The fact that this article was printed in the first place surprised me. It was written about a year ago. When I saw that the article had been printed, I read it over again and said to myself, "What caused me to write this?" Needless to say, I was glad that I had asked for anonymity, since the reaction from my classmates was extremely negative. And so, I am writing this article for the sole purpose of apologizing.

First of all I want to express my apologies to my social studies teacher. Most of the information that I put into the article was written in malice. I am extremely sorry for what I wrote, and to the rest of you: we have settled it in private, everything's cool. However, he told me himself that he is one to accept criticism, and I stand by my comment that he is a "stand-and-deliver," or "traditional," as I called it earlier, teacher. And no, I don't like that kind of teaching.

Next, I'd like to speak to my classmates who were offended by the original article. To each and every one of you (and I'm sure that there are a lot), I have but one excuse for my work: My relationship with the social studies teacher that I mentioned was not going along very well at the time that I wrote this article, and I think that a lot of that aggression I felt toward him went into it. The article was not written well, and when I didn't see it for a few months after I sent it in, I felt sure that it wasn't going to be published. I felt relieved; I thought that I would never have to look at that piece of writing again. But now it has been published and the only thing I can do is try to reconcile what I've done by publishing this letter.

Nevertheless, the article isn't all bad: my French teacher loved the part about her, and gave a five-minute commendation to whomever it was in her class who had written the article. She called it "the highest honor a student could give." And hey - at least that part of the article I'm proud of. n