Apathy Jack writes:

Seniors have left...

...

“Remember, in the candle-lighting ceremony, you’re to burn all of your classmates that I don’t like.”
“Right. Should I start headfirst, or at the feet?”
“Hmm, good question. Start with the feet; burning longer is funnier. Of course, there are a lot of them, so if you run out of time, move to the heads.”
“Yes Sir!”


I don’t know these ones as well as I knew my old ones, but it’s nice that I have a few who understand me...

...

Chatting with a couple of my Year 12s who were back to do some study.

Year 12 “It’s not fair that the corrupt classes got the top three places in English.”
Me “What do you mean? Second and third places went to people in this class.”
Year 12 “Yeah, a corrupt class where the students are feral and don’t do enough work, like the class of the girl who came first. I mean, look at (and here she named Josh’s partner) – she’s like, the hardest working English teacher, and the students in her class always do heaps of work. It should have been someone from her class.”
Me “There’s some merit to that thought. Of course, you lot didn’t need the same approach as hers. You’re all halfway on the road to being geniuses, so you could be afforded some leeway; you didn’t need to have your heads down at every point.”
Year 12 “Hey, we’re halfway to genius!”
Me “That’s no guarantee you’ll get there, of course.”
Year 12 “But if we’ve gotten halfway already, we can get the rest of the way.”
Me “Not necessarily. Have you heard of Xeno’s paradox?”
Year 12 “No.”
Me “Get comfortable...”

...

It was this same couple of Year 12s who read the (to them) bizarre message in the Christmas card given to me by a departing Year 13, and said it didn’t make sense. I pointed out to them what, the more I think about it, is one of the most important lessons I have found in The Teaching:

“She makes perfect sense. She just doesn’t make the same sort of sense that everyone else makes...”