. (Teacher's Assistant):

Okay, you probably remember me mentioning this on my last post. Now, being a teacher's assistant in P.E. is, in my opinion, BORING. No offense to anyone, but I'd rather be playing hockey in the gym rather than "motivate" the players to hit the puck when it comes their way. I know I'm doing a great thing for these kids, but as great as it is, I just don't enjoy it that much. However, we TA's DO get to join in with the regular students and play games sometimes, and that's fun. Oh, and every Friday we get in swim in the pool for the whole period!

5th Period: Sophomore English:

This is probably up there as one of my favorite classes. One gripe I have, however, is that in class, when we read a novel, we analyze the crud out of it. I mean, really, we have to do TONS of worksheets on the novel we're reading. The thing is, I actually enjoyed the first book we read ("The Contender", by Robert Lipsyte), and I'm enjoying the second one we're in the middle of right now ("Flowers for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes), but I'd rather just read the book than analyze it to death while doing it.

6th Period: Biology:

This is another cool class. Our sixth period class is doing a project on Snake Lake (a nature center just across the road from my school), and we were part of a video conference last month, with four or five other schools. Not only that, but we also have some animals in our classroom and in an aquarium out in the hallway, including salamanders, frogs, fish, and turtles. I get to feed them all, too (I'm the official animal feeder)!

... now, you're probably wondering about the title of this post. Well, today in Biology, we got to do the classic science experiment: dissecting a frog. Here were my thoughts while doing the experiment:

• "Wow, that frog almost looks like a rubber play toy!"
• "Ugh, what's that awful smell? It smells like wet paint!"
• "Wait, that's the FROG I'm smelling?"

... and that's before we started dissecting the thing. When we got to see it's insides, let's just say we saw plenty of organs... but no pianos.

(ooooh, bad joke...)

Just one period earlier, we had 10 vocabulary words in English class. Our assignment was to come up with a situation using at least 5 of those words, then ACT IT OUT. So, here's what I wrote (I bold-formatted the vocab words...)

Jim is the ecstatic affiliate of the portly, pompous Rodney. The affiliate is invariably in proximity with Rodney, and unintentionally encumbers his close affiliate. Life just isn't plausible for Rodney.

Oh, and MAN, you should've seen the show me and Oleg (the classmate I was partnered with) put on with that. Oleg's kind of a dork, so I thought he'd be good as the ecstatic affiliate. I was the portly, pompous affiliate, of course.

That's all for this post!