Making a Difference

I've gotten to thinking, everyone makes a difference and everything that everyone does makes a difference on everyone's lives. Every single little decision that anyone makes can start a chain reaction of events. I mean, if I chose to use the rest of my milk in my cereal this morning, then I wouldn't have milk to make that special casserole for dinner the next night. That is, unless I went to the store to buy more, but then I'd have to choose if I wanted to walk or drive. If I wanted to drive, I'd have to find someone with a car, which then affects whoever owned the car. They would then have to take time out of their schedule to drive me to the store so I could pick up some milk. If I took too long in the store, I could accidentally make them late for their class. If they were late for their class, they might miss an important piece of the lesson and decide to attend a tutor session. At this tutor session, they could meet someone of the opposite gender and become friends. After a while they could start dating and soon they get engaged and are married. If I had not decided to eat cereal that one morning, or if I decided to walk to the store, or if I hadn't taken so long, or if the friend hadn't decided to go to tutoring, those two people might never have met! So many decisions were involved.

Now, that was just a random (and maybe extreme) scenario that I came up with, but think about it. Everyone has an impact on everything. No matter how small we may feel, we are always important. I mean, in my above scenario, I basically brought two people together, inadvertently.

I always think about the story of Alma and Abinadi in King Noah's court. How important were both of those men's decisions in that moment? Abinadi's case may have seemed hopeless and futile. He preached so hard to so many, but only converted one man. But that one man that he converted started such an incredible chain of events that impacted so many throughout the rest of the Book of Mormon. If Abinadi had decided not to preach in King Noah's court, Alma would not have heard the word and would not have began his own preaching, then Alma the Younger would not have come about, nor Helaman, or the stripling warriors, or the conversions that Alma the Younger brought about, or anything after that.
Also, if Alma had not decided to listen to Abinadi's words, all that I just listed above would not have come to pass. It is really quite extraordinary, in my opinion.

So if we can make such a difference without trying, imagine what we can do if we get out there and try to do something about our problems. As Dr. Seuss, the source of all wisdom, says: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, things aren't going to get better. It's not."

The Demon Teacher

My friend, Alex will know exactly who I'm talking about. We never refer to our senior year english teacher by name... Dr. Rooth. I clench my teeth just thinking about him.

My year with him started out rough. He started picking on me right from the beginning. He called me to his desk during like the second week of class and asked me if I had "inner anger". You can only imagine my confusion as to why he would think that. In class, I try to keep as low a profile as possible and when I do speak, I am generally cheerful and pleasant. I'm sure my shock at the question was clear and I told him no. He then proceeded to explain why he thought so (brace yourselves): In my summer reading journals I constantly mentioned my disproval of the character's choices of sexual immorality, as well as other immoral choices and would tend to "rant" about them. (The summer reading journal instructions specifically told us to be open with our opinions, so I did not see anything wrong with being open with how I felt with the character's choices). Now I was doing the same thing again with book we were reading in class with the character.

I was so mortified and confused, that I didn't know what to say. I don't even remember what I said. I sputtered some excuse and sat down. Then I berated myself and came up with a million better things I could have said. When I went home (after some encouragement from my mom) I wrote him and email explaining myself.

You'd think that maybe he would have gained some respect for me after that for standing up for myself. Or at least understood where I was coming from and left me alone. Guess again. I'm only speculating here, but I don't think he really liked my opinions at all and I think he thought I had a closed mind. And I think he thought that stemmed from my religion (which I mentioned in my email). So that is what I believe is his core for his dislike of me and the core for his excessive rudeness and random punishments for things I didn't do. (Although there is a hole in my theory, because he LOVED Angela who is also LDS).

With him if you were on his good side, he was almost always nice to you and for some reason you had a good grade in his class. If you were on his bad side, he picked on you a lot and it was almost impossible to rise above a C even if you deserved it. I was on his bad side. Never in my life had I gotten below a B in an english class!

So, I still tried to keep as low a profile as possible throughout the year even with him randomly picking on me in class to read my essay which he knew was incomplete or to answer the hardest questions or trick questions (and then make me feel stupid if I didn't know the answer). But then... came The Day.

The day my life ended basically. We were reading Macbeth in class and for our midterm, we were supposed to write an essay IN CLASS, may I emphasize. We were allowed to do some research beforehand and take ONE page of notes to reference. I did so and read several webpages in preparation, reading them over and over (even right before the class) and took my page to class. I really wanted to do well because, as I mentioned before, I just couldn't rise above a C in his class. So, I wrote the essay, turned it in, and thought that was that. I thought wrong.

Not too long after, the demon teacher called me up after class one day and accused me of plagiarism on my essay. I had never been more speechless in my life. He showed me his proof. He said that my essay didn't sound like "my words" so he looked it up on the internet and found a site with a match. Sure enough, it was one of the site I had been studying so carefully. Just like one little paragraph and he caught it! Can you believe this guy? Going out of his way like that to nail me? (I wonder if he carefully went through all my essays, typing each sentence into Google, looking for a match). I felt my stomach drop to my feet as I realized that several sentences were almost identical to some on the website. I must've studied it too hard and subconsciously put it into my essay. (Those of you who know me are aware of my memorization skills, like with movie quoting and such. Isn't this plausible?) But he would NEVER buy that! I gave it a shot anyway. He asked to see my page of notes. He obviously didn't believe me and thought that I wrote it down on my one page of notes. Of course, just my luck, I had already thrown it away! My situation just got better and better by the minute.

When I got home, he had already called my dad, who believed HIM and was all ready to punish me for cheating! But then I explained it and I can tell it sounded far-fetched to him, but he believed me. Then after I explained it to my mom, she arranged for a meeting with the demon teacher, she, and me.

By this time, I was an emotional wreck, but I was determined not to cry in front of him and show that he was winning power over me. I explained everything to him, but with each explaination, he came up with a "plausible excuse" as to why my explanation was bogus. Finally, he told me that he was going to give me a zero on my essay because that's what happens to people who plagarize. I just couldn't take it anymore and I broke down in front of him. This is the ridiculous part. He just watched me. Not a sorry look in his face at all. Not a tinsy bit of sympathy like "I'm sorry, I have to punish you because I believe it's for the best.". It was more like "I'm the one with the power. I'm enjoying your suffering".

I thought that was that, but no. I was finally getting over it about two weeks later when one day in my Physics class I was pulled out by a campo. I was beyond bewlidered. I had never been pulled out of class by them in my life. I was taken to the detention office with the other bad kids. When I finally went in, I was told that the demon teacher had written me up for plagiarism and there were different levels of punishment, including suspension. The guy I was talking to was nice and thought that punishing a "first time offender" was harsh so he gave me minimal punishment of two days of saturday school (and not the demon teacher's recommended punishment, which I don't even remember what it was).

If you thought I was sour towards that teacher before...

That was only the stuff he did to me. There were my friends too. Alex, for example. She was on his bad side as well.

In her own words: "I didn't give him an advanced warning about a band event, but he got an email about it, but in his book that didn't count, so he wouldn't let me leave early. And when I told him that it was necessary for me to go because it was part of my band grade. He got mad and accused me of being defiant and said I couldn't go. But then the class went anyway, and I went with them, but he stayed behind to do stuff so I just went with the band anyway (because he didn't specifically say I couldn't join the band, he just said I couldn't go early). And when he got there and saw me there with the band, he got super mad and filed a misconduct."

Wow. Just wow. Then she told me that he told her that she was a loser and would be stuck doing nothing for the rest of her life. He could be sued for saying something like that to a student!

Then, Angela. He totally loved her for some reason. Apparently he pulled her aside one day and asked her where she wanted to go to college. When she told him BYU, he said that she shouldn't go there because she wouldn't live up to her potential there. Really, man?

Anyways, there is a point to this post other than me reliving old bad memories and ranting about them. So, this demon teacher never had a good thing to say about my writing. In fact, he constantly heavily implied that I was a bad writer and that I would never go anywhere with it. He bullied me so much my entire senior year and I graduated with a C- barely after the plagiarism event. I could have taken his words and implications to heart and given up on my writing, "oh yeah, he's probably right. I am a bad writer." No way! Not me! I decided to prove him wrong! I am determined to write a book and have it published before I graduate college. I don't care if it becomes super popular (because it probably won't), but I just want to prove that I am good enough to get my work published. So every time I think about the demon teacher, the more I'm motivated to write my book.

Good Literature

Just a quick rant. I have many friends on Facebook who are haters of The Hunger Games because they aren't "real literature". I haven't read them myself. I've only read the first chapter of the first book, but I can tell you that reading that much tells me enough of how the entire book is written. Just because it's not phenomenally written or it's not a classic series like Lord of the Rings or something, doesn't necessarily make it a bad book. In my opinion, it's the story that really matters. I've said this before about movies-- about how the special effects, music, camera movements, etc. are nice, but the story is what always brings people back again and again. It's the same with books. The flowery words, the acute descriptions, the symbolism, the metaphors, and so on are always great, but the story is what people are looking for.

Now, there are some books that have a good plot, but are just so poorly written that I can't bear to finish it. So, yes, the literature is important. But if the book is not poorly written, if it's an average book like The Hunger Games, I don't think it deserves to be called "bad literature". I believe that "bad literature" consists of poorly written books that can also have bad plots *cough* Twilight *cough*. You can find real "bad literature" on the fanfiction sites (believe me, I've been there :/).

So, I say you can dislike The Hunger Games if you don't like the plot, go right ahead. But don't hate on it because it's not "real literature", because that's just a ridiculous excuse when it clearly is.