Domingo 8 Jun 2008, 0h:38

I don't want to do my English creative writing story at the moment. This is all I have written:

The world moved beneath his outstretched fingers in a psychedelic swirl of earthy hues as he exhaled briefly, channeling all his concentration with his eyes shut. The sphere spun and whirred while the tip of his index made contact – he traveled over the Swiss Alps, past the scouring sands of the Middle East, skipped Everest in a heartbeat; the Great Wall, Shanghai… and the orb ceased motion, quivering in a frenzied silence.

I asked my brother to read it, and being the great big brain-dead neanderthal he is, he drawled in an equally brain-dead voice (a tone in which he believes is masculine, a tone in which I think is the epitome of intellectual light-weightedness),
"Uhh, I don't get it."

Well maybe no one does, but hey. At least I tried. These days, English and studies in literature isn't about self-expression. Did you think it was ? Well I'm here to tell you otherwise. To get marks, you have to exhibit the stylistic techniques and prowess of a freakin' FIFTY YEAR OLD in order to target the person who is reading your work, a freakin' FIFTY YEAR OLD.

How can you expect an immature high school student to mimic that of a 50 year-old writing damn memos to themselves to curb the rate in which they lose their memory?

How can you expect the very spotty, very average, very vain and ridiculously narcissistic to write in-depth analyses critiquing the downfalls and vices of our society?

Speaking objectively, the perceived *majority* of people my age say to themselves before they go to a party,
"Tonight, I'm going to drink so damn much I'll throw up in the mailbox."

They decide that they love their boyfriend Bazza so much that after three months of sucking face they wanna TAP THAT, but think buying condoms would be so embarrassing.

Personally, I feel as if people who have mindsets like that should have regulations passed against them in order to make it illegal for them to reproduce and bring up offspring who will have the same ignorant ideologies implanted within them at a young age, but it's impossible to police. What a shame.

A shame that the worst minority is taken as consensus. Has it ever come across an adult's mind that a teenager can be evocative, emotional, well-developed or pertain the ability to express oneself in a succinct and direct manner?

Obviously not. I get stereotyped all the time, and the worst one isn't the "cheap Asian" one, it's the "dumb, uninformed, lewd, loudmouthed teenager" one.

Bottom line: At the end of the day, if English teachers didn't restrict their marking parameters to only prizing works that show maturity and insight, they've conned themselves into believing that they'll have to force themselves to mark whole bunch of stories that would be written about teen angst, emo-ism, Bazza the boyfriend and getting wasted on Saturday night.

So fair game - it's hard writing like a 50 year-old since I admit I don't have the mental capacity to do so and I'm sure it's just as equally difficult to read essays and short stories 4LL WRi++3N LyK Di55 LOL :)

But then again, I haven't actually read a good book penned by an adult author that convincingly brings the teenage mindset to life.

And for this reason, because English teachers can't reciprocate the hormonal tidal goings-on of the teenage psyche, they likewise shouldn't expect us to capture the mid-life crisis melodramatic antics of overweight, whiny down-and-outs.

Game on! Calling all teachers of literature, make my day and comment away.