To Read or Not To Read

We just finished reading Hamlet in English class. It was good, but I liked Much Ado better. Anyway we did a lot of the reading in small groups. We formed groups of 4 or 5 at the start of the play and read in the hallway with those same people throughout it. Somewhere around Act II (of V) I think, I was trying to encourage my group members to focus - quite unsuccessfully, I might add - and someone suggested I read a page out loud as all of the characters. I declined, but they asked me again the next class. And the next class. And the next. Somewhere in there it turned into a whole scene, and eventually a whole act, with everyone else claiming that it had been that way all along. One day I gave in and read a page out loud, telling them that that was what they had said originally and it would have to do. One group member was absent that day, but it was the only day I imagined I would feel like reading as all the characters, and I wanted to get it over with. I did, and it went rather well, so I figured my debt (for what, I know not) was paid, but alas it was not.

The next class I was reminded that one group member had missed it, and that it was supposed to be much more than a page, and that I needed to pick a part with more characters, and that I needed more enthusiasm...etc. This continued for a while, until finally the very last reading assignment arrived. I decided that I would go for it, seeing as they were so intent on listening to my pitiful excuse for acting, and I told them that I would try again. I meant with the small group out in the hallway, so I headed that way, but Mrs. Fuelling called me back inside. She had been informed that I would be performing for the entire class. I decided to go for it, and ended up reading as three different characters and using different places on the "stage" to represent my multiple identities. There were only about ten minutes left of class by this point, so I didn't read for very long, but I must say it was really fun. I navigated the obsolete words fairly well, having had months to get used to them, and I ended up quite glad I did it. And that was the end of the faux complaints from my group, so there.

Some Fun and Out-of-Context Quotes, Part XXXVII

A few gems this time- particularly...well on second thought, I'll let you decide for yourself. Or you can read the mouseovers.

"If you pull the fish out of his hat you become the next king of England."
-Jon D. on my dad's fish hat

"I'm so sarcastic I think I'm rubbing off on you."
-Mr. Giromini

"Do you know how dangerous it is to taste the rainbow?"
-Mr. Lyons on Skittles

"It looks as awkward as it sounds."
-Ms. Sturt on cleavage furrows

"That's sort of a weird thing just to make up your own endings for tenses."
-Anonymous in the alternate form of the past subjunctive

"I remember when we were little, when Friday night came around it would be like, 'Yay! Friday night! I can stay up late!' but now it's 'Yay! Friday night! I can sleep some more!'
-Kenny W.

"The matrices are attacking! Good thing we know scalar multiplication!"
-Aaron on the seniors' Olympics shirts

"It's like killing off all the skinny people by decreasing the heat to a point where they can't survive."
-Anthony G. on using radiation to kill cancer cells

"I have to sing a song in my head to write my last name."
-Hania on being Polish

"You should try harder to be bothersome."
-Mr. Stibitz on his rewarding the juniors' nagging with paella

"Most people have life styles; I have a styled life."
-Mr. Stibitz

Irony

An interesting little anecdote for you today: I was in German class the other day and Marie said she had a story for me. She was at home and her mom had given her a huge pile of laundry to put away. She was in her closet sorting through it while talking on the phone to her youth pastor. They were discussing Proverbs chapter 31 - which is about being a good Christian woman - when Marie's mom entered the room and told Marie to "come out of the closet already!" Marie started laughing, asked her youth pastor if she had heard and told her what happened when she said she hadn't. While telling me the story she drew this artistic representation of the situation which she gave me permission to publish:

I even let her borrow my Stabilos. Which, by the way, I now have a bunch more of after going to the only store in the state that I have been able to find that carries them! Woo!

How will you probably pronounce "2010" most often?

I was curious and wanted to find out. I started by asking random people at school what year it was. They would look at me wondering if I had gone insane then answer either "two thousand ten" or "twenty ten," with the occasional "duh" tacked on. I found that a few more people said "twenty ten," but the more influential people (teachers, administrators, etc.) tended to say "two thousand (and) ten." So I asked you guys, and was surprised by how many votes I got; thanks:) Here are the results:

"Twenty ten" was the overall winner with 40% of the vote.

"Two thousand ten" was a very close second, with 37%; this mirrors pretty well the ratio between these two responses when asking people in person.

"Two thousand and ten" had only 14%, predictably; as that extra syllable is so much more work!

"Oh ten" was the penultimate response, with 5%. This is a personal favorite, nostalgic of freshman year when the IA contained the classes of oh seven, oh eight, oh nine, and ten. Not quite right.

"Ten" had only 2%. Easiest to say, but still not quite right.

Personally I'm going for the most part with "twenty ten." It's easiest to say without leaving too much ambiguity. Although if I ever need to sound fancy, I'll know how to do it.

Congratulations

Recently in Spanish class, I found out from a friend that a senior whose name I don't have permission to use (if it's you and you don't mind, email me) had managed to take over Mr. Majask's computer during class as a prank. Curious, I asked how such a feat had been accomplished, but my friend didn't know; he could say only that the senior had found a way to control the cursor from his seat for a while without Mr. Majask noticing. He suggested that maybe it had had something to do with the Pizarra Estúpida.

I had history with Mr. Majask next, so I decided to ask about it. At the start of class I asked Mr. Majask if it was true that a student had hijacked his computer, and he confirmed the story. It was not, however, SMARTboard-related; apparently the student had brought a wireless mouse with him and snuck the USB connector into the back of the computer when Mr. Majask wasn't looking. He then waited for a good time during the lecture to close the PowerPoint presentation on the screen and open Minesweeper. Brilliant. Anonymous senior, you have my congratulations.

IAtionary: End of the Year Party Test

End of the Year Par-ty Test [end uhv thuh yeer PAHR-tee test] n.

1. A test or exam taken at the end of a school year to celebrate the onset of summer
2. A way of showing demonstrating to students how useful and productive the year has been through festive use of every concept learned during the year at once; OK class, remember, your end of the year party test is next week so look over all your materials and bring some confetti to add to the celebration!

Language of Origin: Westese

In the Moodle forum "You know you're in the IA when," Central student John D. submitted "when people call the midterms and final exams the celebration of learning." West student Sarah W. responded in the following way: "lol last year my friends and i called the final exams the 'end of the year party tests.' It just makes it sound more fun...," a statement with which I agree wholeheartedly. Please people, let's bring this into common usage; how awesome would it be to start hearing people actually say things like the sample sentence?!

You know you're in the IA when...

Sometime near the beginning of this school year, everyone at IA was automatically enrolled in a Moodle course called Tri Campus Unity. The point is to get students from the different campi to interact with each other a bit and stop thinking of the IA as three separate schools. One student posted a thread in the forum with the same title as this post and asked others to weigh in with their own ways of completing the sentence. It's really fun to read and comment on, so if you have access to Moodle please go check it out. I'll share some of my favorites here, but you should definitely still go read some more. (I won't mention submitters' names here without permission, but you can see who submitted what in the thread.)

-you prefer block dude to most video games

~it's a beautiful day out and your first thought is 'Yes! I can study outside today!'

~you spend more time on moodle and zangle then you do facebook.

-you take it to the chess board to solve a fight instead of into the street

~the first thing you notice about a presentor's slideshow is that his sources are older than you

~calculator accessories suddenly become more important than fashion (btw, purple, pink and mismatched cases are soooo in!)

~you make a graph on your graphing calculator that you think is "cool"

~you sit at the computer wondering if you are really at the IA because of that TOK class that you took

-it's easier to count 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 than 1,2,3,4,5,6

~your parents schedule family trips around no-homework weekends

~you have inside jokes with your friends... and those jokes are in your foreign language

-you have a warranty on your calculator, but not your iPod

~you argue over which is better, Runescape or WoW, and factor in cost of membership, benefits of free play, graphics, quests, events, and all sorts of things.

~over 25% of your friends' statuses on facebook are in a foreign language

There's even a Facebook group dedicated to the subject now. I'm pretty sure you can see it without a Facebook account, so I won't share highlights; go see for yourself!

BTW, the ones with a tilde (~) are the ones that actually apply/have applied to me speciffically. Sad? Or not? I'll go with not.

Some Fun and Out-of-Context Quotes, Part XXXVI

So there are quite a few this time...mostly because I haven't gotten to transferring them in way too long. I think there are some gems in here though, so it turned out OK in the end:)

"The French built that wall...that was supposed to keep the Germans out...but the Germans went around the wall..."
-Mr. Lyons on animosity between France and Germany

"It takes a lot of effort to be this stupid."
-Mr. Lyons on his making careless errors

"I show up at school with a ukulele and you're still asking 'why'?"
-Duke on my questioning the motives behind his having a ukulele at school

"With all the creative arts students we have at this school, that could be a lot cooler."
-Julia on the hexagon

"When you took your midterm last year you had a soul."
-Mr. Lyons on IB Fisix

"Not if you don't look at it."
-Mr. Lyons on whether or not there will be questions about quantum mechanics on the midterm

"Shoot for the Z, Amanda!"
Mr. Newell (West) on Amanda's grade.

"I was once dared to shout 'Happy pumpkins!' in the hallway."
-Veronica B. (West) on Physics.

"There's a donut here. It's green. It has sprinkles."
-Ms. Sturt trying to convince the West Science Olympiad team to eat the
last of the donuts at the Tri-campus event.

"Ooh, an antelope!"
-Ms. Fleury on World Literature random-ities.

"Why is it upside down?"
-Kyra on an emission spectrum diagram, which is supposed to be drawn differently from an absorbtion spectrum diagram

"An IA student is more likely to die from stress from finals."
-An anonymous senior on tornado drills

IAtionary: Big Boom Bomb

Big Boom Bomb [big boom BOM] n.

1. Any nuclear weapon; Many argue that it was wrong to drop big boom bombs on Japan, but every mushroom cloud has a silver lining: look at all the lives it saved!

Language of Origin: Majaskean

A while ago in history, we were talking about the Potsdam conference where Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb. Stalin was not very surprised to hear the news, as he had spies in the Manhattan Project, and Truman thought that he did not react because he had not understood the implications of the new weapon. Mr. Majask did an impression of the conversation, basically consisting of exaggerated mushroom cloud hand motions and saying to himself, "It goes boom! Yes, I know. No, it goes BOOM! Yes, I understand. No, I mean it goes BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" It was entertaining, but according to Wikipedia the exact words Truman used were that it was "a new weapon of unusually destructive force." Bo-ring. Anyway, this alliterative phrase came about a bit later, and I believe Kyra might have been involved in its suggestion, but I can't be sure of that. I like it and I plan on using it in history class from now on. Anyone else care to try?

Crossword: Answers

OK, time's up! Here are the answers to the crossword I drew on the whiteboard in fisix before break. If you haven't had a chance to try to solve it yet, click here and don't read on! Sadly, no one managed to email me all the answers correctly, so there is no hall of fame:) Anyway, here they are:) (Click to enlarge)


I had more spare time in fisix today and tried to draw a word search, but it turns out you need a grid to do that; you can't cheat with half boxes and such as easily. I'll try to think of something else for next time.