Two weeks, twelve pages: can you do it?

[more cheerios]

Sloth. It is a common disorder that runs rampant within the teenage population. It effects can be felt from the ninth grade all the way until the twelfth.

Okay, so I am taking an "advanced" English/university prep course/whatever in my fifth year of highschool. I graduated last year, but my schoolboard gives me the option to upgrade courses. I decided if I took photography, got above an 80 in comm tech and upgraded my English mark I would be able to get into the film school of my choice immediately. About three weeks ago, we were given Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad to read. You see, that book is a whopping 90 pages (for all your unknowing children, it's short). Sure, the description goes over the top (as in taking three chapters to describe a tree) and it is a tad boring, but she only wanted us to read twelve pages. There's a common rumor that floats around the school: Heart of Darkness is total crap and hell to read. Nobody gives it a chance, they pretty much just accept that as truth.

My teacher gave us two weeks to read twelve pages. Last monday, we had a short reading quiz. It was the most straight-forward test I have ever written. I have a class of twenty-five and I was under the impression I had classmates who wanted to work, who wanted to actually pass. Today my teacher looked us all in the eye and said, "I was so dissappointed. The majority of this class failed horribly. Come on, guys, this is a grade twelve U course, you need to do better than this."

... Apparently only six people in the entire course read the book. Five other people and me. TWELVE PAGES. TWO WEEKS FOR TWELVE PAGES. People are so lazy, it's sick. :|

[CNagy]

Jeez, reading the title I thought you meant writing 12 pages in two weeks. When it comes down to crunch time, I do that in a morning... reading 12 pages? Negligible time. Damn, people in your class are lazy.

[more cheerios]

Jeez, reading the title I thought you meant writing 12 pages in two weeks. When it comes down to crunch time, I do that in a morning... reading 12 pages? Negligible time. Damn, people in your class are lazy.
I've lost all hope. :P

[Fallen Angel]

Geez... only twelve pages and they didn't do it? Tcheh... I wonder how they get up in the morning, do they even do their own breakfast?

[Pete]

I have little to no sympathy with the people who failed to read 12 pages in two weeks. For my English Lit. A-level I read two books in the 48hrs before the exam - Webster and Shakespeare for the record. I also read my Chaucer text in 4 days.

[more cheerios]

Geez... only twelve pages and they didn't do it? Tcheh... I wonder how they get up in the morning, do they even do their own breakfast?
I was really disappointed in a couple of girls I know from the class. They normally do really well on assignments.

Pete: Yeah, me either.

[Jiant Flying Panda]

Whoa. Like Cnagy I thought you had to right 12 pages in 2 weeks and in my head I was like "Pfft. I can do that in 2 nights"....

But after reading what you said, man.... That's pretty pathetic, lol. Can't read 12 pages in 2 weeks? Jesus! I had to read the second half of Great Expectaions in 2 days in my sophmore year of HS, Haha. I guess I'm not as lazy as I thought I was :D.

[Monkey]

Yikes! Twelve pages in fifteen minutes would be more like me. I count any book under 500 pages as a short story. Three hundred pages is just under a days reading.

How can people not read twelve pages?!

[co_delphi]

The only way this could be even plausible would be if it was from a technical manual. I keep a number of Cisco books aside in case I have trouble sleeping. 12 pages about the EIA/TIA standards for the thickness of plywood behind a PDX puts me out like a light.

[Monkey]

Actually the only time I've not been able to read twelve pages was for the background reading of my final year project. Very similar to the aforementioned technical manual:

"Anisotropic Transport in High Temperature Super-Conductors"

Bit of a mouthful isn't it? I had to look up the word Anisotropic in the dictionary and I'm still not sure what it means in this context :(

The reading list was painful. Especially seeing as I'm so used to reading things easily.

[Arvynia]

Sloth. It is a common disorder that runs rampant within the teenage population. It effects can be felt from the ninth grade all the way until the twelfth.

Okay, so I am taking an "advanced" English/university prep course/whatever in my fifth year of highschool. I graduated last year, but my schoolboard gives me the option to upgrade courses. I decided if I took photography, got above an 80 in comm tech and upgraded my English mark I would be able to get into the film school of my choice immediately. About three weeks ago, we were given Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad to read. You see, that book is a whopping 90 pages (for all your unknowing children, it's short). Sure, the description goes over the top (as in taking three chapters to describe a tree) and it is a tad boring, but she only wanted us to read twelve pages. There's a common rumor that floats around the school: Heart of Darkness is total crap and hell to read. Nobody gives it a chance, they pretty much just accept that as truth.

My teacher gave us two weeks to read twelve pages. Last monday, we had a short reading quiz. It was the most straight-forward test I have ever written. I have a class of twenty-five and I was under the impression I had classmates who wanted to work, who wanted to actually pass. Today my teacher looked us all in the eye and said, "I was so dissappointed. The majority of this class failed horribly. Come on, guys, this is a grade twelve U course, you need to do better than this."

... Apparently only six people in the entire course read the book. Five other people and me. TWELVE PAGES. TWO WEEKS FOR TWELVE PAGES. People are so lazy, it's sick. :|



That totally reminds me of my senior project class. I had the impression people were actually "good" in sewing and production, wanted to make something for themselves. So there is this competition I thought was going on. Ends up like, 3 out of maybe 17 students made at least "decent" effort, and I believe I was one of the top 3.

I was sooo disappointed and surprised. Even if I had terribly half assed my work, it would have came out better than the majority. Sad.

[Alphonse v.2]

I suffer from that disease, yet somehow I have an 85% average.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Heart of Darkness - Review by Pierrot le Fou

Joseph Conrad, the much heralded author of Heart of Darkness, is surprisingly enough not a native English speaker. Well, not so surprising. His misuse (overuse? odd use?) of punctuation, his rambling run-on sentences, and his distaste for these things called 'paragraphs' make me wonder if Polish is written in the same style.

The novel itself is so abstract that Stanley Kubrick wrote a Vietnam movie about it. The actual book isn't about Vietnam, and is of an era before M16s were mass-produced for soldiers. That doesn't mean the story is bad, but I suggest you watch Apocalypse Now and find a translation guide for character names before you take the test. It will probably allow you to get the major plot points right, and pass your test.

And you get to watch a good movie.

So I guess the point is that a non-native novelist writing in English should take care in making their writing readable. And even if they don't, a brilliant film-maker can come along and create a perfectly acceptable movie out of it.

[Random]

Whoa. Like Cnagy I thought you had to right 12 pages in 2 weeks and in my head I was like "Pfft. I can do that in 2 nights"....

But after reading what you said, man.... That's pretty pathetic, lol. Can't read 12 pages in 2 weeks? Jesus! I had to read the second half of Great Expectaions in 2 days in my sophmore year of HS, Haha. I guess I'm not as lazy as I thought I was :D.

Hell, I have to read all of it in 3 days for english GCSE - age 15/16 exams

God, such a boring book, in my opinion. Well, not much you can do about it......


And yeah, not reading 12 pages in 2 WEEKS is real bad. You have to be REALLY lazy, seriously.

[more cheerios]

Heart of Darkness - Review by Pierrot le Fou

Joseph Conrad, the much heralded author of Heart of Darkness, is surprisingly enough not a native English speaker. Well, not so surprising. His misuse (overuse? odd use?) of punctuation, his rambling run-on sentences, and his distaste for these things called 'paragraphs' make me wonder if Polish is written in the same style.

The novel itself is so abstract that Stanley Kubrick wrote a Vietnam movie about it. The actual book isn't about Vietnam, and is of an era before M16s were mass-produced for soldiers. That doesn't mean the story is bad, but I suggest you watch Apocalypse Now and find a translation guide for character names before you take the test. It will probably allow you to get the major plot points right, and pass your test.

And you get to watch a good movie.

So I guess the point is that a non-native novelist writing in English should take care in making their writing readable. And even if they don't, a brilliant film-maker can come along and create a perfectly acceptable movie out of it.
I've seen Apocolypse Now! It's an excellent movie. Lawrence Fishburn is so young when he was in it. Sixteen, I think?

I understand the book on a general basis, I've read it before. What I've been doing is reading chunks twice over then reading a study guide on those particular parts. There were two people in the entire class to receive 25/25 on the short reading quiz: Keenan and I.

[NERD]

Okay, so I am taking an "advanced" English/university prep course/whatever in my fifth year of highschool. I graduated last year, but my schoolboard gives me the option to upgrade courses. I decided if I took photography, got above an 80 in comm tech and upgraded my English mark I would be able to get into the film school of my choice immediately.

This is something random, but I applied for film schools after graduating high school. (And by film schools, I'm assuming it's studying a subject in the filmmaking area, not photography) If you want to go to good film schools like USC, NYU, Columbia, I hope you have a good film that can showcase your skill as a filmmaker, because the film schools I've listed are very selective. What they look for is your potential/current skill as a filmmaker. Doing good in school and tests is only the springboard to get your application submitted in the first place.

[baslisks]

hmmm 12 pages. For me thats less then 5 mins. Even if its descriptive Shakespearian crap. THat stuff takes me probably a little more thought then the norm. I can't write at all but I can read and comprehend. Kind of makes my time when playing instruments and building cheap and effeceint things easier when I understand how to do it by reading instead of frying it 60 times.

[nice gaijin]

I read 3 books this week and a 30 page essay this afternoon for a midterm today. After taking the test the teacher gave us someone else's paper and went over the answers so we could grade them in-class. I read the material and did well; the test I was given to grade literally had more wrong answers than correct ones; granted it was about 700 pages of material, but the guy clearly hadn't done any of the reading.

If you can't read 12 pages in two weeks you deserve to fail the course, not just a test. That's what I call a one-shit reading.

[NERD]

I've been reading Norton Anthologies of Theory and Criticism, and I wish I could read just 12 pages over two weeks. It's frigging tough.

[more cheerios]

This is something random, but I applied for film schools after graduating high school. (And by film schools, I'm assuming it's studying a subject in the filmmaking area, not photography) If you want to go to good film schools like USC, NYU, Columbia, I hope you have a good film that can showcase your skill as a filmmaker, because the film schools I've listed are very selective. What they look for is your potential/current skill as a filmmaker. Doing good in school and tests is only the springboard to get your application submitted in the first place.
Comm tech = a course dedicated to pre and post production. I have a number of good films that I wrote, directed, filmed and edited myself. I know what I'm doing, I've been planning this for a while. :)

I'm going to the Toronto Film School.