English does have its ups and downs

• English is, surprisingly, not as bad as I initially thought. However, Zohra, dropping little kiss-ass comments to Ms. Regan, is starting to really annoy me. These comments consist of; how Zohra just sees so much now, her horizons have been broadened, she notices connections where she didn’t think they existed, and what not. Also, Zohra apparently sees herself as the number one journalist, the only and expert authority on writing articles, which I find ever so slightly ironic, along with mostly irritating, because her word choice is often questionable, like she looked the meanings up in a dictionary but doesn’t actually know how they’re used in everyday life.
English does have its ups and downs.
A down side is that being in AP English is rather discouraging. Not because the work is hard, or I don’t understand things, but because Ms. Regan openly says she hates grade-grubbers and the like, which is what her fourth period mainly consists of, and yet as I look around the class when she says things like this I see blatantly sympathetic nods, signaling an agreement in opinion, from exactly the same people who are widely known to be dirty little grade-grubbers and kiss-asses, hated secretly and sometimes openly, if not just avoided entirely by the general population. The first few times Ms. Regan had disclosed her low opinion of teachers’ pets to us, I had foolishly thought, “Ha ha, suckers! Victory!” to a few particular classmates of mine sitting not a few meters away. Yet I forgot how adaptive humanity is. So classmates like Zohra are still finding ways to try and snuggle up to the teacher, even while denouncing ass-kissers. I think this is the trait that helped us survive the Ice Age, “Oh, hey ice, looks like you’re moving into my habitat, but don’t worry, it’s cool, we were thinking of moving on anyway.” Or economic downturns, “What missing money? Well, the company doesn’t have as much money as it should either but that sure isn’t our fault, we shouldn’t have to give up what little we do have. So, anyway, I’ll be in my Hampton house; call me when you figure something out.”
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.