“I Just Wanna Be Average”—Mike Rose

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In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Mike Rose recounts his experiences in vocational program in high school, which known as bottom level. When he was a freshman, he accidently was placed in these classes but he decided to stay. Rose goes into details describing some of his teachers and classmates. Certain teachers he introduced were not enthusiastic about their jobs and they don’t believe their students can make good achievements, and sometime they even treat students violently, which also lead some students of the vocational program to slack off and not care about studying. Rose also focused on some of his classmates, who were seen as troublemakers. He found out that they actually were not always like fighting, being lazy and loafing, and they had some special skills showed their true personalities. There was one boy that very stuck out to Rose was Ken Harvey, who was asked by teacher to give an opinion of working hard to make achievements, stated that “ I just wanna be average” (Rose 335). I was pretty impressive about this quote because that I think being average might like some of students calm down and feel not so stressful to survive in educational system. Later in Rose’s life, he eventually moved out of vocational program and back to typical school system. At this time, his father passed away, which is not so relevant with the main plot. Later, Mr. MacFarland came into Rose’s life as his English teacher in senior year. Rose looked up Mr. MacFarland deeply because he sincerely cared of his students, told the importance of working hard to them and even encourage Rose to pursue further education in college. I can tell that Mr. MacFarland left positive impacts on Rose’s whole life, and helped him found his real potential.
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... to the United States, which made her really proud. Her rough teaching method actually left a positive impact on my life because I build a good habit of learning and using English, and also I feel so fortunate that I can get all of these supervision, criticism, encourage, and care from her.
Rose said that knowledge “enabled me to do things in the world” (Rose 344). I totally agree with it. I believe that knowledge changes people’s lives. If I did not try my best to learn English, I will never get chance to go abroad to study. I always think about that if I stayed in China and still slacked off in English instead of going to U.S. to studying, what kind of life I will live right now? Maybe I will get used to being “average” like some of Rose’s classmates, but I know I will regret so much when I recall my adolescent life if I did not make efforts to pursue knowledge.

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