Maybe I really should not become a teacher because...

[mothwing]

... they are everywhere! In the streets, in the schools, on every internet site I innocently come upon, there are flocks of them, teenagers, mostly, but there are also some who are in age groups when such behaviour should belong to the past. "Goths". "Emo"s. People who can't make up their minds as to what to call themselves this week. Americans, mostly, but also a few British people and Germans. 

And they write poetry. Well, they call it poetry. Mostly, it's just random lines, often very badly spelled small-case one-word lines, and not because they are fans of e.e.cummings, but because they are lazy. I even asked one of those perpetrators, and they said that their spelling (which even turned out to be quite interesting in some parts if bad) was accidental, they just did not bother checking, because "this is the internet and wat do you want to do sue me next time ok?"

Maybe it is all one big conspiracy and it's not really bad poetry which in fact is not, in any sense, poetry, but a code language of a secret society? There certainly is a pattern, all their poetry contains two or more of the following words:
1. Death
2. Black
3. Pain
4. Nothing
5. Blood. 

Right, maybe, I am unfair. I am not a poet, so I should not judge their efforts. And theirs are similar to what mine have been, back in my "crappy poetry"-phase. And maybe it's better that I did not have the ongoing anonymous support of the internet back then, or I might have started being like them, vomiting up these "poems" and then putting them on internet pages festering with similar "art", certain of the praise of all others. GAH. And everybody has those emotions, but then, every teenager has them. And that's the point. What I don't get is why they have become trendy to be depressed. Yes, trendy. What I learnt in my psy courses was a serious mental affliction has become a trend. Which is annoying and very dangerous, because now I never know which one of those self-proclaimed "highly depressed" people I have to seriously worry about. There are too many real depressed people hiding online.
And why do there have to be so many of them? And why do they walk around telling people they "express" themselves by their clothing and go round telling people that they are a goth and do not like to be labeled in the same e-mail?

Gah. Why is this a life style, and why has it reached teenagers? Why why why? 



And I don't want to have to teach them. I don't want to face a class made up people dressed in black with solemn faces who think that they have seen it all and that they now can judge about life, the universe and everything with the experience of their thirteen to twenty years. 

Argh.

Comments

[duckygirlrocks.livejournal.com]

HUGS!!!

I'm trying to think of something intelligent to say...oh hun, you'll have to deal with them anyway. But they won't all be that way, promise! Still, in becoming a teacher there are certain headaches which are unavoidable, and being a teenager sucks sooooo badly!

Don't be glum, though. It'll be alright! :)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Your comments always make me smile. Thanks for that, Rocky. *HUGS*

[dstroyrofworlds.livejournal.com]

I think you would be a great teacher. I see you are affected, you care and maybe that's exactly what they need. And you seem to know what's right and what's wrong, which is, I think, a trait most people with educational job must have. And lastly, you won't let it crash you.

[quote]Quote:...who think that they have seen it all and that they now can judge about life, the universe and everything with the experience of their thirteen to twenty years. [/quote]
That's the most usual thing for any young person to do. Not only goths, emos, rappers, punks,etc. Everybody thinks like that in young age. Remember it: you have done it, too, and maybe you and everybody else does so -still- because this will never go away completely.
And as far as I remember you are only about 3-5 years older than the oldest you talked about. Don't you think you would not judge this harsh anymore if you had a really recognizable gap of age between you and them, say about 15+ years?

It's as you already said: a fashion, a trend. It comes and goes. Just as the beatles did(rebels), as the flower-power did(revolution), as mini-skirts did(emancipation revolution and fashion revolution) as 80s Disco did(rebels), as bisexuality did (this really was a fashion once in glam rock time), as Michael Jackson did(a mistake), as Take That did(a trend), as Moonboots did(a fashion), as Queen did(a style and revolution), as hip-yeans did(a fashion revolution)....

And it's still better to deal with problems by writing crappy poems than by committing suicide or harming anyone or never letting it out. Give them their time to grow up.
Whatever they do, they will grow up, most of them will become normal, good persons, get a job, do their taxes, have a family, die.
They are persons, just like everybody else. The only thing that makes them a bit extremer than most is that they are young and that will go away eventually.

I am really sorry if I offended you.
It's just that I got the impression that your post is just as sad and angry as any goth's or emo's poems, as any black's rap music, as any girl's make up, as any boy's effort to be hard and cool.



The most important thing is not who you teach, I guess, because there will always be problems, trends, styles and fashions of any kind young people can make up.
The question is just: Do you want to teach at all knowing that there will always be anything which no good? Or is it that this is simply not what you want to do?