Chapter 8 - A New Week of School

Chapter 8 - A New Week of School

A new week had arrived, hopefully this one would not be as incident packed as the previous one.

I would also have to go to some lessons where I had missed the first lesson due to the suspension. If they had been anything like the ones at the end of the previous week, they had only been giving out textbooks and syllabuses. So hopefully I hadn’t missed anything important.

There was one lesson that I regretted missing, but was really looking forward to this week.

Mechanical Engineering was an elective course, more commonly known by the students as Shop.

I was hoping that I would gain some good knowledge in the lesson to help me with the rebuilds I wanted to do on the Range Rover and Trans Am.

But before I had that lesson I had to get through a few other classes first.

The first lesson on Monday was English Literature with Mrs. Stone, when I got to the class, most of the other students were already in attendance, filling most of the seats. I took one of the empty one, which was right at the front of the class. This didn’t bother me in the least, it wasn’t a popular section for students, but if it meant I could concentrate on the teacher I didn’t care.

Mrs. Stone when she came in through the door was a middle aged woman, she was wearing a long skirt and a blouse. The only way I could describe her was plain and ordinary, she wasn’t an attractive woman, but neither was she ugly, she might have a few excess pounds on her frame but wasn’t overweight in the least.

I went up to her to introduce myself, she took a freshman syllabus for the semester from her briefcase and gave it to me, she explained that we would look at different styles of writing throughout the year, but to start with, we would be reading and doing assignments on one of her favorite books. I thanked her and retook my seat.

There were a whole stack of books on her desk, which she started to pass out, there were either giggles or groans heard depending on the sex of the student receiving the books. The girls all seemed delighted with the choice, the males not so much.

I wasn’t particularly happy with the choice either. Not that Pride and Prejudice was a bad book, I had read it previously, Mom had thought it a good choice for me to read years ago. I hadn’t enjoyed the book much, not finding the characters of much interest and the time period of the book not to my liking when I first read it.

The only thing was at least I wouldn’t have to read it all again, having retained most of it in my memory. I would only need to read parts in order to refresh my memory on certain poignant points to complete the set assignments.

The lesson consisted of discussing the author, the time period the book was set in how that had affected the writing.

Our homework was to read the first four chapters, we would have a test on the text for the next lesson to prove that we had done the reading. Then we would move onto working on the first assignment, giving our initial impression of several of the characters.

The second lesson was American History, I had at least met the teacher Mr. Temple before, we took our seats and started the lesson.

This lesson if anything was worse than the last, Mr. Temple had a very bland, monotone voice which made it very hard to concentrate on what he was telling us.

I also didn’t think much of his views on the subject, he seemed to have his own viewpoint on how the events he was covering in the textbook, effected the changes in the country. From the way he talked, I also didn’t think he would accept anyone else’s opinion if it was different to his own.

This might make assignments in this class difficult, I wasn’t prepared to just conform to the teachers opinion if mine were different. I would just have to hope that Mr. Temple would base his grades on the work done, not the viewpoint behind it.

Advanced Math was a lot better lesson, the teacher had a really good way of explaining the concepts of the problems, so all the students understood the method of working out the answers. Always one of my best subjects, I normally would have just gone by the textbook to work through the years work, but I could see for once that I would actually spend more time listening and working things through as per the teachers instructions and explanations, rather than just reading how to do the work.

Lunch was next, I still didn’t feel too comfortable in myself to try and insinuate myself in any of the groups already set up in the cafeteria. I went and bought myself a sub from the cold food station.

I knew the staff tried the best they could with the budget they had to feed the students, but for that reason there were some meals I just didn’t want to try from the hot food station.

I also grabbed a soda and just sat at a table which was completely free. Although on occasion Rory had joined me last week, it was mainly due to the fight and gossip, right now I could see him with most of the rest of the JV football team who shared this lunch period. Until the end of the football season, I would guess that he would spend most of his time in their presence. It would be interesting to see if that changed next semester, of if they all were actual friends off the field as they were during the season.

I had one more lesson in the afternoon before the last double lesson which was PE. That lesson was combined sciences, which I hoped would be an improvement, since we spent the whole previous lesson dealing with health and safety rather than the subject. No such luck, rather than any practical work, which would have been quite interesting, it was all theory from the textbook.

In PE we had been given three choices, Football, Cross Country or Soccer (UK football). I had chosen cross country, the other two would have put me at a major disadvantage, from being so much smaller than the other freshman. At least there would be no contact in my choice, I had done my usual research with sports picking some of the best runners to emulate. For short distances I had chosen Michael Johnson and for long distance Mo Farah.

After getting changed into shorts and running trainers I went out to find the rest of the group who I would be running with. It was a mixed bunch of some athletic looking types and some who were a little overweight.

The coach came out to join the group who would be running, he gave us our instructions which were to run two laps of the sports fields. That caused a large number of groans which were soon stifled after a stare from the coach. He just told us to get on with it, two of the kids set off at a fast pace, the rest of us followed but at different speeds.

I joined at the back of a small group which was running at a pace I was happy to go with, then there was a strung out stream of the rest who at best were jogging rather than running.

I was surprised that the two fast guys were not playing football, I asked one of the others I was running with why that was.