August 3, 2014

A class was beginning and 8 or so students were seated by a round table with the teacher. However there were no spots left so I had to sit at a neighboring table instead. We were to prepare our own notebooks for the class so I looked through my bag. Since they were ordained to be orange, I packed in all that I had. There were three- all used.

I flipped through the covers and they had my name as well as the year levels they were last used. The one with “6” on it was completely used up so I put it aside while “8” was only used halfway. I went through my bag again to find “4” for which only the first 10 or so pages had been used. The word “Amber” was also written on the cover in black marker and I’m not sure if this was another student’s name, a teacher, or some kind of reference that I no longer understood.

“This one should be fine right?” I asked the teacher.

She replied that I should be taking full notes and no shorthand for reasons I am not too sure of. Our discussion began as we transitioned onto an outdoor street.

The teacher asked us to discuss what humans have gained gained through intraspecies conflict. I was sitting really far away and straining to hear what the other students were saying and at one point a student mentioned an anecdote about a boat that split in half due to a person jumping with weights. When it was my turn to speak, I raised the point of how conflict led to better communication as people needed to accurately convey and interpret whether one was a friend or enemy. The teacher liked my idea but challenged to what degree conflict had a role in language as many other activities also encouraged improved communication skills.