#everyone say thank you to ap lit 4 in high school for making me read this

[fallouttboy]

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Out Magazine (August 2008) photographed by David Roemer // Pete's Blog [thisismynewperspective](September 2009) // Pavlove by Fall Out Boy (2008) // Pete's Blog myheartisbetweenmyknees - archived (September 1, 2006) // Pete's Blog [insincerelypete] (December 21, 2013) // The Kids Aren't Alright by Fall Out Boy (2013) // Pete's falloutboyrocks blog - archived (December 20, 2006) // Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Pete's Fueled By Ramen blog - archived (September 18, 2006) // Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Out Magazine (August 2008) photographed by David Roemer // Pete's Fueled By Ramen blog - archived (May 26, 2005) // Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Black and Blue as performed by Louis Armstrong // Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952) // Gray by Pete Wentz (2013) // The Boy with the Thorn in His Side by Pete Wentz (2005) // Pavlove by Fall Out Boy (2008)

[lgbtyrus]

Definitely

A Tarty fanfic? In October of 2020? You bet!!! This is a gift for @delicatesleeper who deserves the world’s most patient person award <3  Enjoy!

Words: 3068

High school was fun because you saw a lot of different things. Kids chanting Lick it! Lick it! to another kid going to lick a weird stain in the science building. An artsy kid having a break down in the middle of math. TJ Kippen fighting another boy in the locker room.

“TJ is fighting Carson!” Marty’s best friend, Tony, announced to him in one corner of the locker room. There was dozens of voices echoing throughout the stuffy place, and Marty could feel his heart slam against his chest every step he took towards the scene. But by the time he got there, their PE teacher had already separated the two. TJ seemed to get in a good hit as Carson hid his blood nose under his arm, not realizing blood was already dripping down at his chin.

“What in the fucking hell were you two thinking?!” their PE teacher’s voice boomed over them. “You’re both going to get kicked off the basketball team.”

“He started it!” TJ yelled, looking furious. His face was read. Marty didn’t know TJ that well, but he knew he wasn’t violent. Sure, he had a temper. But dating Cyrus Goodman for a while had to have done something good to him. Then again, break ups completely reprogram a person. Marty would know. He’s been through five.

Marty was sitting in detention, leaning back on his chair, balancing a pencil on his nose. It was him and the other kids who were regularly in there. Marty tried not to get detention so much he got kicked off the track team, but he also didn’t like doing his homework.

The teacher who looked over detention wasn’t in the classroom yet, so everyone in there was just talking and scrolling through their phones. They only looked up when someone came in, but it was usually someone they all recognized or knew pretty well.

Then TJ Kippen walked in and the pencil fell into his hand. Marty watched him walk inside the badly lit classroom, look around, and sit in the desk next to him before realizing he hadn’t stopped staring. TJ raised an eyebrow at him, making Marty panic and look away, pretending his pencil was the most interesting thing. He felt like if slightly turning his head would kill him.

Mr. Rosas walked in, whistling with a book and paper under his arm like usual. “Alright, people. Phones away. You can take them out after thirty minutes of homework.” He went to the front and put his book at the empty desk for whoever was overlooking detention. The room was in a trailer lot in the corner of their school, and it was hard to find if you never got in trouble. Mr. Rosas started reading the names of the roster, some kids saying here, some kids being recognized by him.

“TJ Kippen?” Mr. Rosas looked up. Marty turned his head and saw that TJ raised his hand. He had a heavy frown on his lips. “Aren’t you in basketball?”

“Not anymore.” TJ sighed, leaning back into his chair.

“Oh. You’re one of those two basketball players from today, no?” Mr. Rosas asked him. TJ nodded, looking embarrassed that everyone knew. Marty had been hearing everyone talking about TJ and Carson all day long, and it was making him really curious to know what happened. Nobody knows what happened. The two went inside the locker rooms laughing and then TJ threw the first hit.

Mr. Rosas finished taking attendance, and Marty realized that Carson wasn’t there. That usually meant an extra two days of detention. Marty forced himself to stop thinking about TJ and Carson and pulled out his algebra homework. Some kids were chatting with their work out on their desks, and Mr. Rosas didn’t seem to mind. He was in a good mood that day which basically meant they could do whatever they wanted. He said he always had a soft spot for misfits because he basically lived in detention in high school but had a good director that helped him get into college.

“Hey, Marty,” someone called out. Marty turned around the room, looking for the voice. “Right here, dude.” Marty made eye contact with TJ who was holding up a piece of paper. It was their homework. “Can you show me how to do four?” Marty looked at him, in shock for a bit. “Your name is Marty, right?”

“Um, yeah,” Marty said. He cleared his throat and looked down at his homework, trying to remember his steps while a storm brewed in his brain. “I dated Buffy freshman year.” Really? That’s what you say? Dumbass.

“I know who you are.” TJ told him. Marty didn’t know how to reprogram himself to work, but he cleared his throat again and held up his math sheet to him.

“Let me walk you through it.”

TJ only needed help on two other problems after that, and Marty gladly helped him even when he was done with his homework. His moms had gotten mad at him for not taking AP classes, but he didn’t like to be challenged in academics. They weren’t interesting enough.

Mr. Rosas stood up and shut his book. “All right everyone, you’re dismissed for the day. Don’t come back.” Without hesitation, everyone scrambled out of their seats and made their way out of the classroom in a line. Marty’s track practice started at 4:30 because his coach knew a lot of the kids on the team had a knack for getting kept for detention or they had other clubs besides sports. Marty just had detention.

He made his way towards the locker rooms by the gym and track field, and after walking for a moment, he noticed TJ was right behind him. Marty decided against walking faster and instead met up with TJ who gave him a head nod in acknowledgment. “Where are you of to?” Marty asked him.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never left school this early.”

“You should go to Rita Donuts. She has student discounts on Wednesdays.”

“Good to know.”

“So,” Marty said. He cleared his throat. He didn’t know how else to keep the conversation going. “What happened in the locker room.”

“What have you heard?” TJ asked him.

“Honestly, everything.” Marty crossed his arms, walking a little closer to TJ who was now heading towards the school gates, opposite of the locker rooms. Instead of saying anything, Marty continued to walk besides him.

“He said something homophobic. I punched him. That’s that.” Marty couldn’t figure TJ out. He was stoic and saying everything like he hadn’t just gotten kicked off the basketball team- the one he was captain of as a junior.

“What?” Marty asked. He had heard many things except that. Something like that wasn’t even a possibility at their high school. “And you’re both off the team?”

“He’s suspended and maybe expelled. I just got off the team because of the no tolerance policy. They said they’ll make sure I can play next year, though.”

“Well, I guess that’s kind of good?” Marty said, still not understanding how the school worked.

“Yeah. Honestly, it’s fine,” TJ admitted to him. “I can focus on actually getting good grades for now. I’m scared I’m not going to pass algebra.”

“I can tutor you,” Marty said without second thought.

“Really?” TJ smiled at him. Marty blushed crimson and nodded dumbfoundedly. “Thanks. I have you on Snapchat, no?”

“Yeah,” Marty nodded again. He couldn’t say much of anything else. He wasn’t even that good at math.

“Cool. I’ll hit you up,” TJ told him.

“Yeah,” Marty said. He looked at the time on his phone. “I’m gonna head to practice now. See you.”

“Later.” Marty smiled at him once more and ran towards the gym with his heart slamming against him like he wasn’t a trained runner. Math just got interesting.

-

Marty didn’t know what he was doing, why he was nervous, or why he even had a brain if it wasn’t going to work and save him from humiliating situations. TJ was going over to his house on Saturday to get help for their test on Monday, and Marty wasn’t exactly a wizard. He got in his shower after his six mile run from that morning and dressed in eight different things until deciding to wear a track shirt and jeans.

He didn’t have time to do his hair when his mom called from downstairs that TJ was there. He slid across the second floor in his socks and ran downstairs, TJ waiting for him at the door. He was smiling and talking to his mom, wearing a plain white shirt, basketball shorts, and slides. Marty definitely felt overdressed.

“Hey,” Marty waved at him.

“Hey,” TJ said, bringing his backpack higher on his shoulder.

“You can wait in the dining room,” Marty said, pointing at the entryway. “I need to get my backpack.” TJ gave him a thumbs up and walked over as Marty ran back upstairs, his heartrate a complete mess even when he ran back down.

“Do you run everywhere?” TJ asked him when he sat down in the chair next to him. Marty nodded, taking in counted breaths.

“It’s faster. You should try it.”

“Maybe when I’m back in shape.”

Marty stifled a full laugh. “You’ve only been out of basketball for like four days.”

“I breathe hard when I go up the stairs now. Four days was all I needed.”

“I run at least six miles every.”

“You’re addicted to track.”

“Sounds about right,” Marty smiled. He took out his binder and homework.

He didn’t know how he did it, but he got TJ through the course work and got him ready for the test. Marty had never studied that much on his own before since math was just a regular subject to him. Studying with TJ was fun, though. Whenever he tried to study with Tony, they ended up messing around and playing video games because they got bored.

But everything about TJ kept him grounded, like he was scared he would miss years of his life if he looked away for even just a second. It was too much for Marty to try to process sometimes, and he often tried to rub the heat away from his cheeks.

-

Marty and TJ hung out more outside of tutoring. TJ had a lot of time on his hands, and his friends were still going to basketball games so Marty would invite him to hang out with Tony and a few other boys. Tony raised his eyebrow one time when Marty was sad TJ wouldn’t make it to bowling, but when Marty asked him what, Tony just laughed and shook his head. That’s how Marty knew he was fucked.

TJ was in that stage months post breakup where he wasn’t gloomy about it anymore and he was back to functioning like normal again, but you could tell he had put a barrier up. There were times when TJ would almost talk about his home life or his family or even how he felt about certain things, but there always something blocking him. Like if he remembered he would only talk about those certain things to a certain someone who broke his heart.

Marty approached TJ with as much caution as much as he threw himself at him. He felt delusional and crazy, but there were times he felt like TJ was starting to like him, too. The proximity in which they would walk side by side seemed to close in even closer every week, and Marty wasn’t the one inching next to him. But even though they were becoming good friends, Marty knew there was going to be a lot more walls to break down.

One day at the park, Marty broke down the first obstacle and asked TJ why him and Cyrus had broken up. “We just didn’t click anymore,” TJ said. “He broke up with me, and I just said ok.” Marty watched TJ fiddle with the basketball in his hand for a moment, about to speak up before TJ started talking again. “I wish I would’ve asked him to stay, though. But… I could tell that he just didn’t want me anymore.” Marty didn’t know what to do with that, so he just patted TJ on the back.

“Sorry, bud.”

“That’s just the way it is.” TJ threw the ball at Marty, and they got up for another game. The entire time Marty wondered if TJ would go back to Cyrus if he could.

Marty figured he had nothing to lose and asked, “Are you over him?” In that moment, TJ stood still with the basketball in his hands. He stared at Marty, making his breath hitch for a second as those green eyes looked for something. “Yeah. I basically am.”

Basically. Basically am. What does that mean? Marty asked himself that over and over that night, and it was starting to drive him insane. So much, he just gave in and called Tony at one in the morning.

Tony was half-asleep when he answered. “Hello?”

“Okay,” Marty jumped right into it, “you know how I like TJ right?” There was a few seconds of silence.

“Yes.”

“So, I asked him if he was over Cyrus, and he said he basically was. What does basically mean? Like he doesn’t want to say he is because he’s lying or he is in the process of fully forgetting him?”

“Um.” Tony yawned into the mic, hurting Marty’s ear with the buzz. “Both?”

“Tony that’s not helping.”

“Dude just tell him you like him.”

“I can’t do that.” Marty’s head was filling with air at just the thought of doing that. “It’d just ruin our friendship.”

“Hmm, I don’t know, man.” Marty knew that tone.

“What do you know?”

“What do you mean?” Tony repeated back. He was cornered.

“What are you keeping from me?”

“Nothing,” Tony’s voice got louder which meant he was lying.

“Just tell me and you can go to sleep.” Marty heard Tony sigh. It didn’t take that long to get him to crack. “He told one of the guys who told me that he thinks you’re… cute.”

“Cute?” Marty didn’t know what to do with the information.

“Yeah. Goodnight.” Marty didn’t even get to say it back as Tony hung up, leaving Marty with the most explosive words he could’ve left him with.

-

TJ always asked Marty to hang out before he had gotten the cute bomb dropped on him, so Marty told himself not to act any different or to pick apart every little thing TJ did like a fetal pig. Doing so was starting to give him a heartache. But when him and TJ were doing homework in Marty’s kitchen, there was just too much gut to not pick at.

TJ had lightly bumped his foot into Marty’s and then just kept it there. He told Marty he had nice handwriting (a lot of people told him that, though). He told Marty his hair looked nice, and Marty didn’t know how to react so he just ran his fingers through his hair and accidentally ruined it so TJ could jokingly say never mind. And at one point, TJ took the ring he had on his hand and slipped it on Marty’s finger, his race redder than it had ever been. TJ noticed it.

“Why is your face so red?” TJ asked, still holding Marty’s hand on the table. Marty looked between TJ’s face that held a sneaky smile and their fingers that were grazing on each other.

Marty hid his face with his free hand and said, “I think it’s just allergies.” Dumbass! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb boy. Allergies?!

TJ chuckled and pulled his hand back slightly. “I didn’t know allergies did that.”

“Yeah,” Marty tapped his ringed hand on the table. “My moms say the doctors don’t know what to do with me.”

TJ looked Marty in the eye as he whispered, “I don’t know what to do, either.” Marty looked at TJ with his eyebrow raised. It was his turn to make him spazz out.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

TJ raised an eyebrow, a smile twitching on his face. “What kind of doctors are you doing to?”

“I think they’re vampires. It works out so I don’t have to miss track practice during the day.” TJ rolled his eyes but not in a rude way. In a you’re not that funny way. But he was still smiling warmly. Marty looked at TJ, realizing how close he had him and how his green eyes were just diamonds on his face. His face was full of sharp features, and he wanted to run his finger on all of them. He reached out and touched TJ’s hand again, making him look at him with wide eyes. Marty was about to retreat his hand, when TJ grasped it, fully holding it and tapping on of his fingers on his ring.

“Do you like me?” TJ asked him. Okay so this is happening now!

“What do you think?” Marty said, showing him their hands. TJ laughed a little.

“I think you do,” TJ said quietly, looking at him with a small smile.

“I know you think I’m cute,” Marty couldn’t help but say. “A little birdy told me.”

TJ had a victorious look on his face. “I knew those two would snitch. I planned it out like that.”

“What?” Marty asked. “You told someone you thought I was cute so that they would tell Tony to tell me?” They both laughed after Marty tried to piece it together in the air.

“I don’t know how Tony got involved, but yeah. Something like that.”

“Why not just tell me?”

“Just in case you didn’t like me.” TJ shrugged. “Can’t really know if someone really wants you despite their words and actions that say they do.” Marty’s heart seemed to sigh as he realized what TJ was talking about. Marty stood up and go closer to TJ, leaning down to kiss him. TJ kissed him back, his hand squeezing his harder.

Marty pulled away and pressed his forehead against TJ’s, their eyes in each other’s worlds. “Well I definitely like you. A lot. And if you’re willing to, I’d like to take you out sometime.” TJ gave him a small kiss.

“I’d like that.”

[all-hail-the-witcher]

every book i had to read for english and why i didn't like any of them

i woke up thinking about this and decided to make this post. for context, i went to public school and was on the honors/ap track for english. i am a firm believer that english teachers ruin books for their students inadvertently. this is my experience:

6th grade language arts

we read three books during 6th grade, bridge to terabithia, the cay, and where the red fern grows. and i had to read a wrinkle in time over the summer which i didn't understand like at all so I'm just gonna skip that one honors english was not a thing until 8th grade where i went to middle school so this was a regular english class and i hated it. it was also a double period class for some reason, so i had an hour and a half of language arts every day. 

it took us half the year to read bridge to terabithia. i am not kidding. that book is like maybe 100 pages and it took us a good 4-5 months. this is because our teacher stopped us every time we got to a pice of figurative language and made us analyze it. every. single. piece. i got so bored that i read ahead and then got in trouble for reading ahead. needless to say, i absolutely detested bridge to terabithia and would not touch it to this day if my life depended on it. 

after bridge to terabithia we read the cay. this took us the rest of the year. the cay is a relatively short book as well so i got bored with this one quickly as well. i really dont remember much about the discussions, but i remember a long one about how the cover was “inaccurate,” which, yes, it was but i dont know if a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds need to spend a week debating that. i think i hated it mostly because, again, we read it for 5 months. 

the last three weeks of the school year, our teacher gave us a book and said “here read this before school ends because we have to read three books a year and we only read 2″ (for context, the other language arts class had read about 5-7 books that year and found it insane that we were “still reading bridge to terabithia”) so i read where the red fern grows. all in all it wasn't a bad book, i did kind of enjoy it, but since i was rushed reading it on top of all my other homework and because it was definitely ahead of my reading comprehension level, it wasn't my favorite.

7th grade language arts

now, a bit of a disclaimer here, this was the year that i was in language arts with the guy i had a crush on and one of my close friends at the time. so, i didn't really pay that much attention to begin with. we read quite a few books in this class, but I'm not sure if i remember all of them. again, this was a double period. 

i think the first book we read was freak the mighty. i remember not liking this book because i felt like i was missing something. there was definitely some kind of metaphor or something in there that i was supposed to get but because i was literally twelve i didn't get it and i didn't find the meaning in it. theres nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you dont understand.

after that I'm pretty sure we read the wave. it was explained to us that the wave is supposed to symbolize how the n*zis came to power and all that stuff, and while we all knew this, i dont think we really Understood it. (probably because we were 12). we all kinda saw it as a joke and thought it was funny. i think that if i read it now i would be like. “well shit this is really interesting” but 12 year old me wanted to make fun of it with the rest of my class. 

i think we read seed folks next. this was another book that just went over all of our heads. its about how a garden changes a whole bunch of peoples lives which is like, super interesting. but none of us got it and were like “lol this is stupid” so much so that we actually stopped reading it. like my teacher stopped having us read it.

I'm fairly certain the last book we read was the miracle worker. a lot of us had had to read parts of it before that class so we were all kinda familiar with it already. i vaguely remember some kind of obnoxious class joke about the book that was probably rude. i remember finding it interesting, but there were so many activities we did about the book that i lost interest. 

8th grade honors reading

this class was A Trip. i liked the teacher, but she was a little out there. its unclear whether she got fired or just didn't come back after that year. i had a lot of fun in her class but it was usually because we all bonded over hating the assigned reading.

i dont remember what order we read the books in and i dont remember if this was all of them, but to the best of my recollection this is what we read

we definitely read romeo and juliet. by the time you're in 8th grade, everyone knows the story of romeo and juliet, so it wasn't like that suspenseful or a surprise or anything. but we had to act the reading out. yes we had to act out romeo and juliet. with burger king crowns. and wrapping paper swords. clearly the teacher was trying to have fun with us, and it was fun fun for awhile but it got old. especially when you got participation points taken off your grade if you didn't read for once of the characters (which is massively unfair because not everyone wants to get up in front of a class in a paper crown holding a wrapping paper tube and read in old english when you're 13 but whatever). 

we also definitely read animal farm. it was another book that went right over our heads (or, mine at least). i didn't actually really understand it until i had to read the communist manifesto for ap euro senior year. and our teacher talked in a bad russain accent the entire time? i could barely keep the characters straight, let alone analyze the underlying message and all that. now i might actually like it since I'm a history major and have a decent background on the russian revolution, but at 13? no thanks.

the one book that everyone hated (including the teacher herself) was farewell to manzanar. it was a memoir about a young girl growing up in the japanese internment camps and looking back on her life and stuff like that. the story itself was very interesting and we all learned a lot from it. but the person who wrote it did not know how to write. it was confusing, some chapters made no sense, and none of us generally knew what was going on. we had to finish the book because we were the honors class, but the regular class got to stop after chapter 6. 

i think we only read 4 books that year and the fourth one was the outsiders. this was one of two books that i actually liked the entirely of my public school education. i kinda vibed with it when we were reading it and then i vibes with it more once i got to high school and rediscovered it. it was just a good book, pretty solid, good themes, fantastic. 

9th grade honors english

i absolutely hated this class. hands down the worst teacher i ever had. she was one of those that should have retired 20 years ago but was still teaching for some reason. and she hated kids. legitimately. that was the first time i got a c and it took my parents a long time to realize that it wasn't because of me, it was because the teacher was absolute shit. the only thing that made that class bearable was the fact that my friend was in there and so was this guy that totally like her so he would flirt with her pretty incessantly and it was Hilarious. 

we read so many books that year and i hated all of them. a lot of them were like greek dramas and plays? like we read oedipus rex and julius caesar and antigone. and i hated all of them because the teacher made me hate reading and made it seem like a chore. 

by far the worst was the old man and the sea. i hated that book, hemingway was terrible. i struggled to find any kind of meaning in it and connected all of my responses to the bible because my teacher loved it when people did that.

we read inherit the wind and to kill a mockingbird and all quiet on the western front which were the only books i found remotely interesting. but i still hated them because i knew that we would have to do her reading quizzes which were impossible so it was pointless to read the book anyway. 

and we also read a raisin in the sun. i dont remember what this was even about except that there was some kind of insurance money involved. but by this point we were all really done with our teachers shit and my one friend legitimately said during class “but, ms. [name] if you put a raisin in the sun, doesn't it just get more raisiny?”

10th grade ap english language and composition (american lit)

i loved this class and the teacher but i hated all the assigned reading because we read it for the ap test. everything you read was in the context of having to find themes and shit to write about on the ap. so i didn't really get any of the books for that reason. i think we only read three and they were the scarlet letter, the crucible, and the great gatsby. i kind wish i paid more attention to gatsby and i think i would like it more now but at the time i detested it. we also had to read grapes of wrath over the summer and i hated that. i wanna read books to read them, not to come into school and write essays on them. also the ending was weird and i hated it.

11th grade honors (british lit)

another bad year of english, not quite as bad as freshman year, but still bad. still hated it. i outlined many fics in that class. the teacher did not like me and i did not like her. she also talked in this weird fake almost british but not quite accent that sometimes still haunts my nightmares. she was also one of those backwards feminists who claims they're a feminist but still was sexist in her favorites and the way that she treated people in the class?? after english i had math and my friend (the same girl who said the thing about raisins freshman year) and some others would complain to our math teacher about our english teacher. math was essentially a support group for english where we would discuss answers to reading checks. 

over the summer we read 1984, which, cool concept (esp right now) but i hated knowing that i had to find some kind of deep meaning in it because i was going to have to write an essay on it as soon as i came back to school.

from there i think we read beowulf which was interesting. i dont know if we actually read the whole thing or just excerpts but again, i hated looking for meaning.

we read a tale of two cities which was like the one book i actually wanted to read because i am a huge fan of the shadow hunters book serieses and will and tessa quote that book all the time. i think if i had read it to read it it would have been better but first, dickens is wordy and weird and second i dont really wanna have to search out symbolism while I'm reading because its required.

we read macbeth, which i just didn't like. idk why. i just kinda thought it was stupid. i dont really have an explanation for this one. i think it was because we read it in the old english and that confused me a lot of the time.

and we read jane eyre. the only thing i remember from jane eyre was “pathetic fallacy” which is where the mood of the scene is reflected in the weather. i dont wanna dissect a book like that. and also my teacher referred to the book as “jane” but she said it “jAAYYneeE” which was annoying. 

12th grade ap lit

dear god. this class. i had issues with this class. our teacher was something. everyone was afraid of him. e v e r y o n e. he ran detention and didn't know how to match his clothes and wore skinny ties. he had three swell bottles the he would bring with him to school every day. people claimed he used to be in a rock band and that was why his voice was so high pitched and weird. some said his wife left him, others said he had a kid. we were genuinely confused by him. he didn't teach, he yelled at you for doing things wrong without giving any instructions on how he actually wanted it done. he made college out to be some big scary thing where we would all be trampled. but mostly, he was an existentialist. 

we had to read song of solomon over the summer. i hated it. i didn't hate it because of the messages and all that stuff, no the book itself was good and toni morrison is a great author. i just hated the fact that there was graphic description of incest, necrophilia, or sex at least once every 5-10 pages. i didn't wanna read that. and it turned me off the book. so when he asked us if we liked the book when the year started i said no and i argued with him about it. and he hated me for the entire year. 

next i think we read waiting for godot. which was absolutely terrible. its literally a play where nothing happens. it would have been funny except that i knew i was gonna have to write an essay on it. how do you write an essay on a play where nothing happens? literally all of our discussions about it were about existentialism and it was terrible. 

we read the metamorphosis, which everyone hated cause it could have been written in like 4 sentences. and our teacher thought he was So Clever for assigning it to us. he thought it was the biggest joke. and he went on and on about how its about existentialism and blah blah. the book would have been funny had he not only discussed it in regards to existentialism. 

i think next was hamlet. i would have like hamlet had we not discussed it only through the lens of existentialism. its a good play, but i hated it because of the way he talked about it. even now, i only like it to make fun of the way he liked it. my friend and i send hamlet memes to each other all the time but only cause they remind us of our teacher.

one flew over the cuckoos nest. the second and final book that i actually liked my entirety of school. i dont know why i liked it, but it was just a good book. our teacher also had some kind of weird cowboy trope thing that he thought mcmurphy fell under which i thought was hilarious. the essay i wrote on that book was the only one he wrote “nice job” on and i still have it somewhere

my friend claims that we also read the stranger. i dont really remember what that book was about except some guy shot some people. there was definitely something in it that i didnt get. 

anyway in conclusion required reading ruins books. when i told my creative writing advisor that i out of all the books i read for school i only like the outsiders and one flew over the cuckoos nest she was like “yeah, english teachers really ruin books for students”