Writing Themes, taught by Mrs. Graber, is one of the most annoying classes I’m in. For one, the discussions, once Mrs. Graber gets her two cents in, begins to sound like a strip club conversation, "Sex! Sex! Sex!" She has a tendency to pull that stuff out of thin air, and it really shines red light on her, as it thus far has been the main thing she has added to the conversations. It has caused such a distraction in the class that we come into class asking each other, "Where will Graber see sex in this story?"

For example, we read a poem that says (of course it means something else, this is poetry after all, the ambiguous speech of the literary gods) something like how to take care of and use a gun (for war) with each stanza ending in thoughts of life and spring. It’s an entertaining, though bittersweet, poem about the wandering thoughts of a young man before he goes off to fight in the Second World War. So we go through the conversation, and Graber lets it take its course for a while, but decides we aren’t seeing the real meaning. “Obviously, this is about the thoughts of a young man thinking of sex.” The collective response was “What?!?” For everyone, it was obvious someone had something on the brain. She went on to say where she got this idea, saying “cock,” as in “cock the gun,” (used as a verb) was, well, you know. This site is just about to be caught by filters already. With this “cock” was a statement of moving back and forth, which again can be deciphered. As we shook our heads in wonder, she continued her recitation of what led her to her interpretation, interrupted by her giddy laugh every couple sentences.

Another irritating thing in her class was the entire poetry section in itself. I loathe poetry. Luckily, only 1/3 of the entire class dealt with it, yippee. Poetry is so annoying; you have a speaker, who isn’t the poet, but the poet decides what the speaker is saying, but it is still the speaker’s ideas. It is also the form of expression where you can break all the rules of the English language and be called a genius. Another thing I hate about it is when they say some author “experiments” with poetic form. That use of “experiment” just irritates me. Experiment is something you do in science, or at least with drugs. While these writers were often choked to the gills with drugs, you still don’t “experiment” with form. Say they tried out a new form, but not experiment. Please.

Okay, the topic of my discussion… ah yes, we’re at poetry. We then must write papers interpreting what the poem says. Remember, this is the ambiguous language of literary gods, and the literary gods always mean something other that what you think; that is why it is impossible to get a perfect score on a paper in this class. You write a four page paper on your interpretation of what a single poem means, expending so much time trying to figure out what the heck this doped up writer is talking about, and then get your paper scribbled on by her illegible writing saying, "I don’t see where you get this interpretation," meaning of course "Your paper is crap, I cringed as I read it." You then spend countless more seconds, hey, we’re busy guys, revising and retyping, or simply scrapping the whole project and starting anew, trying to appease Graber with our futile and hopeless efforts. The smart people were separated from the really smart people (you have no hope if you lie outside these preceding classifications) by how quickly you figured out that she doesn’t want your interpretation, but really a restatement of her viewpoint.

Anyway, we turn in the papers, and two or three weeks later we get them back with a lot of new illegible writing, with things like “I still don’t see where you got this,” and “The assignment was 1000-1200 words, not 100-120.” She’s just so demanding.

There are other problems with her class, like how she expects us to work. Every once in a while, we have quizzes, which are really annoying. For example to be continued…