Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006
9:24 p.m.
<< [ An Open Letter to my Anatomy Teacher ] >>
Something they teach you in psychology is the power of suggestion. They demonstrate this by telling you about things like the placebo effect, or Zimbardo's prisoner study, or an experiment involving three classes: A, B, and C.
What they'll tell you in psychology is that classes A, B, and C are all made up of mediocre students. They're nothing special, but they're not flunking, either. What the people who run the experiment do is they take three teachers as alike as they can find for classes A, B, and C. The teacher for class A is told that the students are high achievers (remember that all the students are considered average). The teacher of class B is told that the students are average, and the teacher of class C is told that the students are failures.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
All three classes were taught and tested on the same material. Class A, the one with the teacher who believed them to be exceptional students, consistantly scored the highest of all three classes. Class B scored averagely, not good, not bad, and class C, interestingly enough, did not just poorly, but abysmally.
I did mention that all the classes were average, right? And taught the same material? And that the only variable is what the teacher thought of them?
Because if I didn't, I'm thinking now would be a good time to do so.
The point of all this, if you're still reading, is that the power of suggestion is a very real thing, and that teachers have a lot more influence than you'd think.
I don't know quite what you were trying to accomplish by saying what you said, by telling the entire class that I'm the weakest link, and that I'm always talking and it's never about anatomy, and I'm the weakest link, and that I never do my work, and I'm the weakest link. Maybe you were just trying to push me into proving you wrong because deep down, you know I can do it. Maybe you were frustruated by me and finally snapped. Maybe you were just being a fucking jerk. I don't know, and I don't pretend to know, but the fact is I'm tired of fighting.
You win. White flag, I surrender, game over. I've transferred out of your class. If this is what you wanted, then congratulations. If not, oh well.
At the risk of sounding my age, I always knew you didn't like me. For the most part, though, I accepted that. The crowning moment (other than Wednesday) was probably when I took the slide test. Do you remember that? I missed four days of test material and you told me I was going to fail. I finished the packet all by myself, caught up all by myself, and then I scored second highest in the class, do you remember? I was really proud of myself, I remember. You treated it like some sort of mistake. Like, oh, Amanda must have cheated. It didn't matter that I got the highest score of anyone sitting in my area. You just didn't care. I guess that's when I figured, all right, he's never going to like me, so it doesn't really matter what I do so long as I keep my head down.
See, beloved anatomy teacher of mine, after pretty much a whole lifetime of being told I'm not good enough by people who are important to me, I can't prove anyone else wrong. I don't have that kind of energy. I'll fight my dad on it, and I'll fight my best friend on it, but I won't fight you. I'm trying to accept that your opinion of me doesn't matter. I'm trying to believe that I walked out of your class on Wednesday crying because of hormones or something, even though I know deep down that's not why. I'm trying to think that you thought you were doing the best thing, and that my government teacher was right when he turned around and said, "You're not a failure, Amanda."
If I were working for you, this would be sort of my two weeks notice, only condensed, because I've already left. It's a letter of resignation in the sense that I've already made up my mind and this is just a formality. I'm hoping writing this will keep me from having to see you again, because when the counselors had me in their office crying for most of the period, they said I'd probably have to talk to you.
So I hope you have a nice life, and I hope you learned something from this even though you probably didn't. I hope you are nicer to everyone else who is stupid enough to take your class. And if you are looking for someone else who will validate your views of thinking I'm a bitch, you could try my English teacher from last year (I won't say her name here, but she's the one that looks like a typical military dyke) who hates me because she doesn't understand The Great Gatsby, or you could try that teacher that slept with a student that I got fired, or pretty much the whole administration that hates me because they shouldn't have been hired in the first place and they completely fucked up the investigation of said teacher. So by no means are you alone in hating me. Maybe you could get together, throw a little party, drink martinis and play charades and bitch about me or something. That would be fun, right?
Love, Amanda