The habits we used to have

Noise From Silence 6 by Shel-yang

If my life is a TV show this must be the running gag.

"You must be ... year 7." She sounds so sure of herself.
I laugh quietly, resigned. "No, I'm actually year 11."
Shock, embarrassment, and she hides her face in her arms. "I'm so so so so sorry."
I smile, "It's okay, I get that a lot."

And that's what happened on the bus when I was talking to some year 9s. On the other hand, be proud of me (or not), I butted into a random stranger's conversation and answered a question. Is that a step forward in conquering my shyness or a step backwards in basic etiquette?

The year nines are getting their new laptop today, the lid of the new laptops are green, a light bright green like some of those laptop covers the DET gave us before. I saw students sit and play with their laptop everywhere at lunch. I guess it is a curiosity for them, and it'll soon be used for anything from movies to games to occasionally, school work.

Like Helena mentioned in her blog, we used the laptop almost everyday before year 11, and not always what it was meant for. Now that we're in year 11, playing with the laptop just stopped, period. Even I've stopped reading on my laptop at school, how impossible does that sound?

There's another habit that I had but has now abandoned. Drawing margins. I look around me in class and almost no one has margins except those pre-printed on the exercise book. In English a girl said "Wait, wait, slow down, I need to draw up my margin first." And the teacher looked at her strangely and said, "I didn't know we had a year 7 here with us." It's a waste of time for the teachers to stop for you when they're dictating because you need to draw up a margin. I don't know what the expectation is in Hurlstone, but in Sydney Girls, you're expected not to draw a margin and slow the class down.

Which brings me to a maybe not so good habit we seem to have given up on. I heard a girl say in the corridor, "Don't you love it that when we were young everyone could do two digit three digit calculations in our head, but know we just say 'stuff this' and use our calculator?" And boy is that so true. I used to be able to add and subtract and sometimes even times and divide mentally with no problem at all. Now days, I see a calculation and I reach for my calculator. I know that if I try I try I could still do it in my head, I'm just not bothered to. Should we try to retain our skills of mental calculation? Or give it up as unnecessary?

And so in Economics yesterday we were talking about barter. I was reminded of a story I read on the internet about a guy that started with a red paper clip, and ended up with a house. He used his red paper clip to trade for a fish shaped pen, and bartered that for a hand sculpted doorknob, and then exchanged that for something else and kept going until eventually he traded a role in the film Donna On Demand for a two story house.

It was just something interesting I came across in my browsing, but the teacher was a bit cross today because students weren't listening and stopped him from moving to the next topic like he wanted to. He's a really good-humoured guy and very easy going, he would have appreciated it any other time, but this time, I thought I should probably remain silent and let he get on with it like he wishes.

I'm so tired today, it's lucky I actually wrote this up yesterday, so I can keep putting up one post a day. Sydney Girls were supposed have a mufti day (or civi day) today to raise money for the Queensland floods, but it was canceled for a reason no none is aware of. I didn't know because the SRC didn't read out the notice and I couldn't get onto my email this morning. I wore mufti to school and most other people were in uniform. Apparently they got their information from facebook. I still don't have a facebook, and don't particularly want to get one. Am I a digital dinosaur them?