MuffinMaddy

Dungeoneering (November 2011)

Thankfully we had a good lesson, she decided to be nice, and stay nice for the entire lesson, so nothing was captured. However, we used my friend's phone and there was some good sound quality. Maybe she heard of our plan Either way, I'm pleased everything went okay, let's hope this continues and we can forget the past few weeks... Not going to lie though, it felt pretty hi-tech placing the recorder at the top of a cupboard and removing it under smooth operations. On topic, it annoys me when my other German teacher looks at her fingernails, looks at her watch and texts during my speaking exams, it gives me the impression that I'm boring her, and when I do come to a close on my answer, she acts like I stopped too soon.

Yep. There are 7 people in the class. 3 of them already won't speak up. One of the three, I agree with her on that decision because she doesn't actually attend our school, she only comes in for German because they don't teach it at her school, so if I was in her position, I'd stay quiet too. The other two are silent because they're scared of her really. Another reason I probably wouldn't be believed is because a lot of the things I say always seem to come across as a joke, even when I'm being totally serious. The amount of times I'm actually serious is far greater than the times I joke, but people always seem to find a way to laugh at what I say. Either way, I will probably be the only one recording because I've just found out that the only other person that could record, (Rosie) has been in hospital for the past four days, I think she had a panic attack or something, I'll speak to her soon :/ . I don't know if she'll come in tomorrow, but if she does, I hope she has a hospital note or something, I have no idea how our German teacher will react, whether she'll have sympathy or anything, because she hasn't shown any these past few weeks. We'll just have to wait for Monday :) In actual response to this thread: It annoys me when people speak so loudly when you're trying to write something, so that you can't concentrate. Also, when people are trying to talk to me and I'm clearly not interested, but they drone on and on. It makes me sound like a horrible person, but I can only listen for so long before I start to get a bit irritated, but I try to be nice and wind the conversation down, maybe I'm too passive about it though, but it happens with a lot of people.

It can damage a friendship, yes, but only if you let it (that's if you're the person pining for the other). I'm not experienced with these kind of things, but me not being able to openly flirt with people probably helped me hide it for a while. You're right though, having it out in the open feels a lot better, but yeah it really depends on the person. Luckily, the guy I'm talking about is pretty cool with it, he's probably used to it too >.< "keeping your feelings bottled up and not telling anyone will at the very least cause you a lot of stress and unhappiness. " I agree 100% with that, it did cause quite a bit for me, I used to overthink about everything, every text I'd send, I'd be worried I'm getting annoying, it wasn't great. I used to wonder whether I was being obvious or not, whether I changed how I acted or not. The only difference is probably that I'm a bit more open with him than I would be with anyone else that I'd only met a few months before. In short, you're right.

Really? Because I told the guy I like how I felt and he doesn't feel the same way about me, but we hang out more than we ever did now, and we're still as close friends as we were before that. If anything, we're closer as friends. I wouldn't trust him in a relationship deeper than friendship anyway, so it's worked out for the better. I'm not going to lie and say I don't find him attractive anymore, but I'm really happy the air's clear. I've had unrequited feelings for him for a long time, partly because he didn't know who I was, and partly just because he doesn't feel that way about me, and I'm completely okay with that. So I just have to say I disagree with the bold bit, unless it's different from guys to girls, I wouldn't know.

I just have a feeling I'll back out of it on Monday, and I'll probably turn up to the lesson late as usual, show her my homework and get on with everything, then she'll find some reason to kick us out and the same cycle will repeat itself. We'll then go into the canteen and everyone will want to find out the latest punishments and we'll all crack jokes like it was no big deal, but it really is actually affecting our learning. Sometimes, if she doesn't kick us out, she herself will just leave us halfway through the lesson. It's just annoying on a Monday morning because we really have nothing to do for like 20 minutes. She's being paid for not doing her job, basically. There was a guy called Simon, he came over for three weeks from Germany to do work experience. It's not his job to be a teacher, he was just supposed to do speaking practice with us for 1 hour appointments during our study periods. My German teacher ended up making him teach us for hours while she went out for a coffee. She'd come in right at the end of the 2 hours and be like "Oh this is the homework. Thank you ladies :)" and act like everything was over. At the end of the three weeks we bought Simon a present (a mug with "You're the best teacher ever" on it.) When our teacher saw the present, she wasn't happy Lol. But yeah, I only really get through German because my classmates help each other out, and they're nice people. We do have another German teacher, who teaches us on Wednesdays but she genuinely doesn't care about anything. She's just as bad, if not worse than the teacher I've been posting about. I will however continue to stand up to her without being disrespectful or doing anything that is asking for trouble. I will continue to learn my vocabulary, do the homework, study for tests etc. but that never seems to work with her, she just likes fighting it seems, and then tries to push it on us and make it look like it's us who are continuing to create tension, when we actually aren't.

I seem to dream about things that are about to happen. It's really weird, they can be insignificant, or they can really confuse me. It's only been happening in the past few months, but I had to do a debate on "Religion has no place in the modern world." Although I'm Christian, I ended up having to debate against my own view, which I wasn't too bothered about. I had to work in a pair with another guy and we had like 2 weeks to prepare. A few days later, I dreamt that I was talking to him about the debate in study period, which is what I had planned to do anyway. I don't remember the details of the dream but I remember waking up thinking "Have I spoken to Henry yet? Have I not?" Another dream I had was after I was invited to a party for Friday night. At some point during the week I dreamt that I slept through the entire party. I actually went to school the next day ready to apologise to the girl who's birthday it was when I realised that the party actually hasn't happened. Is it weird to just dream of random people that you see now and then (like at school) but otherwise don't affect your life significantly?

What the [bleep]? How is she allowed to do shit like that? She's just been a senior teacher at our school for like 20 years or something crazy like that. Ever since I was in Year 7 she taught me German, and I didn't mind her back then, but my classmates used to be terrified. We'd usually queue up in a line for her to mark our work, and that would be the one time when everyone would be like "Oh no, Maddy, you can go in front of me." People have just always been frightened of her, no one has stood up to her (not that I know of) and been a successful student. Back in Year 7, I was like in the bottom class of German, and I remember how she used to pick on my friend who's dyslexic and has some other issues (I don't know exactly what it is) but her handwriting is like squiggles, and I just remember her shouting at my friend being like "It's like a 5 year old wrote it!" All I have are bad memories from this teacher, she used to like me but she clearly doesn't any longer, I don't know if I did the right thing by trying to snatch the paper from her that day, because it's like everything changed dramatically since then, and now I'm not enjoying German anymore when it was once my favourite subject... I'm more sad than angry about it all now...

A bit of sympathy yes, but also concern for whoever would be doing this. My point here would be that regardless of what the teacher has done, ruining their career (if that happened) would strip them of a job and mess up their pension, which will affect them for the rest of their life. If they are married, its going to impact on that, and if they have children, its certainly going to affect them. So even if the teacher totally deserves it, you have to think through the collateral damage to all the people who didn't do a thing to hurt you. You just need to think about these things and decide if you can live with the consequences of your actions. Thanks for the replies everyone, I wasn't expecting that much feedback. In response to Gid, I've backed down a lot and I've generally done what she's wanted, and I'm doing AS, but she gave us A2 reading comprehensions when our standard isn't that high. I also want to take German to A2 Level and there's a very high chance I'll get her again next year (if they run the course). Otherwise, I'll have to teach myself like a girl in Year 13 is doing at the moment. I'd prefer to do that but I don't think that's going to happen, since enough of us still want to do it next year. In response to Randox and the other suggestions, we had thought that we should record her, and more than one person will, just so if one recording device is confiscated, we still have the other versions. I don't think we'll risk the actual visual filming because the risk of getting caught is too high. Especially if it's one of the 'most hated' people, ie Rosie, Lydia and I. The best way we can record this is probably leaving a phone on under a textbook or something. If there are better ideas, please help. We're planning to do this on Monday morning, it's probably going to be a bit of an issue since we have an assembly, but we'll see... I hope for her sake that she doesn't do anything extreme, just something that gets us talking and helping the situation improve rather than getting her actually fired. It just seems like she's got everyone scared of her, even my mother is unnecessarily overly concerned about the tone of the letter she sent us, and how she got it delivered it First class. There is a slight bit of sympathy though, she isn't married, she's about 40 and she got left at the altar a few years ago. I remember when I first started high school, she was my first German teacher and I quite liked her back then, but even then she had a few odd things about her. Like, for every mistake we'd make in our book, she'd make us pay her money to correct them. She used to say "I'm collecting the money for my wedding fund." She was even learning Turkish since her fiance was Turkish, and then two years later, she was still teaching us and the money jar was gone, so we asked her "How was your wedding, Miss?" And she basically told us she was left at the altar... But it's been years, of course it's going to affect her negatively, it'd affect anyone that way, but surely it doesn't give her any right to treat us this way? :S We understand that every now and then people have bad days.. but jeez... I think though, that considering Randox's final point, we shouldn't act in our anger. Our emotions are probably being affected by how close it is to exams and how important they are to us. It's important that we remember the potential consequences of any evidence we gather.

Absolutely this. Talk to whoever her boss (generally the principle, unless its a private school in which case it will probably be the assistant headmaster. If you wanted to, you might also consider talking to the teacher first. That way, when you do go to the principal, you can say you tried to work it out with the teacher first, which removes most of the teachers right to be mad with you, and makes your case look a lot more legitimate. She's crazy, honestly. We try reasoning with her, being honest and doing anything she says (work-wise) but she's just mad, she'll be grinning at us one minute and then making us stay behind for no reason afterwards. We've brought it up with the teacher in charge of our year group but she has just said we should 'be respectful and do the work' which we're doing anyway... this class was entirely optional so we're obviously interested and want to do well. The headteacher is a 70 year old elderly woman, she runs my study period and she's just not that approachable in that way. My German teacher just so happens to be a senior teacher with deputy headteacher status as well

This is a slightly 'advice' needing post... But basically, my German teacher is on a massive power trip. This started a few months ago when my friend Rosie wouldn't learn the vocabulary for tests and things, wouldn't bring her text books and would generally be disorganised and disinterested in the lessons. Unsurprisingly, our teacher didn't like her much and kicked her out of the lessons a few times. Ever since, Rosie's realised there's no point in trying to fight and since she picked to study German, she might as well pull her weight and try to actually enjoy it and pass it at the end of the year so she can just take Maths, Chemistry and Psychology next year. So the following German lesson, in efforts to repair her relationship with our German teacher, she learns all the vocabulary, brings her stuff, arrives on time and gets on with the work. We all had mock exams in January and most of us failed or got lower grades than we would normally get. During this lesson, (this was a lesson we were supposed to work in groups for), the teacher randomly picked on me, and a couple of friends, including Rosie and was like "why are you chatting in my lesson? What did you guys get in your mocks?" and Lydia (a classmate) was like " D", and the teacher would deliberately make Lydia repeat her grade louder to humiliate her in front of all of us. I found this unfair but I didn't say anything. Afterwards, we went outside to have speaking practice with another language teacher, and we went in pairs, so I was with Rosie. We came back inside from speaking practice and I decided to get on with the work set for us. I realised I had annoyed the teacher earlier by chatting with friends a lot so I made it a point for me to just get on with the work and not talk at all. We started working and for no reason at all, the teacher shouts "Rosie, Maddy, what are you doing! Stop chatting!" When we clearly weren't talking at all. The class was silent. For absolutely no reason, the teacher then launched at Rosie and was like "I'd get on with the work if I were you, I have regular conversations with your dad about your progress every week. I'm sure he'd defend you though if I rang him up now" and she continued to just made snide comments like that, and at that point I was really frustrated with the deliberate embarrassment she was causing my friend, and so I did a pretty stupid thing. In my anger I wrote on a sheet of paper "She's being a [bleep]" and Rosie wrote back "She's the reason my dad doesn't talk to me anymore" and at that point, the teacher looked up, saw us writing, stood up and came to grab the sheet of paper off me. I held it to the ground and it was like a mini tug of war. Luckily I crossed out the word '[bleep]' immediately after I had written it, so I have no idea if she saw it or not. Ever since, she basically hates us but we've done nothing wrong since the lesson. She continues to make personal attacks on my friends and gave us a spontaneous sentence test on Friday afternoon. She said "For every sentence you get wrong, you have to stay an extra 5 minutes after school", and obviously with 15 minutes to learn 11 complicated sentences, we got a few mistakes and had to stay up to 35 minutes each, without prior warning before the day. That was annoying but that kind of thing just happens, so I was less 'angered' and I just took it. Then, on Monday, she tried to make us do 50 press-ups for one person having spelling mistakes in an essay which I just didn't do because I didn't feel like I should be forced to do press-ups for someone else's mistakes. Hell, she shouldn't be doing push-ups for her mistake, it's a German lesson :| She tries to treat us like we're 12, threatens to confiscate our phones and keeps us in longer than needed. She checks our attendance before her lesson and calls parents if you aren't in her lesson which no other teacher does, since after all, we aren't legally obliged to attend lessons anymore (since this is Sixth form, not high school anymore) By the end of Monday's lesson, she kicked me and a few friends out for not writing an essay which she told us was optional, and she wrote a letter home to my mother claiming my progress in German is extremely worrying at this time of year. She has also given us a 20 page booklet with comprehension questions to do by Monday and an additional 3 page listening task to complete, or she'll kick us out of German permanently. Tl;dr?: I am annoyed by power-tripping teachers.

WTF ME AND ICE?????

THAT IS NOT VERY NICE, DEO

Piff blog, Pret Best of luck with the goals and ting

When I'd be on Runescape and forget to turn off the music and one of those standard Lumbridge songs would play. Munch Bunch yoghurts and Bananas in Pyjamas. The Noughts and Crosses book series, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Books that I read when I was young, like "We're going on a bear hunt", "The man who wore all his clothes," "The very hungry caterpillar" and "Where the Wild things are"

Here is how I look at it: Saying you don't have the time is pretty much the worst excuse ever thought up for this sort of thing. It sounds like it makes sense on the surface, but the truth is that if you want to be with someone, you are going to rearrange your schedule to fit them in. So unless you know someone who is in a permanent state of being so busy that everything they do is last minute and they really don't have any free time, its just them trying to be nice. So I would take it for what it really is. He doesn't want to be with you and he's trying to be nice about it, which means he cares at least enough about you to not want to hurt your feelings and let you down as easy as he can. So I don't think you should be holding it against him, and your original plan to try and make sure things aren't awkward is probably still your best choice. At the end of the day, it's the friendship that counts. I'll try to make sure things aren't awkward, even though they won't be but I'm still going to try to get some space from him without completely ignoring him. Being too 'in his face' or trying to talk to him too much might be counter productive and I'm scared of looking in a mess or desperate but ignoring him will make me look jealous or hurt, which I'm not. I was more shocked than anything. But he still wants to be friends with me, and it's up to me to keep that going and why not? He helped me when I needed it, he's been more or less a good friend. But yes, you are right, he doesn't want to be with me and I'm totally going to try and move on and stop thinking about him in that way. This probably makes it a lot easier to do that. On a side note though, a lot of guys in my year have used the whole 'exams' thing as to why they don't want girlfriends, but they've made 'promises' to their respective 'crushes' that they might get together after exams and it seems likely enough that they mean it

I don't know if I have the right to feel this way, I probably don't and I feel a bit silly but I was planning to go and speak to the guy I like(d) on Monday and clear up any issues and say I don't want a relationship and it's cool that he doesn't want one too yadayada and make sure it wasn't awkward, but I just found out that he went raving yesterday and got off with several girls and I know he was drunk and things, and it probably doesn't mean anything but I feel kind of heartbroken almost, just because it's like he has two sides to him, it's like the "I want to concentrate and pass my exams, so I don't want a girlfriend as a distraction, but I want you to have more confidence, Maddy, because I care about you deeply" side VS the party animal, drunk "I'll get high and drunk every week for the hell of it, and I'm the popular guy that is fancied by 80% of girls in the school" side, and I don't know what to do. Should I still have a chat with him on Monday to clear up the potential 'issues' or should I just leave it and try to forget about him? Because really, he's got a lot of good sides and he doesn't owe me any good behaviour, I just feel a bit shocked for some reason...

I think this bolded part might be the most important bit of your experience. I'm happy you've boosted your confidence up and at least she was honest about it, and hopefully you'll stay confident throughout the next few years and life too. I'm probably/hopefully going to be able to meet up with the guy I like(d) next week to chat about everything, and clarify that I don't want anything more than friendship right now either. Dem exams

Banned for having an aesthetically pleasing avatar.

Yeah it's just something I was wondering about, I almost always embrace it, if the guy is trying to kiss me, but I've never actually tried kissing first. I just feel a bit like I'm invading personal space, or maybe it's because I'm shy, but the guy I like kissed me first. I was a bit too dazed to kiss back but since then I've always returned the kiss. Thanks for the tips, I'm probably going to try to find time to talk to him next week to clear up the fact that I had a little crush on him and that I don't mind not getting serious right now, since we have exams and other things to think about. I just kind of want to keep it casual and ensure we're still friends, at the least.

7 - I suppose you're right, Ezee.

DAMN YOU OUCHY. 3

Out of interest, is it okay for the girl to initiate a kiss to the guy? And is it still a case of when it 'feels' right to you?