Personal Narrative

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Personal Narrative

House Centrella Suite Number 3
Rather to Do That I Would…
Lucas Shum

O, let me jump, rather than do homework
That belongs not to me, but to a jerk.
Who sits where Kovach lives
And words of wisdom gives.

You might think that you had heard this poem before. If you are, then you are right: This poem was presented in class in the last project. What I am going to tell you is that there is something more - a long story on this poem, and it started when I was a freshman.

I was sitting in the ESL resource room doing work one day, and my friend Lorib Nakla came in and asked if I could help him with vocabulary words that will be due the next day. It was an orange book called "Vocabulary Workshop – Level E", published by Sadlier-Oxford.

In Mrs. Centrella's English class, or my class, we have to learn twenty vocabulary words per week, finish the according exercises, and at the end of each week, a test is given to force you to memorize the words. For me, sometimes those words were really hard; but do you know what my Global I teacher, Dr. R. Kovach, always say? "You ought to finish 1-2 pleasure books each month and find at least one (!) word each day!" This is crazy. "READ! The SATs are coming!" I am not saying that it's wrong to do that, but is one word per day a good rate?

Anyway, I have to review the vocabulary word with Lorib. Some of the vocabulary words were easy such as inclement (in=not, clement=good), omniscient (omni=all, scient=have science/knowledge). However some words appear in the same week were so similar and make it hard to find its roots, such as vociferous (voci=voice, fer=to burden/bring) and voluminous (volum=volume, nous=many).

Although I was reviewing and doing the exercises with my friend, I didn't even have a chance for me to review because I was the only one who was doing the work, who was doing the exercises! None of those notecard words were stored in my harddisk. On that test, I had a score of 36, just higher than Nnyrb Ikswonipets, who had a 30.

Before the next test begins, I prepared for my self, so that I wouldn't score near where Nnyrb did. The same problem happened again. Lorib wanted to "review" with me again. This time, the same thing happens. He wasn't even using his brain! I scored somewhat higher on this test than before, but that was not satisfactory for me.

Again, he tried to perform that before the third test. This time, I didn't even care about him anymore. I forgot what score I've got on that test, but it's better than the last time. I didn't even respond to him in anyway in class. There was an assignment on Romeo and Juliet that asked us each to write a poem, to "List 10 things you hate to do. One way is to say you'd rather do all these things than the one worst thing; the key is exaggeration of the alternatives, based on the poem in R+J:

O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris/... And I will do it without fear or doubt,/ To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.

And so I wrote a poem about these "events":

O, let me jump, rather than do homework
That belongs not to me, but to a jerk.
Who sits where Kovach lives
And words of wisdom gives.
Or shop at the mall,
On the Manhasset Plains;
Or to be dared, to drink diet coke,
With "natural, sugar, fat-free" foods;
Or to dissect animals in my science class,
Machines that, make me dizzy all day;
Or palatables that makes me sick and ache.
Neither would I do it without fear or doubt,
To suffer "chemistry" with someone
Who neither I admire or love.

I've always name my poems for homework after the teacher who gives the assignment: This is the third poem, so the name should be House Centrella Suite Number 3, And the title is Rather to Do That I Would...

The day after, in the ESL resource room, We look upon each other and stunned. With the guidance of a support staff, Mrs. A. Mariojious, we successfully untied our temporary dead-locked friendship.

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