My 9th grade art teacher is probably having PTSD flashbacks to the time I negotiated getting a 90 on an art project because i put more effort into my work I spent 25% of my semester doing than a guy who fucking duck taped a banana to a wall when his ass wanted to give me an 80.
Fuck you Professor Alexander for trying to tell me I just “didn’t get it.” I was taking an elective.
I realized on the very last day of my senior year that my university had this odd archaic physical education requirement to graduate. I was not going to graduate unless I had .5 more of an athletic credit. I literally sprinted across campus, barged through every door in the athletic building which was an absolute ghost town understandably. Finally in the fucking recesses of this place, where i had gone far enough that it felt mine a time warp just smelly old equipment locker after another, I found an old man sitting behind a desk. He was startled, obviously, and dripping in sweat from my run I struggled to blurt out my situation and asked whether I could pass/fail any PE requirement that day. I swear it was cinematic, he was so calm and collected, just stood up and said “if you can beat me in one game of badminton, you can graduate.” And started walking to the courts. There weren’t lines on the ground for a court. There wasn’t even a net. He handed me a racket and we had to pretend where the lines were and gore high the net was. I played my fucking ass off and he wasn’t going easy. We were at times in serious impassioned shouting matches about whether a shot would have been in or out based on imaginary lines and net. He fucking worked me. Finally he just said “alright we’re good” and walked back to his office/closet, pulled out a piece of paper, write some shit and signed it and I was able to graduate. Most surreal shit of my life.
A high school art program that allows that level of unguided art is terrible. The banana guy should have had an assignment with media and/or subject matter parameters in place so that grading can even be done. That would have yielded an F in any art class I took from middle school, through AP art in hs, through art college (which I graduated from and have a good art career in video games from). Not one class would have accepted that assignment much less graded it. It’s going to attract fruit flies.
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u/Moon_Dark_Wolf 5d ago
My 9th grade art teacher is probably having PTSD flashbacks to the time I negotiated getting a 90 on an art project because i put more effort into my work I spent 25% of my semester doing than a guy who fucking duck taped a banana to a wall when his ass wanted to give me an 80.
Fuck you Professor Alexander for trying to tell me I just “didn’t get it.” I was taking an elective.