Dr. Frank's What's-it

who's the kid in the t-shirt supposed to be?

I'd make my way past Ms. Austen and the Bronte's hoping they wouldn't bore me to death, see if I could get a little pick me up from sir doyle, tell mr wilde to keep his hands to himself, make sure i didn't drink anything that mr carrol gave me and proceed to plot the destruction of the gala affair with mr poe. Not until I met john stuart mill though. Mrs. holland's opus is a wonderful idea.

As if AP kids aren't big enough outcasts... Come to think of it, my high school creative writing class "scene" tried to do some kind of "beatnik poetry jam" or whatever one time. It was mostly my fault, since i was the one who was into the whole Kerouac thing and got everyone else into it by refusing to shut up about "On the Road." Then of course i fail to show up at all for the evening's festivities, which included everyone getting it wrong by dressing in hippie garb, as well as several of the local Pothead Jock Heroes (who at least dressed in black, but looked more like burglars) reading "funny" poetry. Not really a poetry jam...more of a Warped Indiana Version of What People Think a Literary Event Looks Like. I guess it was really something.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Doyle's favorite afternoon "indulgence" was in fact cocaine (as it was the favored substance of his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, as evidenced in his stories in graphic detail...read em some time). But, um, since this is like high school, I dunno if blow was allowed (or maybe it was....that might explain the tired looking guy in the tee)...

Um, weary looking guy in the tee....if you are reading this, I was just making a joke. Sorry.

Actually, in fact, my girlfriend Eva (English Lit major) has set me straight and so I make this retraction: Doyle never abused cocaine. I had Doyle mixed up with a colleague of his or something.

right, we wouldn't want to be spreading internet rumors about doyle hitting the blow on here...

He did, however, believe in fairies. Just FYI.

As one late Victorian novelist might have said:

"The horror! The horror!"

Ah, memories: In my English class in Middle School, we had a "Feast of the Gods" when we were studying Greek Mythology. We sat around and ate ambrosia (aka "fruit salad"). I was Hermes.

We were geeks, oh yes indeed.

I was Red Chief in the 5th grade gifted-class production of O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief".

How does one get into this class? I had to read books in my advance English classes. Damn my school and its attempts to make me learn.

"There is even talk of 'possibly' reading some of the books, too."

One wouldn't want to confuse their minds with irrelevancies.

AP English and AP History here. I don't remember a damn thing about AP English, but the AP History class is the only actually good high school course, in my view. It was serious college level material, and not at a low grade, either; we read both primary sources and plenty of various historians of various contending schools, on the issues we considered, and had to write essays of significant substance.

Damned if I know now what we did in the English class; talk about books, I guess. Beats me which ones. (It has been thirty-plus years, to be sure.)

In all seriousness, I think you might be misreading the line you presumably base this on: "There is even talk of 'possibly' reading some of the books, too."

The story says "Hollands said the class is currently collaborating with a professor in the NMU English Dept to possibly read the same classics as students in that class, and then have the college students and the high school students discuss the literature together."

That seems to be pretty clear that the AP students "read... the classics." The "possibly" was in regard to the college students reading in tandem with the AP class. That is, there's no indication in the story that the students read all the classics they based their characters upon, but instead that "while studying the Victorian time period, students formed literature circles and read either "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen or "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde as well as studying Victorian art and poetry."

This brings back memories of the "British Lit tea," circa 1983, in Mrs. Lee's class. The culmination of 8 years of Orange County MGM/gifted classes. We made British tea cakes and I stayed up late convincing Kim Senft that my best friend was the right man for her. Ah, the British Lit tea. Thanks for the nerd-encrusted memories.