So it's about 20 minutes to 4pm...a little less than an hour before the class that I absolutely *despise* this semester: Theater History. (cue shower scene music from "Psycho")
Just like other classes that I have hated in the past, I've tried do find out just what my issue with this class is. Is it the professor? The room? The subject matter? The time of day? What logical reason do I have for hating this class with every fiber of my being?
The scary thing is that I have way too many reasons to hate the class.
First off, the professor. I do not disagree that she is most likely a brilliant person who is higly knowledeable in some area of theater. However, she's horrible at lecturing and she really doesn't know what she's talking about. She just lectures off of her notes at about 500 miles per hour, expects us to absorb everything she's saying, and then remember every single detail of it for an exam on which she will only ask us about a fraction of the information that we've memorized. Try to ask her about something that's not in her notes: she'll just answer you by rephrasing what she just said, and then move on to the next thing. Yeah, she thinks she's slick like that. She once told us that the French Revolution had no influence on the plays being written at the time or afterwards. I have two words for you: Georg Buchner. (google him or something, I don't feel like explaining now)
I hate about 25% of the people in my lecture and recitation classes. They're all BFA's with their heads so far up their arses that they're incapable of listening to anything that's going on or even giving two craps about it. Example:
Professor: The National Noh Theater was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1983.
Asshole 1: Wait, what theater was that?
Professor: The National Noh Theater.
Asshole 2: Wait, where was it?
Professor: Osaka, Japan.
Asshole 3: Could you spell that?
Asshole 1: What year was it founded?
Asshole 2: What theater is this again?
(repeat for every fact that Professor gives in lecture.)
In addition to all this, the lecture room that we have to sit in has the most uncomfortable chairs know on this earth. Every single one has the springs in the seat strategically placed so that they dig into your ass bones, therefore forcing it to fall asleep after approximately 40 minutes, or halfway into the lecture.
Recitation sucks. As of two weeks ago, the TA decided that she was going to give a quiz on the plays that we read every week for the remainder of the semester. Instead of coming up with creative ways of publicly humiliating people who don't read, she had just decided to waste our time by taking up all back to high school. Now, instead of reading the play at my leisure and having a good idea of what to discuss on Tuesday afternoon, I have to read an entire play on Monday night and make sure that all of the information is crammed in my brain so I can pass a stupid quiz. That's because my opinions and observations are no longer an indicator of whether I'm doing the work: my quiz is now the proof.
Which leads me to the real reason as to why I truly hate this class and everything that it has stood for thus far:
It has turned me into the kind of person that I despised in high school: The Anal-Retentive Honors Student (A-RHS).
You know who I'm talking about. You might have been this person. You definitely knew people like this. You might have admired them, or laughed at them. Let me explain.
The A-RHS was that kid who sat at lunch punching away on his TI-83, trying to find out how his GPA would be affected if he misses more than 2 questions on his Spanish exam. The A-RHS was the girl who never sat for more than 2 minutes before whipping out a stack of index cards filled with equations for the AP Chemistry test that was 5 months away. A-RHS's spend 20 minutes of class time arguing with the teacher over a half point on a pop quiz (and they end up winning!).
I hate Theater History because it forced me to retype all of my lecture notes so I could sit up till 3 in the morning going over them. The day of the exam, I had a classmate quiz me and I was spitting out everything correctly. Of course I did this with an audience in front of me (because A-RHS's have to prove to everyone that they're smarter than you). I got an 88 on the exam. Then I saw that I was given a 9.5 on a question that I clearly should have gotten 10 points for. The only reason that I chose not to argue was that an 88.5 would probably not be rounded to an 89, and an 89 is still a B+. On a quiz last week, I tried to argue the one question that I got wrong on the basis that the answer choices were vague and the answer that I picked was as equally correct as the TA's idea of the correct answer. I lost in my battle, only scoring a 90.
This class is driving me insane.
Today in recitation, we had a 5 question quiz on a play and some xeroxed essays by the playwright. I forgot to read the essays, but I think I was able to BS an answer (another trademark of the model A-RHS). I know I missed at least 2 questions on the quiz, earning me an 80. I probably got a C on that quiz. But I did bring up an extremely good discussion point today, and it was well founded.
But we all know that I'm not satisfied with that. In the realm of the A-RHS, all that matters are the numbers. Numbers are what determine your grade.
Today, I got a C on a frigging reading quiz, and I'm actually upset about it.
Thank goodness the semester is halfway over.
It's 4:20. Time to go rot in class and lament my life while my ass slowly grows numb.
Just like other classes that I have hated in the past, I've tried do find out just what my issue with this class is. Is it the professor? The room? The subject matter? The time of day? What logical reason do I have for hating this class with every fiber of my being?
The scary thing is that I have way too many reasons to hate the class.
First off, the professor. I do not disagree that she is most likely a brilliant person who is higly knowledeable in some area of theater. However, she's horrible at lecturing and she really doesn't know what she's talking about. She just lectures off of her notes at about 500 miles per hour, expects us to absorb everything she's saying, and then remember every single detail of it for an exam on which she will only ask us about a fraction of the information that we've memorized. Try to ask her about something that's not in her notes: she'll just answer you by rephrasing what she just said, and then move on to the next thing. Yeah, she thinks she's slick like that. She once told us that the French Revolution had no influence on the plays being written at the time or afterwards. I have two words for you: Georg Buchner. (google him or something, I don't feel like explaining now)
I hate about 25% of the people in my lecture and recitation classes. They're all BFA's with their heads so far up their arses that they're incapable of listening to anything that's going on or even giving two craps about it. Example:
Professor: The National Noh Theater was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1983.
Asshole 1: Wait, what theater was that?
Professor: The National Noh Theater.
Asshole 2: Wait, where was it?
Professor: Osaka, Japan.
Asshole 3: Could you spell that?
Asshole 1: What year was it founded?
Asshole 2: What theater is this again?
(repeat for every fact that Professor gives in lecture.)
In addition to all this, the lecture room that we have to sit in has the most uncomfortable chairs know on this earth. Every single one has the springs in the seat strategically placed so that they dig into your ass bones, therefore forcing it to fall asleep after approximately 40 minutes, or halfway into the lecture.
Recitation sucks. As of two weeks ago, the TA decided that she was going to give a quiz on the plays that we read every week for the remainder of the semester. Instead of coming up with creative ways of publicly humiliating people who don't read, she had just decided to waste our time by taking up all back to high school. Now, instead of reading the play at my leisure and having a good idea of what to discuss on Tuesday afternoon, I have to read an entire play on Monday night and make sure that all of the information is crammed in my brain so I can pass a stupid quiz. That's because my opinions and observations are no longer an indicator of whether I'm doing the work: my quiz is now the proof.
Which leads me to the real reason as to why I truly hate this class and everything that it has stood for thus far:
It has turned me into the kind of person that I despised in high school: The Anal-Retentive Honors Student (A-RHS).
You know who I'm talking about. You might have been this person. You definitely knew people like this. You might have admired them, or laughed at them. Let me explain.
The A-RHS was that kid who sat at lunch punching away on his TI-83, trying to find out how his GPA would be affected if he misses more than 2 questions on his Spanish exam. The A-RHS was the girl who never sat for more than 2 minutes before whipping out a stack of index cards filled with equations for the AP Chemistry test that was 5 months away. A-RHS's spend 20 minutes of class time arguing with the teacher over a half point on a pop quiz (and they end up winning!).
I hate Theater History because it forced me to retype all of my lecture notes so I could sit up till 3 in the morning going over them. The day of the exam, I had a classmate quiz me and I was spitting out everything correctly. Of course I did this with an audience in front of me (because A-RHS's have to prove to everyone that they're smarter than you). I got an 88 on the exam. Then I saw that I was given a 9.5 on a question that I clearly should have gotten 10 points for. The only reason that I chose not to argue was that an 88.5 would probably not be rounded to an 89, and an 89 is still a B+. On a quiz last week, I tried to argue the one question that I got wrong on the basis that the answer choices were vague and the answer that I picked was as equally correct as the TA's idea of the correct answer. I lost in my battle, only scoring a 90.
This class is driving me insane.
Today in recitation, we had a 5 question quiz on a play and some xeroxed essays by the playwright. I forgot to read the essays, but I think I was able to BS an answer (another trademark of the model A-RHS). I know I missed at least 2 questions on the quiz, earning me an 80. I probably got a C on that quiz. But I did bring up an extremely good discussion point today, and it was well founded.
But we all know that I'm not satisfied with that. In the realm of the A-RHS, all that matters are the numbers. Numbers are what determine your grade.
Today, I got a C on a frigging reading quiz, and I'm actually upset about it.
Thank goodness the semester is halfway over.
It's 4:20. Time to go rot in class and lament my life while my ass slowly grows numb.
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