I think the most important skill, the one I'm called upon to use most frequently and the one I struggle most with, is projecting interested neutrality while feeling so frustrated I'd like to beat the seminar table with my fists.
I dropped the one class I mentioned a few posts back, and found out today that the professor scornfully told the class that "someone dropped because she thought she already knew how to read poetry." This is insulting on so many levels . . . for instance, 1) That's far from what I said in my very carefully worded email, and 2) Why would it have been so bad for me to say I know how to read poetry? It's a lifelong process, and all that, but I don't see why you should have to pretend you're a beginner if you're not.
Meanwhile, I sat through class #2 today also wishing I could drop it. It has been consistently totally soporific. Someone would pose an interesting question, and then the professor would jump in and without even acknowledging the point lull us back to passivity by, for example, lecturing about primogeniture (which I distinctly remember learning about at about the same level of sophistication in 10th grade) for 15 minutes (that's 900 seconds, if you're counting each one).
I can't tell if I'm too hard to please or just unlucky this term.
3 comments:
Condolences, lady. That sounds miserable. That professor should go teach a class in the trapeze arts if s/he doesn't want to deal with the possibility that a student might know what she's doing.
Woah.
do you think this is the bias against MFAs rearing its ugly head?
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