Followers

My photo
College student hoping to expose people to thoughts and ideas they might not necessarily come across on a regular basis.

It was but a single straw...




This is just going to be a bit of a rant post.

One of my teachers is a out of her mind. It's the only way to describe it. She must be on something, because she goes at a hundred miles an hour at all times. Which is fine. What's not fine is the fact that she uses her ability to juggle 10,000 tasks at once to dump as much work on us as possible. It's insane.

Two weeks ago, she told us about a 200 point project that was due this Friday. Okay. She then commenced giving us an assignment to research for that Friday. Some sort of phony baloney debate about who is better, Dior or Chanel?

Um, neither. They're both expensive as hell, and are completely uninteresting to me. The debate, and the research, which was to find 10 good things and 10 bad things about each, served no purpose whatsoever!

Then, that Friday, she gives us the standard 70+ word vocab list that she gives every week to do for Monday. Plus sentences for each. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't just busy work. There is no goddamn way we can possibly memorize any of those words when we have so many of them. Not the mention the fact that most of them are combinations of words that we already know. She gives us these random phrases that are supposed to be useful. I've started doubting that, because she's always telling us how 'chic' the phrases are. Hey, lady. I don't give a fuck about being chic in Paris. I want to be understood in France.

After doing the vocab, we have a test coming up before Spring Break. Studying for that takes up a lot of my time, because I now have to go through 8 or 9 weeks of vocabulary word by word to find the ones I don't remember and review the ones I do. Notice that working on this project is not anywhere in there. It would be, if I had the magical ability to pull extra time from the depths of my ass.

Take the test on Friday, which I don't do well on, because she decides to grade for things she doesn't fucking teach us.

That's another thing, that I'll interject here. She doesn't teach us anything. All the learning we do is outside of class via these ridiculous assignments she gives us. All these projects and whatnot are the only way we learn anything. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Well, you're learning something, right?"

WRONG! These projects are so random, narrowed and focused, and all done with very little direction, that it's hard to know what we SHOULD be learning from them. All class is spent listening to other people present their semester projects, which we also have, presenting some crap dialogue that she's made us write using cookie cutter phrases and not really learning how to actually converse, or going over the ungodly list of vocabulary that we had to do.

So, for Spring Break, what does she do? She gives us another 170 words. 1. That's a lot of words! 2. We're supposed to be working on the project. 3.

You can always find reasons to work. There will always be one more thing to do. But when people don't take time out, they stop being productive. They stop being happy, and that affects the morale of everyone around them. --Carisa Bianchi

It's called a "break" for a reason! 4. And this is the worst one. The second list is comprised largely of vocabulary that you learn in French 1 and 2, and this class is supposed to be on par with French 3. Words like "mère" and "père," which mean mother and father. THAT'S BASIC STUFF, WOMAN! Now I've gotta spend a chunk of my time copying this crap into a 'decorated notebook' that she made us do (What is this, fifth grade!?) and then writing sentences for all of them.

And of course, of course, instead of giving us time to work on our project this week, she gives us yet another stupid dialogue to write and memorize for Wednesday.

I'm hovering just above a B right now, and I'll be happy with either an A or a B. At this point, I'm gonna do my best, but I refuse to kill myself over this crap. She is not the only teacher in existence, and her class is not the only one we are taking. To cope with this ridiculousness, I think of this:

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. --William Ellery Channing

The soul is like a sword. Forged it heat, and handled properly, it strengthens when it is bent and beaten, and it time, it can shine brilliantly and pierce anything that stands against it.

Better bend than break. --Carl W. Buechner

But to reach that optimal state, we must always keep in mind that survival and coping is the key. A sword cannot be forged if it is brittle, and shatters before completion. In many situations, adaptation the best path, the necessary option, to avoid failure and complete breakdown.

It's true, you can only bend so much before you're simply flattened. That's why it's key to shed some of your problems, handled your business, and tell the world to back the hell up on a regular basis. Remember, it was not the millions of straws the camel was already carrying that broke his back. It was the last one. Don't wait to see just how many straws you can carry.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance. --unknown

TL;DR: Teacher gives insane amounts of work, much of it stupid busy work, expects it all done perfectly, and disregards all other classes and responsibilities. Just because her life is a hectic mess.

===

I know this is way different than what you're used to, but I've still got the quotes in there, and I think they work. I think I'm going to try to diversify this blog a bit. The quotes are the main thing that I'm interested it. I'm going to try to keep it as positive and inspirational as possible, except for this, but I wanna try some different stuff. Maybe write some really short stories, known as flash fiction, to fit some of the quotes.

We'll see. I'll put up a poll or something.

Thanks for reading and being patient with that long post. See you soon!

10 Responses so far.

  1. Unknown says:

    Great quotes, and way to find the silver lining on this cloud of a teacher.

    Fun side-project... what happens if you give the spazoid teacher an energy drink? Would there be an explosion? Let's find out...

  2. Hahaha, oh my god, NO! I don't even want to try that. The power randomly went out in our entire building today, and I'm convinced it's because her chaotic energy clashed with the power systems of the university.

  3. Foreign language teacher? I've had plenty of those. They get those jobs not based on their ability to teach, but rather that they know a language and are willing to teach. I have had some horrid French and Spanish teachers over the year. I only figured this out my last year of French, when my teacher had neither been to France nor taught a class before. Instead she just piled busy work on, hoping we would learn. I failed the year before because a different teacher did the same thing, but I knew all the tricks this time.

  4. thank you for the daily dose of quotes. theres always something there to learn from.

  5. Patti D. says:

    I loved how you managed to toss in some quotes, your rant seems justified, your teacher is insane, lol.

  6. Unknown says:

    great quotes, the more you know

  7. Alphabeta says:

    "Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance."
    Love that - and might I add - dance like no one is watching.

  8. DocStout says:

    Or how about "Those who can, do... those who can't, teach." As a former teacher, I disagree with this quote as a generalization, but in this case it seems appropriate.

  9. Azurikai says:

    off topic, but your blog is beautifully laid out.

  10. G says:

    great quotes and blog - congrats on the 100 followers

Leave a Reply