The Players: My professor (known as Mr. X), myself, and approx. 50 classmates
So today I dragged my weary body to my dreadfully dull evening class, ready for three hours of Mr. X's hopelessly mangled attempt at explaining history in the most convoluted manner possible.
Then I get into class, and discover the Obama presidential election speech - you know, the one where he's ridiculously inspirational and you wonder how anyone could even think of voting against him (that wasn't sarcasm). Fair enough, the election was yesterday, and this is a semi-polysci class.
But by the one-hour-in mark, we're still talking about the American election. Now, I love a good ol' politics chat as much as the next hopelessly dull individual, but I'm here to learn about the HISTORY of INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, not a modern day election, regardless of how interesting it may be.
What is going to happen to the lesson plan Mr. X had set out for today? Are we doing it next week instead? But that would set us back a week, and there are only so many weeks in a semester. Drop the lesson altogether? But... you can't just leave out a chunk of history, it puts everything out of context (not that there was much to begin with in this class).
You can see the problem I have with this. Now, I'm all for professors shaking things up a bit and trying new things, but seriously, that's only alright for like an hour, tops. I'm sitting on a painfully hard wooden chair, wishing I could be researching my essay (due on Monday, which I've barely started), and Mr. X is babbling on for THREE HOURS about something NOT EVEN RELATED TO THE COURSE.
I suppose I should be listening. I'm sure he has lots of insight to offer on the current state of world politics. But you know what? I have only a passing interest in politics, and I certainly don't want to talk about it in a classroom at 9:30 on a Wednesday evening. Call me irrational, call me a diehard, old-school fanatic, but really, when did lecturing your students on the SUBJECT OF THE COURSE become so radical a concept?
Now Mr. X says "I'd argue that our discussion this week is more important than... our discussion next week". What does that mean for his lesson planning abilities? I genuinely like Mr. X, but really, he needs to learn how to plan his lectures better. And on that note, professors in general need to learn how to make powerpoint presentations. Slides that say:
The American Revolution
- economy
- social issues
- military power
-- are NOT good slides! How the hell are you supposed to take notes from that? Any idiot knows that the economy, military, and society were a part of the American Revolution. Give me names, dates, or something that I can use for the invariably impossible final exam!
All I can say is: learn to teach, professors. We're paying you something obscene like $50 an hour each to fill our minds with knowledge, so fill them already!
Interesting Fact: the first tv show to have a toilet onscreen was Leave it to Beaver.
3 comments:
Maybe your professor planned this whole 3 hour discussion for weeks! He's been anticipating this day and marking each day off on the calendar as it approached. Give him more cred!
Your absolutely right. I feel it's unfair that students have to go to a class, and learn something that isn't even related to the subject. You're obviously very smart and pretty.
ok a few things...
1) very smart and pretty? not taht I'm denying it, since you are both, but how does one find that from your writing?
2) ahem, did Wednesday Nov 12th fall off the face of the calendar or something? I've added checking into my post-choir routine you know!
3)My profs do what yours did very occasionally but if a good paper comes out thatis remotely related to our topic then can spend almost half of the class (mind you ours are only 1 hour) talking about it!
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