names changed to protect the guilty
Upon awakening this morning, not ten minutes ago, and during the process of my morning pee pee, I devised a new series for this journal.
We'll call it "COLLEGE CLASSES I HATED."
The title should be self-explanatory. I endured many terrible classes in college, and I've reached a great enough distance from them that I feel I have license to "tell all" as they say. So, today we shall start with Intro to Psychology, taught by an older professor whose name coincidentally resembled Headshrink.
This was the biggest class I was ever in, excepting concert band, and it was held in a lecture hall with stadium seating. Being a twice-a-week class, it was nearly 90 minutes long -- an hour and a half of mental torture. Headshrink was no better at holding the attention of 250 college students from all ranks than he was at explaining the economics of the cattle industry to a herd of Holsteins. Despite quirky utterances of "alrightalrightalright" and "boolaboolaboola" this old cat was square as his 1963 haircut. Worst of all, he insisted that no one sleep or even give the appearance of being about to drift into sleep (an offense of which I was found guilty -- "you need to sit up" the old oaf grunted at me one day), and he forbade men to wear baseball caps in class, a futilely adversarial insistence if there ever was one (and, mind you, I'm no fan of baseball caps).
His class was so unenjoyable that the guy sitting next to me, with whom I would later become friends but whom I had no reason even to speak to at the time, would occasionally murmur "you suck" and "I hate you" at a volume almost audible to Headshrink but just quiet enough not to travel down to the old goat's ears. The tests were terrible, pulled from the textbook chapters we never covered in class rather than Headshrink's desultory lectures. I can't remember a single lesson from that class, though it's only been five years, but I'm sure I couldn't remember anything from it the following semester except how painful it was. OK, I do remember Headshrink talking about the railroad worker whose head was impaled on a metal spike and who survived, albeit with a different personality. If only we in the class could have been so lucky as Phineas Gage.
Lastly, my favorite memory from the class was the somnolent outburst of a student who was sliding into slumber. We're all familiar with the grunts and moans that people occasionally utter as they're falling into a deep sleep, but rarely do we get to witness such sounds in public. I wasn't sitting near the student, but his "aaaAAhh" was so loud and so immediately recognizeable as heralding the onset of sleep that the entire class -- those who were conscious at the time, anyway -- burst into laughter. Because he didn't immediately bare his fangs and throw the sleeper out, Headshrink must not have realized what we were all laughing about.
Report Card
My grade: B
Professor's grade:
(the typo lends credence to the reckless indifference of the statement, don't you think?)
We'll call it "COLLEGE CLASSES I HATED."
The title should be self-explanatory. I endured many terrible classes in college, and I've reached a great enough distance from them that I feel I have license to "tell all" as they say. So, today we shall start with Intro to Psychology, taught by an older professor whose name coincidentally resembled Headshrink.
This was the biggest class I was ever in, excepting concert band, and it was held in a lecture hall with stadium seating. Being a twice-a-week class, it was nearly 90 minutes long -- an hour and a half of mental torture. Headshrink was no better at holding the attention of 250 college students from all ranks than he was at explaining the economics of the cattle industry to a herd of Holsteins. Despite quirky utterances of "alrightalrightalright" and "boolaboolaboola" this old cat was square as his 1963 haircut. Worst of all, he insisted that no one sleep or even give the appearance of being about to drift into sleep (an offense of which I was found guilty -- "you need to sit up" the old oaf grunted at me one day), and he forbade men to wear baseball caps in class, a futilely adversarial insistence if there ever was one (and, mind you, I'm no fan of baseball caps).
His class was so unenjoyable that the guy sitting next to me, with whom I would later become friends but whom I had no reason even to speak to at the time, would occasionally murmur "you suck" and "I hate you" at a volume almost audible to Headshrink but just quiet enough not to travel down to the old goat's ears. The tests were terrible, pulled from the textbook chapters we never covered in class rather than Headshrink's desultory lectures. I can't remember a single lesson from that class, though it's only been five years, but I'm sure I couldn't remember anything from it the following semester except how painful it was. OK, I do remember Headshrink talking about the railroad worker whose head was impaled on a metal spike and who survived, albeit with a different personality. If only we in the class could have been so lucky as Phineas Gage.
Lastly, my favorite memory from the class was the somnolent outburst of a student who was sliding into slumber. We're all familiar with the grunts and moans that people occasionally utter as they're falling into a deep sleep, but rarely do we get to witness such sounds in public. I wasn't sitting near the student, but his "aaaAAhh" was so loud and so immediately recognizeable as heralding the onset of sleep that the entire class -- those who were conscious at the time, anyway -- burst into laughter. Because he didn't immediately bare his fangs and throw the sleeper out, Headshrink must not have realized what we were all laughing about.
Report Card
My grade: B
Professor's grade:
(the typo lends credence to the reckless indifference of the statement, don't you think?)