The Old College Try

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Orthodox Palm Sunday
Passover / Pesach
Pink Moon
Taurus Begins

 

Nothing like writing a paper for a teacher you know will grade you down and/or argue with you if you present any opinion contrary to hers. Sure, the content of this medical anthropology class is fascinating, but there’s got to be a better pedagogical format than posing a rhetorical question, waiting for someone to answer with the expected narrowminded viewpoint, and then expansively informing that person that they’re wrong. Especially if a student answers with an open viewpoint and she waves them aside. If you’re going to convey the message “Hang on, I want somebody to be wrong on this before we move on,” then you’re probably not going to get a lot of responses to your questions. And those long pauses while people fail to volunteer to offer themselves up for the slaughter? We call those “wastes of time.”  The other possible ways we could be using that time?  We call those “useful ways.”

 

Of course, this is the class that started out with a dreaded Group Project. Not a good way to set the tone with me.

 

Anyway, this long ranty gripe is just my way of telling you that the tale of How I, Along With One Other Quick Thinker, Casually Saved Almost All Of My Friends From A Burning Building By Stopping The Building From Being A Burning One* will be slightly delayed while I write an essay on How Taking Into Account What People Think About Their Own Illness Is Sort Of Important, Even If You Know The Scientific Cause Of The Illness Already.** Rest assured, we will get to it.

 

It’s days like these I remember why I’m graduating the hell out of here.

ETA: The best part is that while this teacher is going to spend ten weeks trying vainly to convince me that You Scientists With Your Modern Medicine Ain't So Great, in another class a guest lecturer waltzed right in and totally sold me on the validity of midwifery and the problems of childbirth attitudes in the US.  Dude, it's all about the attitude; I am a fickle, spiteful thing.

 

 

*Accounts of this may vary, but I can assure you that no alcohol was involved. Or, at least, not in the way you expect. I’m not sure if this defends or damns us.

 

**For example, I can cite this very paper as a cause of the headache I am currently suffering.

Comments

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

My English teacher in college was the same way. She was convinced that she was the single most enlightened person ever on social issues, and that we were all morally bankrupt because we were white (never mind that she was white too).

There was one poor black guy in the class, and she tried to make him weigh in on everything even though he obviously was uncomfortable standing up and speaking for every black person ever or even -- here's a thought! -- didn't agree with her. She'd press on him in class, because she genuinely wasn't happy unless he stood up, donned the robes of his African tribe from the father land, and spoke in 15 minute monologues about how whitey been keeping him down.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

My mom had a history teacher like that in college. The prof was a black woman. Who never let the class forget that she was black. And a woman. And therefore a black woman. And how this made her So Much Better than everyone else because black women have been the Oppressed of the Oppressed, and thus she knew the Truth behind the historical stuff she taught.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I wonder if she was the sister of my speech prof, who informed me I was a "cracker" as well as an oppressor from a long line of oppressors*. Also, my friend Courtney was a "race traitor" because she didn't want to join the Minority Students Group. Well, and that she had a bunch of whities for friends.**

Oddly enough, my issues with this, may have lead to my C in this class.


*Among other heinous things my family has done, have been such horrid acts as being from Kentucky but joining the Union army during that little scuffle in the early 1860s because they thought that whole "people owning other people" was wrong.

** Courtney was an Army brat, and a nerd who lived most of her life in Germany on American Army bases. To her, the big thing wasn't color, it was that you were American. WTF is wrong with her!?!

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

She actually called you by a racial slur in class? Oh WOW.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

He.

Yeah, he called me a cracker.

This was the Honor's Program - Speech 101 class. The first thing he said on the 1st day of class was "All right you bunch of uppity white assholes, shut up and listen."

Mind you, we all stopped talking when he came into the room, but I guess he wanted to set the tone right off the bat.

I thought it a rather unfair generalization, as of the 18 of us in the class, only 16 of us were white. I'd say only about 1/2 of us were uppity assholes.*

That was a helluva class, this was the 2ne semester ( Shippensburg operated on a Spring/Fall semester of 3.5 months, with 3 short, intense summer semesters ). We found out that the new person in the class was actually a member of the Honor's Program since the fall, but she never took any of the other HP classes ( history, comp, or the 3 electives offered each semester ) but she did grow up next door to the prof, and had been babysat by him since around the time she was born.
There was rather pointed grousing about that, funny enough, she only got a B. He graded everyone pretty easily though, as long as you didn't get on his bad side.
Which I did. ( as did my friend Courtney ).
Among his other darling traits, he used to run his fingernails on the black board because he knew it bothered me.
While the C did irritate me, I have to admit over the years correcting students who were talking to him was minor pleasure "Dr. Woodyard..."
"Excuse me, he's actually Professor Woodyard, he doesn't have a doctorate."**


*I include myself in there.**
** For example. I wasn't so good at keeping my mouth shut, but I have gotten better.***
*** Recently. See also: "Why was biomekanic the one person in his 500 level seminar class to get a D? Is this because he disagreed with the prof running the class and everyone sided with him?" These are the things I learned in college.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

"OBJECTION! LEADING THE WITNESS!"

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

How can you call yourself an English teacher if mix up what the characters do with what the authors think it's OKAY to do? That's like the first thing most English teachers try to convince their students NOT to do!

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Wow that's messed up.

I just thought he was a poor author because if I read one more song or meal description in LoTR I was going to go postal. ;)

I bet Hunter S. Thompson would have given her an aneurism(sp).

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, I wasn't going to bring up why I think Tolkien IS a lousy author--but "having characters with vices" is not part of my criteria.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Well, you know how impressionable youth are. Obviously if children read that Gandalf smoked, they're going to start smoking the 'halfling leaf'.

As for teachers... I've had some good ones over the years and some God awful ones as well. My 5th grade science teacher told us "evilution" was lie created by America hating atheists, my 6th grade English teacher encouraged me to keep writing, and not stop, my science teacher encouraged us to remember that science was serious business, but could also be cool and fun, 'cause chem explains why things go boom! So let us make some things go BOOM! and calculate how much energy we've released? My 6th grade math/reading teacher mocked me saying that someday women would be in combat "What are they going to do, hit them with pots and pans" ( mind you, this was... *counts on fingers* '79-'80).
I was an English 2ndary Ed major for 2 years, but I realized my own intolerance for stupid would eventually lead to a body count.

[vogtalicious.livejournal.com]

Glad my credits rolled in, and I rolled out of that class as a result!

From what you said, the class I took this summer really was the 300 level version of this class! Teacher had a very narrow opinion, and you had hell to pay if you thought differently!

Still...it looked interesting...what class did the midwifery guide come in? I'm very interested in researching that field (seeing as how half the people I knew from high school are poppin' babies out like no tomorrow!).