Yoti's Dream, Part II

Scarcely had I arrived, and in a far younger body than I would previously have guessed, but friends, I found myself remanded to an academic academy. I will spare you all the details about the foster homes, the foster families, the indignity of not being accepted for the independent individual I knew I was. It was in the school where I suffered the worst horrors.

Can you imagine...! Each class seemed to demand greater and greater amounts of my time, not simply what could be experienced with the teacher actually present, but assignments meant to strengthen the knowledge I was supposed to gain. This would have been excellent, if the teacher attempted to teach any of their subject at all, rather than fixate on the same details day after day, repeating what we were supposed to do at home, and then punishing us if we failed to understand how any of it was supposed to matter. There were plenty of subjects with required reading, the memorizing of material needed to pass tests and graduate at the end of the year.

Friends, I tell you the worst of it was the literature classes! Somehow these teachers had gotten it into their heads that their books were just the same as the textbooks in History or Science, that if we simply read at the established pace and listened to all the required interpretations, not only would we end up appreciating these books, we would eagerly invite the same experience on our personal time. As if there were such a thing! This was not a time to use our free moments repeating the dreaded exercises of the classroom, but for rebellion!

Rebellion! What else is youth for! Except to learn the drudgery that awaits us in maturity! Books had always been a refuge for me, before this trip through time, and yet, experiencing this notion of how one was supposed to appreciate them, made books less friends and more a source of endless misery. There was no sense of universal understanding in these stories, unless that sense was defiance! Burn all the books!

For years and years I was caught in this loop. I thought it would never end!