Maybe I Should Start Drinking Coffee

Class Observation

Thursday, September 15th

Journal 3

Today was my last day for classes. I am one of few, extremely fortunate freshman who does not have class on Fridays. English was my last class today, and I honestly considered ditching class, but then realized it was my turn to take class observation notes.

I walk into class, sit down, open my laptop, and sigh heavily. For homework, each student was supposed to gather some kind of persuasive writing piece to rhetorically analyze. I had chosen an article written on a magazine website debating whether or not cheerleading should be considered a sport. Though it’s not a huge controversial topic, like slavery or women’s rights, it is something I know a lot about. I figured it would be best to analyze something I know a lot about, because I’m going to have enough trouble analyzing anyway.

Ms. Evans, my English teacher, walks around the room and looks at each person’s persuasive piece choice. She nods her head in approval at mine and a few others and then goes on to lecture for about fifteen minutes about choosing articles from “junk” sites. I don’t think a majority of the students were listening, because it seemed as though most of them were scrambling to Google an article for approval.

While all this commotion is going on, I sat at my computer and Facebook instant messaged a few people. Wesley sits across from me and continued at the attempt to engage me in conversation, but I wasn’t having it. It had been a long day, and I just wanted to get out of there.

Today, Ms. Evans showed us all a text from some kind of Mythological debate. Apparently, this fella, Gorgias wrote a persuasive piece denying all possible guilt toward some Helen lady. I didn’t pay interest to the base story, but I should have, because I found myself interested in all of Gorgias’ arguments. Ms.Evans divided the class into groups and gave each group a question to discuss. After taking way too long for discussion, every group started to stray from topic. I didn’t say much, and I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to clock to run out.

Of course all great things come to an end, and eventually class was over. Ms. Evans mentioned something about checking out a website and finishing first drafts, but I was already halfway out the door and on the high road to home.