Monday, October 23, 2006

It Is Probably Never a Good Idea to Tell Your Professor: “Bite Me”

… but it’s becoming more and more tempting by the day.

This semester actually should be going well for me. I have three classes that I really, really like. In Con Law II, the professor is mildly insane, but in the way that leads to interesting conversations, at least for people like me, who like stuff like gender studies and critical race theory. The neat part is, there are actually other people in the class who have like those things too, or at least are willing to talk about them, and the conversations are a blast. We are slowly all becoming all bond-y and friend-y and talk outside of class and grab a cup of coffee-like and that? Is kind of fun.

Especially fun is when one guy in particular talks, because he always starts with a very intelligent, rational comment, and then at some point he goes somewhere so insane and absurd everyone just does a double take. It’s like, “Yes, in Brown v. Board, the progressives were making a radical movement towards judicial activism through a divergence from traditional jurisprudence, much like when the Kool Aid man leapt through walls in the 80’s, except now children eat too much sugar.” And everyone is like, yeah, yeah, …. The FUCK?!?

I also enjoy Indian Law (except y’all? We totally screwed the Native Americans. I mean, I always had a vague understanding that we screwed the Native Americans, but seriously? We totally ­screwed the Native Americans.). My human rights advocacy class is cool too, if for no other reason than it got last years’ memo, and totally from day one has not even pretended to be a law class (Professor: “I am not teaching a law class.”), making it a refreshing change.

But y’all? The year is not going well for me. It is not going well for me at all, because of my fourth class, which is the ­class from Hell. I knew this class would be bad when we got like a seven page e-mail assigning us things that were due before class even started. Worse, this e-mail looked like it was written by a troll on a mommy blog, with the amount of exclamation points and bolds and ALL CAPS throughout. The class got worse though, as the two professors, (yes, there are two) seem hell bent on wasting all of our time. We have to write papers, and the class is set up so that people are presenting papers. This means that for the first couple classes, we had very little to do. Did this stop Professors Talky and Gabby? Oh, hell no. They kept us around, for entire class periods, either re-discussing class rules or going over things like, “a paragraph has a topic sentence.” I am not kidding.

So as I wrote about in my last entry, we have to write these papers. And we are supposed to post a draft the week before we present, and then we present the draft, and they give us comments, and we rewrite. Ok… fine. So I killed myself a few weeks ago, including taking a day off of work, to get a draft done so I could post it. And I did, and (limericks aside), I was ready to go last Tuesday, but… Mssrs. Talky and Gabby wouldn’t SHUT UP, and they ran out of time. But they were all, “You… need to write a new paper.” So, ok. I could improve on what I wrote. Not that they helped me so much, more like giving me widely vague ideas that I should “consider”.

Anyway, so I went home and I did a bunch of research and I stumbled on a topic. That I liked! And I e-mailed the profs and took Friday off and did a ton of research. Friday night, my prof e-mails me back, (AFTER I had done all the research, mind you), and is like, “Eh, you can cover that topic, but you have to bring up other issues. And take into account our conversation on Tuesday.” *

* Note: Our conversation on Tuesday? Basically boils down to: pick a topic, which I thought I did, as evidenced by… my topic.

But anyway, I freaked, but didn’t have much of a choice, since I ALREADY took the day off work to research. Again. So I wrote him back and pointed out ways that my new paper did what he had asked, all nice like, and then spent most of the weekend writing what I honestly think is a pretty good paper.

This morning (this morning, people. THIS MORNING. My paper needs to be posted later this week, and he gives me feedback NOW? I WORK, asshole. My life? Is NOT your class). Anyway, his brilliant feedback today?

“Can we meet after class? I am afraid your topic is too broad.”

….Too broad? Too broad??? You mean, the topic that you told me FRIDAY I needed to add to and not just focus on??? THAT TOPIC???

So I wrote him back an e-mail, establishing that:

1. I work full time.
2. I have an appointment Tuesday night after class.
3. The paper? Is already written.

And somehow, I managed to NOT sign it: bite me.

Y’all? I need a break.

posted by Citycat @ 2:43 PM