White and Green
So, my other two professors.
This morning, as I was getting ready to leave, I got an e-mail from my Latin professor, whom I will call Mrs. White. The e-mail said that, since the class tanked so badly as a group, she was going to make all of us retake the test, and have another one to boot. Every test now is not only open-book, but take-home, and she is making herself available for in-her-office tutoring sessions. Then we went to class and she repeated the whole thing. I think she was as irritated as she ever gets; she's a pretty effervescent sixties leftover - if you remember from earlier articles, she's the one who sings the translations to us, just to be bubbly.
Then she introduced Jose, our TA. He seems a nice enough guy, with sideburns and a mustache, and apparently a burgeoning love for all things Latin. Go figure. Anyway, Mrs. White did this go-around-the-room-and-introduce-yourself bit, the first part of which was "age". Now, I don't shy away from telling people I'm 42, but I don't run around offering it either. People tend to think I'm younger (and Mrs. White was no exception, apparently) and I'm just fine with that. Anyway, there's a 41 in class too, and I put her in her thirties, tops, so there you have it.
Mr. Green teaches the History of Technology. It's an odd class by design, with a lot of information that overlaps other classes. Seriously, I think half of the classes I've ever taken have taught me the history of the arch and the vault and the flying buttress. Also, every week we're supposed to write an article about what we learned the previous week (okay) and he'll sometimes read the really intriguing ones out loud. Today, though, he flipped that, and brought the whole class's attention to one student who wrote about the bronze production in the African nation of Benin. Problem was, he didn't actually write anything, but instead just posted a link to an article about bronze production in . . . Cyprus. Mr. Green asked him where the Benin information was, and the student said "it's in there". Mr. Green said, "no it isn't", and then the room was deathly quiet for about two or three minutes as this one student - who screwed up, sure - was totally lost. It was kind of humiliating, I thought, and unnecessary.
And Mr. Green does this weird thing - he has a hearing problem, so he gets super close to you when you try to answer. I've started talking in my RADIO ANNOUNCER VOICE to him, just because it's creepy to have his face three inches from mine. I guess there isn't much he can do about it, but it's just unnerving.
I went to Mrs. White's in-office tutorial, which was just us going over all of the same stuff, only in her very small, cluttered office. She has books everywhere, and on the other side of the room, one empty and dust-covered bookshelf. Hmm.
Anyway, now you've met my four professors. Tomorrow: a paper outline is due, and I just realized after weeks of planning that my concept doesn't work. Ah well, another adventure.
This morning, as I was getting ready to leave, I got an e-mail from my Latin professor, whom I will call Mrs. White. The e-mail said that, since the class tanked so badly as a group, she was going to make all of us retake the test, and have another one to boot. Every test now is not only open-book, but take-home, and she is making herself available for in-her-office tutoring sessions. Then we went to class and she repeated the whole thing. I think she was as irritated as she ever gets; she's a pretty effervescent sixties leftover - if you remember from earlier articles, she's the one who sings the translations to us, just to be bubbly.
Then she introduced Jose, our TA. He seems a nice enough guy, with sideburns and a mustache, and apparently a burgeoning love for all things Latin. Go figure. Anyway, Mrs. White did this go-around-the-room-and-introduce-yourself bit, the first part of which was "age". Now, I don't shy away from telling people I'm 42, but I don't run around offering it either. People tend to think I'm younger (and Mrs. White was no exception, apparently) and I'm just fine with that. Anyway, there's a 41 in class too, and I put her in her thirties, tops, so there you have it.
Mr. Green teaches the History of Technology. It's an odd class by design, with a lot of information that overlaps other classes. Seriously, I think half of the classes I've ever taken have taught me the history of the arch and the vault and the flying buttress. Also, every week we're supposed to write an article about what we learned the previous week (okay) and he'll sometimes read the really intriguing ones out loud. Today, though, he flipped that, and brought the whole class's attention to one student who wrote about the bronze production in the African nation of Benin. Problem was, he didn't actually write anything, but instead just posted a link to an article about bronze production in . . . Cyprus. Mr. Green asked him where the Benin information was, and the student said "it's in there". Mr. Green said, "no it isn't", and then the room was deathly quiet for about two or three minutes as this one student - who screwed up, sure - was totally lost. It was kind of humiliating, I thought, and unnecessary.
And Mr. Green does this weird thing - he has a hearing problem, so he gets super close to you when you try to answer. I've started talking in my RADIO ANNOUNCER VOICE to him, just because it's creepy to have his face three inches from mine. I guess there isn't much he can do about it, but it's just unnerving.
I went to Mrs. White's in-office tutorial, which was just us going over all of the same stuff, only in her very small, cluttered office. She has books everywhere, and on the other side of the room, one empty and dust-covered bookshelf. Hmm.
Anyway, now you've met my four professors. Tomorrow: a paper outline is due, and I just realized after weeks of planning that my concept doesn't work. Ah well, another adventure.
