Unfortunately yesterday was NOT the last day of Education 524, aka the class that makes me want to throw myself through the 3rd story window because the shards of glass and broken bones would probably be less painful than having to sit through 2.5 hours of patronizing, condescending, touchy-feely bullshit.
Usually it's just mind-numbing to the point of agony. But last night was a kicker. Irv Seidman, an Oprah/Dr. Phil wannabe who couldn't hack it as a teacher and didn't have a degree anyone cared about, switched into the education department, which fully deserves the bad name it has at schools everywhere. But that's not the point. The point is he is usually so afraid of mildly putting anyone out that nothing is wrong... everything is good.
Except my presentation, apparently.
My partner and I (it's a "team teaching" project) had 14 minutes to do a topic of our choice. He's history, I'm classics. We picked Romans and Christianity. Despite my loathing for the class, I think the material deserves proper treatment so I actually did try to make it worthwhile. We did not rehearse together, and my partner clearly was more willing to extemporize than I was, but hey, some people are good at that. No worries.
We do our presentation. Partner makes a goofy joke during his part, I didn't think it was particularly funny but hey, who am I to judge. Some kids chuckled. He made this joke during an example of martyrdom where a girl's forced into the arena with big hungry cats who proceed to rip her apart. Maybe not the best time for a joke, but I can't control it and I certainly don't think it was a big problem.
Irv comes up to us after our 14 minutes are up and gives us a 5 minute lecture (quietly, while the other students are just chatting among themselves) on how we were extremely disrespectful to Christians. "You don't know who could be sitting in the back of your classroom," he said. Then he said it again. Then he said it again. This is how Irv operates... listening makes you want to kill yourself just to stop it. We try to ask what we did wrong. He won't mention specifics, except Partner's joke. OK... then why glare at me, Irv? Even if that joke was in poor taste, what the fuck can I do about it? He just kept going on and on ad infinitum.
The good news is I have zero respect for him, his class, and his opinion. So by the time I got home after a Rammstein-laden car ride, I was no longer feeling angry or even very bothered by it. But a little annoyance remains... if I did something wrong, why can't he say what? I am pretty convinced I didn't, and my friends who were listening confirm it. So why fuck with me, Irv? Why?
So Irv Seidman - my disregard for you knows no bounds, you worthless waste of time and space. WC out.
Song of the night: "Diamonds" by Los Lonely Boys. Picked up their second album, Sacred, and it's fantastic.
1 comment:
That's crap. Sounds like dear Irv and my Sanskrit professor need to be friends - the guy who serves organic cookies, takes offense at pretty much everything that anyone in the West ever did, and sent us an email saying we'd better turn in our finals on time or we'd get bad karma. Not joking. Hope things are looking up for you a bit!
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