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sergeant, who taught military science at the school, went up to me and said, “Son, were you out drinking this morning?” Once again, I was embarrassed.
    The first day of academic orientation began when the assistant principal for student affairs told us, “You are at the best high school in the Capital District.” In fact, that feeling was shared among the faculty, staff, parents, and students. However, there weren’t really any statistics to demonstrate this alleged superiority. The school has always been private and never has published any statistics about SAT scores or regents exams. I found it ironic that less than five years after making that comment, the assistant principal later left Saint John’s and became an associate principal at the middle school I had attended.
    The first day of classes, the behavior of some of my teachers shocked me. All of my public school teachers had been professional, and most held master’s degrees. In my freshman year of high school, of the teachers for my core subjects (English, math, science, social studies, and foreign language), three of them had postgraduate degrees, but my global studies teacher had a masters degree in English and my earth science teacher had a doctorate in English. Even though I would hear many comments about how public schools were falling behind, most of the teachers at Saint John’s wouldn’t have been qualified to teach at a public school.
    The first English class that I had was with Mr. Ramone, an icon of the Saint John’s community. He was an alumnus of the school and had taught there for close to twenty years. He also served as the assistant principal for academic affairs and was the varsity basketball and baseball coach. The first day of school, he encouraged us to write a schedule of our day and put it on the refrigerator. This daily schedule consisted of school, homework, sports practice, church, and limited time for recreation or socialization. A few weeks later, at the meet-the-teachers night, he actually asked the parents if we had our schedules on the refrigerator and encouraged the parents to enforce them. I was simply there to get an education, just as you go to the dentist every six months for a dental appointment. Like everyone should set aside time for oral hygiene, all high school students should spend time studying. However, my dentist doesn’t suggest a schedule that he makes up for me on how to spend my time and then encourage my family to enforce it.
    Due to his other commitments as an associate principal, Mr. Ramone would often arrive late to class. He would eat lunch during class and was very unorganized. During the last day of the marking period, we would grade other students’ tests. One student asked if there was going to be a curve. Mr. Ramone replied, “Depends if I have a glass of wine with dinner tonight.”
    Like almost every freshmen English class in high school, we had to read Romeo and Juliet . I just considered it an ancient chick flick. I could never understand why teachers try to promote reading in children by giving them the most boring and ancient books to read. Romeo and Juliet love each other and then kill each other because they cannot express their love. For some reason, ninth graders are forced to read this book, and Mr. Ramone’s class was no exception. Of course, we had class discussions on the readings. Mr. Ramone gave a lecture one day on how the character Tybalt was a “coward.” The next day, Mr. Ramone asked us to summarize the discussion that we had the day before. Like a good student, I raised my hand and said that the theme we discussed the previous day was how Tybalt was a coward, and I gave my rationale for this argument. Mr. Ramone then replied, “Would you?” insinuating that I was even a coward. My family was spending six thousand dollars a year so I could discuss how Tybalt was a coward. We didn’t discuss literary elements used by Shakespeare—style, grammar, or tone. No, our class