Things that Bug Alasdair #156
Ah, Wednesday. The day when time is turned upon its head, when extended morning form time moves everything forward by ten minutes until balance can be restored by removing a chunk of my lunch hour.
And then we do house marching for half of what's left.
A little summary of house marching for those not in the know:
Boring as hell.
A slightly more detailed summary may be in order, for those of you who are still interested in reading about an item near the top of that mile-long list, "Things that Bug Alasdair".
Many schools, particularly private ones, have a house system, like the one in Harry Potter (to pander to the lowest common denominator). Unlike Harry Potter, we don't have a house where all the evil children go, though Churchill seems to be filled with all the ones who are terrible at sports.
I'm in Nightingale; Curie and Montgomery round out the numbers to the traditional four. The concept of houses is meant to instill competition and friendly rivalries in sporting events and the collection of arbitrarily distributed tokens from teachers that seem to never be given out to anyone beyond S4, which is when actual academic results become important as opposed to holding the door open twice in one day.
One of the traditional competitions under this system is house marching, when the various houses line up in pairs by order of height and walk in a semi-orderly fashion behind their respective house captain*. Naturally, this is a difficult thing for many of the young children, and the older children of similar maturity, to do on their first try each year. Thus, house marching practice.
It eats up half of lunch break for a week every summer term and then they steal a Friday morning to spirit us away to a nearby stadium for a full practice before Sports Day. I have done this same routine every year for the past 8 years and I am sick of it.
I'm sick of the music that seems to taper out once you've come to a standstill only to flare back up again for another minute of ground pounding. I'm sick of seeing the little children, whose turn it shall be in the coming years, mocking us for having to put on this desperately dull display. I'm sick of the one person who can never, ever keep in time like anybody else, thinking that if they slouch and drag their feet they will somehow look rebellious. I am sick of the other person who can never grasp the concept that once you stop moving forward, you stop swinging your goddamn arm, just like everybody else who's standing directly in front of you.
Unfortunately, try as I might to avoid it (which several people with more self confidence than I did successfully this afternoon), it is a tradition and traditions must go on until somebody is offended or somebody dies. I can't imagine anyone dying at house marching, unless the person who refuses to keep in time and the person who never stops swinging their arm are one and the same and standing directly in front of me (it comes perilously close this year), and, as much as the pupils hate it and the parents don't understand it, it hasn't quite reached the point where the school has been accused of warmongering.
And so, on that anticlimactic note, today's little tirade ends. I'll probably mention it again on Friday and after the actual event on Monday. In the meantime, you may now proceed to laugh at my pathetic problems. I shall weep.
*The post of house captain, just so you know, is one created entirely to give the impression that Sixth Years actually do something.
And then we do house marching for half of what's left.
A little summary of house marching for those not in the know:
Boring as hell.
A slightly more detailed summary may be in order, for those of you who are still interested in reading about an item near the top of that mile-long list, "Things that Bug Alasdair".
Many schools, particularly private ones, have a house system, like the one in Harry Potter (to pander to the lowest common denominator). Unlike Harry Potter, we don't have a house where all the evil children go, though Churchill seems to be filled with all the ones who are terrible at sports.
I'm in Nightingale; Curie and Montgomery round out the numbers to the traditional four. The concept of houses is meant to instill competition and friendly rivalries in sporting events and the collection of arbitrarily distributed tokens from teachers that seem to never be given out to anyone beyond S4, which is when actual academic results become important as opposed to holding the door open twice in one day.
One of the traditional competitions under this system is house marching, when the various houses line up in pairs by order of height and walk in a semi-orderly fashion behind their respective house captain*. Naturally, this is a difficult thing for many of the young children, and the older children of similar maturity, to do on their first try each year. Thus, house marching practice.
It eats up half of lunch break for a week every summer term and then they steal a Friday morning to spirit us away to a nearby stadium for a full practice before Sports Day. I have done this same routine every year for the past 8 years and I am sick of it.
I'm sick of the music that seems to taper out once you've come to a standstill only to flare back up again for another minute of ground pounding. I'm sick of seeing the little children, whose turn it shall be in the coming years, mocking us for having to put on this desperately dull display. I'm sick of the one person who can never, ever keep in time like anybody else, thinking that if they slouch and drag their feet they will somehow look rebellious. I am sick of the other person who can never grasp the concept that once you stop moving forward, you stop swinging your goddamn arm, just like everybody else who's standing directly in front of you.
Unfortunately, try as I might to avoid it (which several people with more self confidence than I did successfully this afternoon), it is a tradition and traditions must go on until somebody is offended or somebody dies. I can't imagine anyone dying at house marching, unless the person who refuses to keep in time and the person who never stops swinging their arm are one and the same and standing directly in front of me (it comes perilously close this year), and, as much as the pupils hate it and the parents don't understand it, it hasn't quite reached the point where the school has been accused of warmongering.
And so, on that anticlimactic note, today's little tirade ends. I'll probably mention it again on Friday and after the actual event on Monday. In the meantime, you may now proceed to laugh at my pathetic problems. I shall weep.
*The post of house captain, just so you know, is one created entirely to give the impression that Sixth Years actually do something.
Labels: alasdair, annoyances, rant, school
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:14 PM
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