After the talentless show you'd think that new "I'm going to turn this school into a success story, dammit!" principal would've given up on his ambition, but months later it was announced that the whole school would be dedicating an entire day to learning about jobs. Now, I've been doing this since 2nd grade, where we do reports on randomly assigned jobs, then pick which job we want to do. Which meant picking the correct option(s) available (jobs that make a lot of money and are guaranteed positions after x years of school) or get yelled at by the teacher for picking the "wrong" option (talent fields were money isn't guaranteed). The difference was that on this day there'd be people actually coming in to talk to us about their fields of work.
For the most part, the day was very unremarkable. Adults standing the the front of the class fumbling through why they love their job without actually telling us much about it before leaving, presumably to fuck off elsewhere to kill time before going back to work. The part that stood out was when I got to science class and we were told that our next guest speaker would be speaking in the cafeteria. We get to the cafeteria, I look up at the stage, and see an art easel set up with some markers and got excited. I was going to be seeing the professional version of what I considered doing for .00001 seconds for the talentless show.
This came to an equally immediate end when my teacher started yelling at some of my classmates for going to sit down. That wasn't our presentation, we were going to go to a better one in the far corner of the cafeteria, behind one of those temporary walls. The only times I'd ever seen that wall set up were on election days because our school was a polling location so I was honestly expecting to see election stuff set up and a person telling us all about being a poll worker. Instead was some stuff I could barely see on top of a table I couldn't see since nothing was raised up, before sitting in the very back.
Some guy came out that I could barely see with all the heads in front of me and started to speak. He worked in the science field, but what he did exactly I couldn't tell you because I couldn't fucking hear him since he had no microphone, or even a megaphone. Even worse was that the art guy started his much larger presentation shortly after, and he did have access to the sound system, and between that and the frequent cheers from his audience, drowned him out completely.
I quickly stopped paying attention and instead was thinking about how I really wanted to see the art guy and if I could peek around the wall without my teacher noticing (and freaking the fuck out). When I heard cheers coming from the people in our audience I snapped back to attention and got a glimpse of some colored flames coming from the table out front. It was actually pretty cool (and really pretty), and I wanted a better look at it, but he quickly put out his fires and started talking some more. Even though I couldn't hear him, I suspected it was a trap to get us to pay attention and that he didn't work in any sort of chemistry field involving (I'm guessing) firework production.
The art presentation ended, but this guy droned on a while longer (and still wasn't any better understood), but finally he said something and stopped talking. Silence echoed throughout our corner, and our teacher told us he asked if we had any questions. I gave no fuck about the rest of a presentation that was impossible to hear, but I really wanted to get a better look at those colored flames so I put my hand in the air, and was the only one to do so. The guy pointed to me, which under normal circumstances never fucking happens because there's something about me that just makes me invisible to others.
I stood up and called out that I wanted him to show the flames back here so we could see them. And just like me, he couldn't understand a word I said. I called again that I wanted to see the flames, and he still didn't know. I shouted, again, I want to see the flames, and he figured out I was saying something about the flames, but either he deliberately ignored what I was really asking about, or only understood the word "flames" because what happened was he started rattling off something I realized was the chemical combinations for each color. I forced myself to keep smiling and nodded like I understood what he was saying (I didn't) before sitting back down. Nobody else had anything to say so the presentation ended and we went back to our classroom.
There was actually still time left in the period so our teacher asked us what we thought of the presentation. I straight up said it was boring, I couldn't hear anything he said, and would've much preferred to have seen the art presentation. Many of my classmates agreed. My teacher said art was a stupid waste of time and that we should choose a real career, like science. Somebody pointed out that a science teacher isn't a real science career, she ordered his ass to the office, and nothing else remarkable happened for the rest of the day.
I still wish I could've seen the art presentation, though.
