Throughout my grueling time of what is now almost 12 years at school, I've picked up a lot of things I dislike. Certain teachers and fellow students, specific subjects, such as Science and Math to name a couple, and of course the fact we wake up earlier than adolescently necessary, but nothing stands in the way of my hatred for the study of English. Of course, it's essential for everyone living here in Canada, as obviously it's one of our two official languages. I don't mind the tedious grammar lessons and things of that nature, as those will inevitably come in handy in later life, but the thing that gets me going is learning about poetry. Namely, and some writing fanatics will get peeved at me for this, Shakespeare. I could never fathom as to why we needed to pick apart everything this man did so long ago, why we needed to surround ourselves with these alien adaptations of the language we know so well. Sure, the stories themselves that he wrote were magnificent and I understand people would speak similarly to that during that time because the English language as a whole was still being established, but why on earth should we care? For instance, if anyone said "doth" or "thy" or any other of those abnormalities, everyone would think you were out of your mind. Also, don't get me started with all of those darned poetry terms. I find the majority of them useless, because unless you are legitimately seeking a career or a consistent hobby with poetry, why should we need to know every single one? Again, I understand the need to know the basic ones like personification and metaphors because they are used in every form of writing, but things like cacophony or assonance just seem plain useless to me and I can imagine they are the same to other aspiring creative writers, too. I feel you can be poetic without using these little additions, even rhyming. I feel poetry should just be about working in emotion, honesty, and real meaning into your writing, and you don't need to have strict rules as to how you write. Yes, you can criticize me and accuse the classic: "You don't like it because you're bad at it" mantra, but I could care less. People should just be able to write, about whatever, whenever, and not with restriction. F*ck you Shakespeare.