Basket.

I am knee-deep in English essays, and not just any English essays, but godawful English essays. Essays that, when mercifully (and relatively, I might add) grammatical, are almost inevitably mind-numbingly boring. "Then we had lessons. After lessons, we had a group discussion. After that, we had dinner. After dinner, we watched a movie. The movie was called "(xxx)" and it was about (insert horribly ungrammatical and way-too-long sentence I could not make head or tail of). After that, we went home. Almost before I knew it, the first day was over."

It goes on in the same vein for about 400 more words. This guy, by the way, was describing the most exciting experience of his life. The irony is not lost on me. What is worse is that his script was actually among the better ones - considering that, anyway, most of them failed to make the word limit of 350. Yes, I counted, because too many of them were trying to smoke me by passing off essays that were manifestly not of this length.

Please believe me when I say that I do not want to fail them. However, I have no choice, because what happens when you don't meet the word limit is that your marks are capped at a maximum of 50% - which they will not achieve, due to their non-existent command of grammar, appalling vocabulary and indescribably awful spelling. This, of course, is before I even judge them on writing ability: which as the above extract might show you, is not exactly something they possess in spades.

In before "What did you expect?" - yes, I expected bad, but this is beyond my wildest imaginings of bad. I sincerely believed they would actually be at least able to make up 350 words and not fail for this silliest of reasons. It is unfortunate that I find myself very much mistaken.

That aside, my Sec 3s are pretty adorable, actually. Most of them are still 14 and at the age when mention of the word "sex" is still met with barely-suppressed giggles and the occasional googly-eyes at each other. One of them today flashed the middle finger in class, thinking maybe that I was blind. I asked a girl what was abortion and she demurred her answer with painful shyness while her classmates giggled at her predicament. The class clown shouted "sex" and I resisted the urge to make him stand up and explain to everyone what it was. All that, a day after I got myself into a bit of a pickle in my Sec 2 Geography class by bringing up contraception (I explained it away as "making sure the woman does not get pregnant"). It is really cute to see teenagers squirm at these topics, perhaps because it is a reminder of what we must have done when we were their age.

So, that's school life. Ups and downs, just like it was when I was a student and getting picked on by teachers instead. A red EXP on your composition means you have to find a better way to express yourself, but it can also stand for exasperation at hopeless pieces and exasperation at precious antics, words and actions.