The Good, The Bad, and Everything in Between
Well first I'd like to offer my favorite quote by my crazy Jewish-Mexican US History professor. Mind you her accent makes her completely incomprehensible and I add her backgrounds because she's such a unique combination.
"I'm sorry to all the gays that we only have male and female gender. There only the two."
*stares*
Awesome. She's slowly becoming amusing, after four classes of trying to understand her ridiculous accent. You should see her syllabus, it's in the worst English grammar I've ever seen. It's quite terrifying. The fact that this women has some sort of degree (assumedly in the US) and has been teaching (at colleges?) for 40 years terrifies me. But she is adorable.
I was going to go into how work has been and grad school ramblings, but I've been thinking a lot about this upcoming semester, more like full year, because of potential conflicts....well, read on...
Dr. Hinton and I have never gotten along. When he first got to Susquehanna (our first year as well) everyone who had him for band just praised him to no end. While I wasn't in band, I had him for trumpet lessons and found him to be a pretty poor teacher. he gets fixated on minute things and then obsesses over things that cannot be fixed immediately. Such as his insisting on etaching mehow to breathe again. That's fine if you can justify it, but he can't and he also can't teach me. He's still working Just on that (two years later!!!!). My technical skills suck, my general technical knowledge sucks and I completely blame him for not trying to help me with Anything but breathing. We got along politely freshman year.
This past year however, he decided to really make his "territory" his. When he found out I was double-majoring, he didn't bother to hide the fact that he doesn't want to teach me. I'll never forget him snarling "Maybe you should stop lessons and just focus on your theatre things." I'll never forget the utter loathing in those words. Obviously anything that's not band is inferior, how dare I double major. I promptly replied "No, I'll be fine, thanks." I was sick of him walking all over me and trying to push me off, I was there to learn and dammit he's going to teach, that Is why I'm paying for trumpet lessons.
Brass Class 1 was ok. His tests were unfair, but no one said anything, we managed to get through it fine. Not taking Brass 2 but seeing the other students after it, they were in tears after every test because they were so ridiculously unfair. It killed me to see them let him do this. I asked if anyone said anything about it to him, but they were all too scared. Great, that'll change Nothing.
While I didn't have him for Brass 2, I still was taking lessons. More proof as to why I'm convinced he doesn't want to teach me? My lesson was a half an hour long (1:00-1:30) He would show up ten minutes late and say nothing. Twice, he didn't bother to show up and never said anything about it. Awesome. Sandy and Doug saw me right after (Sandy's voice lesson let out as I should've been going in.) She waited with me a few times and was stunned at his utter lack of caring. Doug asked if I said anything to Dr Tober (Music Dept Head) and I said it wasn't worth pissing him off for.
Near the end of the semester came the incident which was the last straw for me. I begged him to let me do an independent study for instrumental conducting. It conflicts with Into to Design and Everyone (including Doug) has said to take that and Directing together is do-able, but basically suicide. I explained this to Dr Hinton saying that, while technically I could do it, I knew I didn't want to do that to myself emotionally.) He said that independent studies are only for an additional course, not the actual course. I told him, that wasn't necessarily true, I knew of professors (ie Doug) who've offered them if courses conflict. I told him I'm free from 1:30 on every M W F and that I was willing to give him whatever time he wanted. He didn't bother to ask the music dept and just said "Oh, yeah, that...welll I can't do that. Guess you'll just have a rough senior year."" he then proceeded to laugh in my face. What. the. fuck.
Now I know I'll have him for Intrumental Conducting this fall, I've also heard Doc is taking her sabbatical and Hinton will be teaching us in the spring as well for Instrumental Methods. Shoot me now.
I fully intend to make sure he gives us fair tests and actually teaches. I won't take his ego and power trips. I Need good grades and more than that, he's being paid to teach so he ought to start.
I hate confrontation so much, but it Has to be done. I intend on running everything past Doug before I ever say a word to Hinton about it all.
Oy. Just what this year needs, more stress.