I know just as much as any other student at Paly that the first glance at a sheet of vocabulary is like skydiving. You’re up in the air, and you need to get down to the ground. It’s a simple matter of how to get from point A to point B without transforming into a blob of strawberry jam (achieving self-jamification). It’s quite easy if you think about it – well, if your parachute is working.

Now, there is already a term for achieving self-jamification; it’s called being ‘screwed.’ But this generic term doesn’t really cover all the different ways that you could be screwed. Therefore, I’ll offer some of my own terms. There is, of course, the normal "jamification" – this is the act of becoming a blob of strawberry jam (achieving self-jamification) by the time you’ve reached point B (and have finished the quiz). Then there’s "pop jamification," a term that refers to vocab quizzes you didn’t know you had.

Pop vocab quizzes are like when you’re in midair, and you say, "Oh, oops. I forgot my parachute."

At this point, you’ve just failed your objective entirely, and unless you’re Harry Potter with your little portable broom stick, or you get picked up by the aliens and carried off to Planet Zimbozalia to be the latest test subject, it’s the strawberry jam for you. Pop jamification. Kersplat!

Then again, are these two events really so unlikely? Everyone who’s watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus knows that this stuff happens all the time (or some of it). Is there some vocabulary parallel to being abducted by aliens or shape shifting into a fictional character? I think so.

It’s called themes. By themes I mean definitions that keep reoccurring. For example, one of my former English teachers seemed to have a billion synonyms for "cheating." It seemed like everything was a synonym for cheating! Even simple words that we all thought we knew the definitions to. Watch out! One wrong word and it’ll be a confession to cheating! Call the police! (I’m starting to sound like Ashcroft now, aren’t I?)

So of course, if you see the word "apple" on a surprise vocab quiz, you write down "cheating"! And if the teacher counts it wrong, obviously you just picked up the backpack with the bowling ball instead of the one with the parachute. Bowlijamified. Kersplat!

Sometimes, you’re already strawberry jam, a state I refer to as being "jammed up." I’m sure that everyone has been jammed up at some point or another. I know for me, it’s when I’ve been working really hard and feel the most confident with the material. I’ll walk in, hoping to get an easy A, and then I’ll get the test:

Write a five-page essay explaining why this is a perfect example of a grammatically correct sentence (you have 10 minutes):

Rob complained to his friend about swallowing a whole pie and a bunch of journalists; he knew he had to diligently and cunningly eat 10 more.

Obviously, the author of this test flunked sophomore English because there is absolutely nothing good about this sentence. It has a misplaced modifier and a split infinitive; in that idiom filled slur we call "regular English" you can’t eat a bunch of journalists.

At that point, it is no longer a matter of getting from point A to point B without achieving self-jamification because by then I am still on the plane (point A) and have already become a puddle of strawberry jam. I am totally jammed up.

So maybe I laugh. "Haha! That’s such a funny joke!" Maybe I just turn in a blank piece of paper or a joke essay just to amuse myself.

Maybe the teacher didn’t think it was so funny. Maybe I’ll stop laughing when I see the zero in my grade.

I’ve named this phenomenon being, "unknowingly jammed up".

So what am I saying? What am I getting at? I’m not really sure, but sometimes, it’s better not to be sure of something. More often than not you won’t be able to fly away on a magic broomstick, and there won’t be that alien space ship coming down to abduct you. And I’m not just talking about school here; in fact, I’ve never been talking only about school. Draw your own conclusions.

Then again, I’d rather be jamified–even jammed up, for that matter–if the aliens were actually a cult of geometry worshippers, who wanted to take me to their planet, "Euclidonia" where everything is a three column proof.

Geomjam. Kersplat!