I'm so bored I could tip a cow.
I thought about it. I mean it would be funny, the sight of me tipping a cow. Especially being as small as I am and everything else. Me, pushing some big old cow, or trying to, until some redneck came after me with his shotgun.
I'm so bored that I start giving Rob those AIM warnings to boost his level. And got excited when he did it back to me.
My school is such a fucking joke.
My Sociology class is really Mickey Mouse. I can't believe the stuff the teacher was explaining to the class. The guy spent twenty minutes explaining the basics of grading policies and whatnot, another thirty explaining the seven page term paper that will be due in December (things like "now a 36 point font won't count toward your seven pages." Having him review drafts is optional, but if you do and you take his suggestions you're almost guaranteed a b, that sort of thing...) and the rest of the time going over maps of the US and Canada for a quiz in mid September.At one point, he had to say "while I'll help you during the course, and I'll always tell you how you're doing, the semester grade is final. So, if you don't like your grade, please don't come to my office and break down and cry. I won't change your grade." I guess I thought that was common sense, not crying to change your grade.
My Sociology teacher took a poll. He asked how many of us were from Kalamazoo. All but three of us weren't either from Western Michigan or a wealthy suburb of Detroit. He then asked how many of us aspired to leave. Only two of us did. It was the most god awful homogenous group of people. It was scary.
I passed a
whole hallway of guys in reverse baseball caps and the same generic t shirts
all in a row, sitting on the floor together. I started wondering if that's
the student body or if there's actually a cloning machine in some science
lab that went out of whack that day. I started thinking how much it was like shooting fish in a barrel, all lined up in a row like that. I mean, if a fire spread suddenly through the hall, it would wipe the world of fifty more baseball cap clad youth. But then, they would probably be replaced by a hundred more exactly like them. Endless streams of white boys from the suburbs listening to white boy rap music, terrified of anything not exactly like them, mindless and unimaginative. Like cockroaches, they are.
But the real joy didn't come until today.
My design and appreciation class is the most fucking evil thing on the face of the earth.
I have this awful teacher, this woman who seems to have gotten it into her head that she can teach college students as she would fifth graders.I can't decide if she thinks
we're retarded or if she is. Seriously. For example, she said to us about our student
discount at the art supply store: "now, be sure to tell them you get the
discount *before* you pay. If you forget, go home and come back and ask for
your discount they won't give it to you." She also said we aren't allowed to
leave the class until formally dismissed by her, and if we leave a few
minutes early she'll mark us absent for the whole class. Additionally, she
said if we miss a class, she'll call us to ask what's wrong and why we
weren't there. And she gave a ten minute speech about how we need to not get
any eraser shavings on the floor, since the floor was just waxed. So, if we
get shavings on our desk, we need to scoop them up in our hand and walk over
to the trash can. (???)
But wait there's more.
She told us "be sure you're up to the homework. Because if you can't do the
homework, you won't get as good a grade. Then that will hurt your GPA and
when you graduate, you'll be applying for jobs and they'll ask you your GPA
and you'll go 'oh, if only I had done well in that design and appreciation
class.'" At that point I started laughing, because that is such utter
bullshit, and she said "oh I see some of you smiling. I'm glad to see that.
See? You know what I'm talking about."
Um. Wow.
But I really almost lost it when I tried to eat a nutritional bar for breakfast. See, I can't eat early in the morning. This class is a nine am class. Now in most art classes, it's no problem having a candy bar or something, as long as you're doing assignments in between bites. Well, she gave a long shpeel about what foods and drinks were acceptable and which were not. Well, I decided to be courteous and ask her if it's okay if I have my Boost bar, explaining I hadn't eaten breakfast. Well, she goes on this long thing about how to eat it and how to make sure I throw it in the trash when I'm done. I'm getting annoyed as it is. Then she says, "oh and next time--eat breakfast."
Oh fuck you, you inbred hayseed bitch.
I think I can handle deciding if I eat breakfast. She was showing a really inane video at the time anyways. I wasn't hurting anyone. Not only that but I'm paying her salary with my tuition money. I'm not a child, I don't need lectures on my diet, nor instructions on how to eat and how to throw out my wrapper when I'm done. I'm smarter than her, I obviously know more about the professional world than her and I'm willing to wager I even, before I quit my job to go to school, made more money than her. I don't need to be treated like I can't find my own asshole.
It was at that moment I knew I had to drop her class.
So, this evening, I dropped her class. I'm down to twelve credit hours which is fine by me, as long as my other teachers are tolerable. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed on that one.
This whole experience is only reinforcing my negative attitude about school. As much as I would like to get a degree sometimes I really don't see what the point of the whole thing is. It seems to a large extent that classes are taught by people who know nothing about the real world, who regurgitate propaganda, making it so its graduates have total misconceptions about what to expect and what brings success.
Maybe I'll change my mind. Maybe I'm just having a bad day. I'll allow for that. But as it stands now, I'm going to take what I need from the experience and get the fuck out as soon as I can. Because college is proving, once again, to be the least intellectually and creatively stimulating thing out there.