by: Siyona Singhal
Humor Editor

Every high school student has to take English for all four years. This means that, sadly, every student has experienced a Socratic seminar once in their life. Kids either love or hate Socratics; I love them because I’ll take yapping over writing an essay any day. However, despite my preference for the seminars, I have had some really bad experiences with them.

Let’s start with freshman year. I will never forget when we were doing a Socratic about a coming-of-age lesbian book, and someone kicked off the questions by asking, “Is anyone part of the LGBTQ community?” The room went silent, and everyone looked at each other, waiting to see if anyone would respond. Despite being a part of the community, I stayed silent simply because of how uncomfortable I already was. However, after we got over that little bump, it was actually a great seminar. Everyone was sharing; it was pretty wonderful. Until someone started trauma dumping, which contributed to the already awkward experience. Other than that seminar, my freshman year try-hard self was so good at participating and racking up as many tallies as I could. Alas, it was only downhill from there.

Oh, sophomore year. I can’t say I survived every class discussion, but I did make it through every seminar with minor casualties. I remember blacking out every time I would raise my hand and praying that I didn’t say anything stupid. I think the reason I never felt too embarrassed was because I was so used to being humiliated in that class. Whether it was our dumpster fire of a debate or my cultural artifact project (I said that beloved children’s show Jessie hated Indian people and Ravi deserved better), I was used to getting shamed in front of my peers. Saying some random stuff during a seminar was nothing compared to struggling to read Julius Caesar in front of everyone.

Junior year has been rough, but it’s not my fault! My AP Lang class is simply full of people who dislike me. In one seminar, we were talking about Chris McCandless from Into the Wild and I mentioned that I thought he was not a selfish person. Two people later, someone raised their hand and just said, “Actually, on page 56, it says that McCandless was selfish, so Siyona’s wrong.” Everyone was dead silent, and no one knew how to continue from there. On top of that, taking an AP class means having people who love participating and are jumping out of their seats to participate despite having spoken 12 times already. Let’s just say I’m working on my listening skills this semester.

Socratic seminars are something everyone has to experience once. It’s a rite of passage to struggle through a sentence and end up repeating the same thing that five people before you said, but this time in a different font. Just remember, if you can talk your way through a seminar on a book you haven’t read, you can talk your way out of anything.