Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.


Friday Five #27

Yeah, it’s late. Sue me.

http://fridayfive.org/

1. What was/is your favorite subject in school? Why?

Oh that’s easy. Art, Craft and Design wins, hands-down. It was fucking sweet, getting do do stuff that you actually enjoy during school hours. And it’s an exam subject too. (In other words, doing Art actually counts towards getting a place in university.) When you do Art, you do most of the exam before school ends and the main Leaving Cert exams begin, since it’s split into a few different sections (life drawing, modelling or design, a history of art written paper, and so on). Out of my class, only myself and Grover elected to do the poster design rather than clay modelling. One has more time to do the actual modelling (not counting extra time for painting after it’s dry) but I couldn’t model for shit and still can’t. Plus, the sooner I could go home, the better. I think my poster (an advertisement for a museum exhibition of Ancient Greek artifacts or somesuch) turned out pretty well – even if my preparatory work was a tad lacklustre, I was always more of an improv guy in that respect – but it was so good walking out and going home for the day at lunchtime, knowing those other chumps had to hang around till the evening to get their crappy modelling done. Suckers. That’s one of my few good memories of school.

2. Who was your favorite teacher? Why?

I dunno, I don’t think I had a favourite, I’ve known some crappy teachers in my time but also some pretty cool ones. Some I still know or see now and again (Dave’s dad was a teacher at my school, and I’ve met Mr. Dunne – art teacher – a couple of times at work).

3. What is your favorite memory of school?

I don’t have many. None besides what I’ve mentioned above. I guess anything involving me going home early or not getting any homework ranks pretty high. The last week or so of school in sixth year was pretty cool; we did feck all, and they fucked us out after an emergency assembly two days before we were officially finished. Which was nice of them.

4. What was your favorite recess game?

Oh, that’s way too far back to remember. I was never one to partake of many playground activities. That’s not to say, hovever, that I’ve never joined in in a game of Bulldog. It was against the rules and everything – ooh I’m such a rebel.

5. What did you hate most about school?

I just hated school full stop. Don’t get me wrong, I liked most of my teachers and made lots of friends (the majority of whom I’m still great friends with, even after three years of college), but I just hated the whole strict nature of it all, having to go in every day, having your uniform just so, having all your homework done, studying for tests every week, two-to-three hours of shitty homework every night. I couldn’t wait to get out. In contrast, I loved going to university. There was little-to-no pressure, (usually) no one badgering you for homework and shit, and if you got bored in a class you could just say ‘fuck it’ and leave. Or just not show up in the first place. University rules. I miss it. I can’t wait go back, do a post-grad.