The Scientific Method

Dear everyone who is still reading after my ridiculously long previous post,

This one is not going to be any better. I've talked (typed? written?) about the special end-of-year events; now, I think, it's time for the basics. Despite the fact that we're all increasingly uninterested in it, school seems determined to go on. Some of the teachers are relentlessly trying to actually make us do work, explaining 'I wouldn't turn up to your house a week before the holidays end and make you do Maths, would I?' (yes, this was a Maths teacher. Surprise, surprise, surprise). Others appear to be just as bored as we are and are just relying on old Wheel of Fortune episodes to keep us mildly interested until we can all finally make our escape. Some are celebrating the year's end - in Gwen's tutor group, for example, her tutor finally came good on the promises she's been making all year and brought them in four cakes at once. Or in Mr W's case - he's been seen headbanging in his classroom throughout recess, although this isn't celebration so much as his normal behaviour.

At any rate, I thought it could be an interesting experiment, to write down what all my different and varying teachers are doing to commemorate or commiserate the year's end. I'll begin with Science, which is my worst subject, and move down in no particular order, as befits the Scientific Method (bearing in mind that I have no idea what the scientific method actually is, I just thought it sounded good. I asked Gwen once and she said 'It means trying things with experiments and testing, and, you know, not using that wacky logic they taught us about in RAVE.' I still have no idea). And so here is:

A LESLIE M. HARPER ™ LIST:

End-of-year subjects

Science

So, Science. My very favourite subject of all, if you take favourite to mean 'least favourite', which most people don't. I've had a lot of good Science moments over time. The time in Year Seven, for example, when I forgot how you were meant to label forces and drew all the arrows in the wrong direction on my test. The time in Year Eight when I had a bonding experience with Shoelace and Peanut (whom I had barely spoken to before) over a weird chemical reaction we christened 'Pudgy'. That other time in Year Eight I was boiling hydrochloric acid and nearly burnt Peanut's face off. That other time in Year Eight Peanut and I decided to make caramel with a bunsen burner. Year Nine, when I forgot to turn the gas off after an experiment involving flames. Year Ten, when Bob Dylan forgot to turn the gas off at the tap and set her hair on fire. Also Year Ten, when Falcon spilled both sulfuric acid AND hydrochloric acid on himself in the space of five minutes. And those are just the ones I remember - I'm sure there are plenty I've expunged from my memory, probably with good reason. This week was my last week of Science EVER. In our last lesson, we did experiments (during which Falcon did the acid thing I wrote about above), and, when we'd put everything back and Falcon had washed his hands enough that we were fairly confident he wasn't going to suffer significant damage, we received our grades. I got a B. Falcon got a B. Gwen, however, was being stubborn, and refusing to find out her mark. This frustrated me somewhat - she's topped the class in most, if not all, of the sciences we've done this year, and I wanted to know what she'd gotten for Chemistry.

LESLIE (L): Just go and find out what you got.

GWEN (G): Leslie, I'm busy.

L: It's not hard, you just have to go up and ask him what you got.

G: Be quiet. I'm trying to work out my unit score.

L: BUT IF YOU GO AND ASK HIM HE WILL TELL YOU YOUR UNIT SCORE.

G: Why are you so keen to find out?

(Pause)

L: I want to know if you topped Science or not.

G: I won't have done, look; if my unit score is the same as this, it's quite low.

L: But that's not your unit score! He has your unit score!

G: You know, I think I might be happier not knowing.

L: No, you wouldn't. Incidentally, you're still wearing your apron from the prac.

G: Oh, right.

L: If I put it away for you will you find out your score?

G: No.

L: Right.

(I begin to strangle Gwen with the apron).

G: Stop . . . LESLIE, STOP THAT!

(Obviously I wasn't strangling very hard, as she was still able to talk. There's something for any of the readers who are shocked by violence - then again, I know most of you, and that's not many of you)

L: FIND OUT YOUR GRADE!

G: All right, all right!

And she did. Except I've now forgotten what it was. Clearly it made a big impact on me.

And that was my last lesson of Science. Something I certainly won't miss. Possibly, we could now have a minute of silence for everyone who is going on to do Science next year. Or you could just keep reading.

Maths

For the end of term, we've all been split up into different maths classes. We go into the Maths that we opted to do in Senior School - in most cases, at least. So General students do a kind of pre-General class, Apps do pre-Apps, and Methods do pre-Methods. Trouble however, arises over Spec A & B. To the best of my knowledge, only about thirteen students are enrolled in the Spec B (i.e. double Maths) class next year, and about forty or fifty want to do Spec A. Obviously this leads to fairly uneven classes. So those who make important decisions around the school have decided to scoop up the creme de la creme of the Spec A class and stick them all in Spec B for these last couple of weeks. I, unfortunately, was one of those few. And I have no idea what's going on.

I'm not sure how many people know this, but I'm currently doing a Maths enrichment course, along with three other people in my year (Eggleston, Reedy, and Tree), which I got into accidentally after getting an unprecedented High Distinction in a test (in fact, it's the Maths test mentioned in the second half of my post 'Tales of Mocktails and the Fail Whale'). Every Friday, I sit there for an hour and a half, listening in amazement to smarter people (almost all of whom are Asian boys, Eggleston included). Recently - the day before yesterday, in fact - I had to do a four-hour Maths test as part of this enrichment process. I worked for about half an hour in total over the course of the test, and spent two hours gazing at the questions and wondering desperately about incircles and arcs and how to prove that when a circle has 2N points on it making arcs of length 1 and the points are joined in pairs, making N number of chords, N is even (I just drew a picture of a circle and left it at that). After two and a half hours I couldn't stand it any more and skipped out. Eggleston, damn him, left after an hour and a half, because he was actually finished. 'Goodbye, peeps,' he said as he exited cheerfully. I've never wanted to throttle someone more (except for the Gwen incident mentioned above, obviously).

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that you could take any moment of those two and a half hours and the the feeling I was experiencing would be basically the same as how I feel in Spec B Maths. Luckily, as I've mentioned above, it was only for a couple of weeks, but still.

As it was for the end of term and we had no set syllabus, our teacher let us suggest what we wanted to do. He wasn't that keen on most of our ideas. 'Look, you're the top class, I'm not going to let you play with blocks for today's lesson.'

Still, we've finished now - no more axioms, factorials or proofs by subtraction until next year - and unless I get into the Maths enrichment program again, I should be essentially safe.

English

Shakespeare isn't all that relevant to what we've been studying in English, but I thought I'd put his picture in as my English icon anyway because (a) the alternative was a picture of Jack Nicholson in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' and (b) it relates to a conversation I was having with Peanut the other day, and I'm not going to let her forget that in a hurry.

Let me set the scene: we were wandering around the Year 10 locker area. All the posters for Year 10 Shakespeare were up - this year, they've called it 'Freakspeare'. Peanut and I stopped  briefly to look at one of the posters - which featured, among other things, a picture of Shakespeare.

'Why are the pictures of Shakespeare always so blurry?' complained Peanut.

'Well, they're paintings,' I pointed out.

'Yeah, but none of the pictures I've ever seen of Shakespeare have been good quality,' she said.

I considered this. 'Well, there were some photographs taken of him during his early career as an actor, but they were lost some time during the seventeenth century.' (Obviously I wasn't being serious. I mean, you've probably already realised that, but I have to prepare for every eventuality; after all, Shoelace reads this).

Peanut thought about this. 'That would make sense. I did an assignment about how nobody knew what he looked like, so if the photographs of him were lost . . .'

She paused.

'Wait a second! They didn't have photographs in the seventeenth century!'

That was a truly golden moment.

Anyway, English is one of the few subjects I take in which the teacher has sensibly realised that there's no point in making us do work, and instead lets us watch movies. My English teacher was actually on Wheel of Fortune once, as was her husband (although they were on different episode). So she brought in the episode she was in - at least, so she thought. Turns out what she actually brought in was the tape of her husband's stint on the program. Which would be fine, except that they're currently going through a divorce. I've always quite liked Wheel of Fortune - at least, from what I can remember of it, I liked it - but somehow it's for more entertaining when your English teacher occasionally pauses it on a freeze-frame of her husband and makes obscene hand gestures at the screen. I think I'm going to miss high school English.

French

For the end of high school French - for some people, although not for me, their last lesson of French EVER - we made a newspaper. Each (well, both, there are only two of them) French class made one. My class contains Skeith, Midgie, and Hitler, as well as Comet, Lyssy, PC, Graziella, Ram, and S-Man (we're a pretty small class). Each of us tackled a certain part. Midgie wrote an article about music. This gave me an excuse to bring my blue iPod into class, as I'm basically the only person in the class who has any French music. Not that we listened to that much French music: whenever the teacher left the room Midgie and I would just watch Chaser videos. Still, we both managed to get our articles written in time. Mine was a film review, I wrote about the seventh Harry Potter. I'd tried to get some quotes about it from the friends I went to see it with last Sunday (something I'll write about in more detail in my next post), but unfortunately one of those friends was Vyvyan, whose idea of a useful quote (when I asked her what her favourite part of the film was) was 'OH MY GOD! When that snake jumped out and Peanut full-on freaked out and kicked me!' (and yes, that is an exact quote - I was recording it. I'm going to provide a transcript in the next post). Anyway, I did manage to get it written. Hitler had originally decided to do a cartoon entitled 'Skeith's Adventure's in South Africa' but then changed her mind and made a find-a-word instead. She was also the editor. She didn't do a lot of editing, though; at least, not that I saw. She did spend plenty of time reminding Skeith about the time he coloured his lips in with permanent marker ('It burns! It burns! And it won't come off!'), persuading our relief teacher to let us play the waka waka song over the classroom speakers, and explaining to me how the film 'I, Robot' was really a vehicle for anti-Communist propaganda. Lyssy did a gossip column. PC covered photography - he took pictures of all of us and then edited them so we had moustaches. It won't surprise anyone to know that Hitler was sieg-hailing in hers. Comet wrote up a crepe recipe. S-Man wrote a horoscope. Graziella did design. In fact, she designed S-Man's horoscope with a blue background and a number of artistically placed black splotches. S-Man wasn't overly thrilled with it. 'What's this? Did someone spill ink on it?' 

Ram had originally been going to do a review of the canteen. He surprised all of us when he announced 'Actually, I think I'm just going to try and write some French poetry instead.' I'm not sure if he finished or not, although we were all fairly keen to read some. I was, anyway. Frankly, anything is better than Aviator's poems, which is all the poetry I've read recently.

Aviator has recently discovered a talent of his for writing dirty limericks. I was with him in the library once when he showed me a page of five poems he'd written for Lyssy at her own request. I'd recount some of them here, but I want to keep a G-rated page - PG at the very most. Besides, most of them mention either his or her last name, and that would kind of go against the whole point of using nicknames. Anyway, Aviator decided to print them out and give them to her. So we printed them and headed over to wait by the printer. While we were there, a pair of Year Seven girls came over and collected several pages they'd printed out. Aviator and I waited for a little longer, but nothing more came out of the printer, so we decided there had probably been some technical error and went back to the computer to puzzle it out. While we were there, one of the Year Seven girls came over and tapped Aviator on the shoulder. 'Excuse me? This got mixed in with our printing. I think it's yours.'

The only thing funnier than her expression of distaste as she handed the poem sheet over was Aviator's face, with mixed relief - that it hadn't accidentally printed out on a teacher's printer - and horror. He handed the poems over to Lyssy and exited the library quickly, before anything else could happen (I left too, and so I can't describe what Lyssy's reaction to the poetry was, but I can imagine it).

There is a sequel to this incident: a couple of days later, I was talking to Peanut when I remembered that she was one of the few people I hadn't yet related the poetry story to. I was partway through when she went 'Oh, yes, I heard about that.'

'How? Did Aviator tell you?' I asked, surprised.

'No,' she replied. 'One of those Year Sevens was my sister.'

PE

Yes. The great moment has come. The moment I've been waiting for - well, basically for my entire school career.

I've had my last PE lesson.

There are some down sides, of course. No longer will I have the opportunity to fall off a bike in front of my entire PE class. I won't be able to run any more cross country practices, falling up hills (yes, up. If I have to injure myself, I'm not going to do it in a conventional way) and scarring my knee. Vyvyan will no longer be able to hit me in the shins with crosses. I won't play badminton with anyone, missing the serve five times in a row despite the fact that Falcon is actually standing next to me and explaining what I have to do. I won't have to go and get the table tennis balls after accidentally hitting them through the net - wait, did I write 'down sides'?

There is very little I'm going to miss about PE, from the freezing early morning changes to the moment at the end of school when I realise I've missed my bus because I had to stay behind and pack up the bocce balls, or whatever bizarre sport we were playing. For my last ever lesson (which I didn't realise WAS my last ever lesson until right at the end) we combined with another class and played soccer.

The first game I played, I was playing Klaus's team, so I just wandered around and talked to him. We occasionally took it in turns to move towards the ball when it was coming near us, and then moving back when it had been safely propelled out of range (usually by somebody else). Klaus explained to me his policy of trying to touch the ball once, on average, for each game. If he touched it twice in a game he was exempt for the next one. It was an interesting concept, and I was still considering it as a potential strategy when the whistle blew. For the second game I bade goodbye to Klaus, and went to playing Vyvyan's team. She explained to me that she had actually scored a goal in the previous game and I explained Klaus's theory to her. Not a lot of soccer-playing was done. In our third and final game, both Falcon and Wiggles were playing. On their own, they're not generally over-competitive people. When together, however, they seem to have this need to constantly tackle each other, do ridiculously long passes, and generally not get along. What made it particularly strange is that they were both on the same team.

We'd just begun the game when I noticed Sharona giving me a strange look. 'What is it?'

'Are you on my team, Leslie?'

'We've been playing together for the past three games, so yes, I think so.'

'That would explain a LOT,' Sharona said. 'I was wondering why I kept playing on the same field as you.'

Ah, yes. That's how much my friends are into soccer playing. It probably had something to do with the end of term as well. None of us are at our sharpest.

One of the examples of this, during this game, was when BBB, while attempting to get the ball as far from her team's goal as possible, accidentally kicked it so it went up and smacked Falcon in the face. He keeled over, moaning gently and rocking back and forth. We all gathered around.

'Are you all right?' someone asked worriedly. Falcon calmly stood up and brushed himself off. 'Yeah, I'm fine.'

'Then . . . what was all of that? The falling over?'

'That,' he said firmly, 'was for dramatic effect.'

And he ran off, with the ball. I happened to be in front of him, so I wandered up in the vague hope of stopping the ball. 'Go on, kick him in the shins!' yelled Wiggles hopefully. 'Really, it might be amusing.'

I would have had a go, but by that time the game had moved on.

Something else happened during that game which might have been my finest soccer-playing moment of all time, excepting that time in primary school when I was in goal (they'd learnt I couldn't play, so they put me somewhere I wouldn't have to run around much) and somebody tried to score, but they hit my knee instead, causing it to bounce off and look like I'd saved it. Falcon and Wiggles were about two metres away, each trying to tackle the other one in an attempt to score the goal. In the midst of this they'd managed to completely forget about the ball, and so I did the sensible thing: I ran up and kicked it (rather feebly, to be honest) to Tree, who was then able to pass it on. Soccer-playing history.

At the very end of the lesson Vyvyan ran up to me and attempted to hug me. Luckily I've become wise to her ways and managed to shake her off after a matter of minutes (Beartrap wasn't there to act as bodyguard). 'It's our last PE lesson ever!'

'Please don't do that right next to my ear - wait, is it really?'

'Yes! Backwards hi-five!'

(A backwards hi-five is what Vyvyan and I attempt to do after any great sporting moment. It might even work if either of us were remotely coordinated).

Anyway, never again do I have to don sporting garb and pretend to care about what everyone else is doing with a ball. Except for playing netball, of course. Apart from that, though I'm finally free.

Geography

Geography is, I think, unique among my subjects in that not only did they give us a non-assessable end-of-term assignment, they tried to make us care about it. We had to write a speech and then several groups would be selected to present. Peanut, Marie-Clare and I worked in a group of three to make a powerpoint about the people of Afghanistan (we were given the topic). When I tell you that we actually wrote our speech twenty minutes before the presentations were due to begin, you'll understand how unprepared we were.

I took drastic action on the way across to the lecture theatre and decided to pray that we weren't chosen. Not being religious, however, I didn't really have anyone to pray to. So Peanut and I created a new god - the God of Geography or, as we like to call him, the holy and all-powerful Boltssna.

Marie-Clare was perplexed by this, as was Giuseppe when we explained it to her. Klaus was intrigued. 'Boltssna? You've personified geography?'

'Yep,' Peanut told him. 'And his son's called Map.'

At any rate, something must have worked because we didn't have to give our presentation. And that, my friends, was my last ever Geography lesson. Perhaps if I'd thought to create something to help me through Geography earlier on in my school career, I'd be doing it next year. Or maybe not. I guess we'll never know.

Media

In Media, to commemorate the end of the year (and complete our assessment), we made films. They had to be 10 seconds long, have some form of twist at the end, and were virtually impossible to do. I'm sure this wasn't the case for everyone. It's just that I was working in a group of three. It was me, Apple - and Skeith. Apple had the idea, which was of someone running around, being chased by a ghost. The person running would be cornered into a dead end and the ghost would close in on them. At that point, we would cross to a shot of someone playing Pacman, and the viewer would suddenly realise that it was really just a game of Pacman, which had just been lost. It was a great idea in principle. In practice, it was a little hard to do.

Before filming, we had to find the costumes, i.e. the ghost's costume. You see, it's all very well to go 'I want a ghost to be in this film,' but what you're basically looking at is someone in a sheet. In this case, Apple in a sheet. We managed to find one in room 15 and a half (yes, it exists, look for it). Skeith got considerably tangled up in it before I dragged him, and it,  away. We were just about to begin filming when Apple objected to Skeith's appearance. 'I mean, he's been running. He has to look exhausted. Sweaty and tired and that kind of thing.'

His solution was to spray Skeith with water, something Skeith strenuously objected to. They spent a good ten minutes arguing about this, trying to attack each other with the sheet, locking each other in girls' toilets, etc. Eventually Apple got annoyed. 'OK, Skeith, we're not going to spray you with water, all right?' He wandered over to the bubbler to get a drink. Once he'd finished, Apple turned around and spat water into Skeith's face, thus giving the effect we'd wanted. Skeith didn't see it that way. I would have tried to help out somehow, but I'd unfortunately collapsed with laughter.

Somehow or other, despite numerous impediments - we couldn't find a dolly for a shot Apple wanted, so we put the camera on a wheelie chair instead - we managed to get to the editing stage. This film was actually worth part of our mark, so we wanted to do a good job (it should be mentioned that this whole project was actually a couple of weeks ago, before our grades were finished). Finally, we'd finished all but the final scene, of someone playing Pacman in the Media classroom. It took long enough for us to get our shot of the game screen - everyone else was getting annoyed by the constant Pacman noises - but then Skeith had his prima donna moment and refused to do it. I still don't know why he refused. Our pleas were all to naught. Finally, Falcon stepped in and did the final shot, which is basically just of somebody getting annoyed. And we were ready for the editing.

Editing is my forte in Media. 'Forte' in the sense that I'm not that good at it, but I'm better at it than at filming or planning or anything like that. Anyway, both Apple and Skeith seemed to think that I was better at it than them (or possibly they just weren't prepared to spend the next few lessons speeding each individual shot up by a tiny bit at a time in an attempt to fit it all in and still keep it within the time limit). Editing isn't a hard job, but it does require a lot of concentration. Which is a hard thing to get in our Media classroom.

In one instance, I was trying to find the place to fit in Apple's vertigo shot, which is the one he'd needed the wheelie chair for. Falcon had found a really small bicycle and was trying to ride it around the classroom. 'Hey - hey, Leslie, I'm staying on - no, wait. Let me have another go.'

'You're not going to be able to stay on,' I told him absently.

'Yes I am, look at this - no, the seat's too small. There's got to be a way around this . . .'

A few minutes later, and he'd found a way around it.

'Look! I have a chariot!'

'What do you mean, a chariot?' I asked, turning around. 'Oh. Right. A chariot.'

And it was a chariot, if you can call someone sitting on a wheelie chair while peddling a small bicycle in front of them a chariot. He rode around the tables for a bit then got bored.

'Hey, can somebody open that door?'

'Why?' I asked warily.

'I want to try riding it outside.'

And he did.

A focussed lot, my Media class (still, what can you expect from a class with three girls and twenty-one boys?).

It was a bit better when we actually finished all our projects and got to the point when we were watching films. Recently - actually, the day before yesterday - Jig came up to me and asked to conduct an experiment on me. Jig, too, has appeared in this blog before, but under the pseudonym of 'STUDENT 1' in my 'Not-So-Sweet 16' post. Anyway, I was a little suspicious, but agreed.

JIG (J): So, Leslie, will you give me something? Let's say, your jumper?

LESLIE (L): Um . . . I'm going to say no.

J: OK. Well, watch this.

(He undoes two buttons on his shirt before my horrified eyes)

J: Right. Now can I have your jumper?

L: NO!

J: Damn! Why does that work for girls and not for guys?

Wow, Jig. I have no idea.

RAVE

Ah, RAVE. The most pointless subject of all. Pointless, that is, unless you decide to become one of those Evangelical preachers whose only purpose in life is to make money out of their so-called flock. Like this guy.

Luckily, I haven't had any RAVE lessons in the past couple of weeks. It would be a blow to me if I had actually been studying to be a priest (I could be the leader of the church of Boltssna). As it is, I think I'll live.

And that concludes part 2 of my end-of-the-year special (now, if I can only find someone to pay me for it . . .). This year's over, and we have no idea what the next one will hold for us.

Actually, that's not true. I do have one idea about it:

So long as it doesn't contain Science, I'll be happy.