Thursday, September 15, 2011

Blogging and community college

It's amazing how long you can spend on the internet when you have no work, no test to study for, no TV to watch, and a looming application that you don't want to work on. I spent the afternoon, evening, and night going from twitter to eonline to twitter to youtube to twitter and finally to this blog http://lostandtired.com/ about a father with 3 boys on the autism spectrum who also have many medical issues and a wife with debilitating medical problems. He also somehow manages to post a couple blog entries a day as well. I feel like if he can find time to blog, so can I.

However, it helps when you have something going on in your life to blog about and people that actually read your blog. Otherwise blogging is just an exercise in narcissistic self-indulgent drivel.

Normally the only things I have to say are about my worries about my life plan, self-pity that I have few friends and no boyfriend, and how I think more about the lives of TV characters than I do about my own life.

Today is a different story, though. I am currently having the most unusual experience in a class ever. My physiology class at Moorpark Community College is taught by this hispanic woman, who is also apparently a physician (which scares me a lot, and you'll soon see why). She is very "serious" about teaching and sent us multiple emails before the class even started to tell us how hard it was going to be and that we should plan on studying at least 12 hours a week for it (Ha!). However, it turns out that she is a completely incompetent teacher, which I guess is pretty normal at community colleges.

I must have looked very bored on the first day of lecture (and who would blame me when she barely talked about enough for me to take one page of notes) because the second day after class when I turned in my homework she asked me if I already had a degree and when I told her I had a degree in neuroscience from UCLA she said the next section would be pretty easy and boring for me.

Ever since then she seems awkward and unsure of what she is saying and she has literally asked me questions in class because she honestly doesn't know something. The first really weird day came when she both asked me to look up something on my phone so she could learn and explain it to the whole class AND scolded me for whispering in the space of two minutes.

Then during the next lecture when I was on my phone, which is a big no-no in her class (and why it is is beyond me) she said "Ellen, I know this is boring for you, but it's not fair to the rest of the class" and proceeded to tell the entire class that I already graduated from UCLA with a degree in Neuroscience. So what happened next was completely her fault.

For the rest of the class period, the kid sitting next to me kept asking me questions and after answering a few in a hushed whisper I told him I'd explain it later because she was giving me a dirty look. He continued to ask me questions and it's not like I could just ignore him!

So after class she calls me and a couple friends over (although she probably just wanted to talk to me) to say that she knows it's easy for us but that the talking distracts her and that people in the front were giving her looks like "aren't you going to stop this?" (seriously?? I doubt it! It's probably more like "we are so bored because you say things that don't make any sense and ramble on and on about the same thing for half an hour")

The MOST RIDICULOUS thing of this whole story is that she then ASKED ME TO SIT IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM! WTF?? I guess it's because I'm "distracting to her and the other students" but I think it's more because she is intimidated by me. It's like she half loves me and wishes I would just teach the class, and half hates and resents me.

I dunno. I sat in the back of the room today and tried to keep my mind busy while she re-lectured about stuff that she already "taught" us and told us that she was behind and we have to read most of the book on our own.

I guess we'll see if it gets better or worse. I'm going to try to just be ignored, but when she blatantly says things that are wrong, it's a little difficult not to speak up.


Wow, I didn't mean to write this much. I probably just scared away the one person that will see this from ever reading my blog again. Oh well.


- E