I started my odyssey through college last week. My class schedule looks like this:
Technical Communication
Multimedia Writing
Marginalized Populations in Europe 1000-1900 AD
Women in Contemporary Society
Except for the format, Technical Communications and Multimedia Writing could be interchangeable and except for the time period, Marginalized Populations and Women in Contemporary Society could be the very same class. I figure by the end of the semester I should be very adept at creating visually stimulating rants on oppression.
During Week #1 I learned the following…
I am a woman
Women have been oppressed for a very long time
During the Middle Ages, God said women and Jews need to be oppressed because women are lustful and Jews eat Christian babies at Passover
Interactive websites are cool
The 202 at 5 pm is a flipping parking lot
Don’t drink a bunch of water before getting on the 202 at 5 pm
Look over the list, maybe there’s something you can use in it. You won’t be tested later.
One of the interesting features of “new school” is this glaring lack of testing. The entire semester I will have to take only 2 tests in one class and have no finals for any of them. My recurring nightmare of studying all night, then sleeping through the final has become anecdotal and obsolete. Where’s my cramming, my cleverly disguised crib notes? Where is my caffeine-edged regurgitation of chapter and sub-chapter headings? What will I do with all these darn #2 pencils and Blue Books? They are lost to me forever. Alas.
Instead I have papers and projects to do. Lots of papers and gargantuan projects in lieu of cramming useless facts into my head then core-dumping them on to a piece of paper during a test. What do these people want me to do? Apply knowledge? What? I want my machine-scored testing back. I want to fill in the circle completely with a #2 pencil while making no other marks on the paper. I want to turn my paper over and close my test booklet when I’m done. I want my easy A, you educational oppressors.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Marilyn Frye’s seminal article “Oppression.”
“We hear that oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as to those they oppress.”
Believe it.
Showing posts with label Higher education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higher education. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Of cabbages and kings
I have college books! I love college books although I have to admit that I loved them a lot more when Mommy and Daddy were footing the bill for them. During my first go-around in school, I saucily purchased new, pristine books and recklessly marked them up, dog-eared their pages, and abused them with rude doodles. Sometimes I even tore them up after the class was over in a post-final exams hissy fit. Someone should have spanked me for what I did to those books but no one ever did, until now.
Now, my very used, yet still very expensive books will be treated as gingerly as a Gutenberg Bible in hopes that they will be able to be re-sold to some other poor student. I realize that I hope in vain. If a text is used 3 or 4 times, that’s a lot in the life of a textbook. Profs rotate in and out of texts as often as Britney forgets her bloomers, requiring new editions or altogether different titles. I recall one my professors requiring his class to hunt down and purchase a “supplemental guide.” It consisted of a spiral bound collection of illegible hand written notes coupled with unreadable articles on indiscriminate topics. If Mad Magazine put together college texts, it would look a lot like this. We used the proto-door stop once since no one, not even the professor who compiled it, could make heads or tails of it. I think he inhaled…a lot.
I had almost forgotten the fiefdom of the classroom. Most of my former professors could ably be described as benevolent dictators but some were full-on despots and a few, outright sociopaths. Those ivory towers of higher education can function as insane asylums if needs be. After 40 though, I’m a lot less cowed by the egos, the brilliance and bizarre behaviors exhibited by my professors. I still remember the hushed awe that swept through a historical survey class I took when the professor (complete with a Chief Inspector Dreyfus facial tic) concluded that Hitler’s megalomania was directly derived from his mother’s cancerous breasts. Allll-righty then. At 19, I sat quietly in honor of the prof’s obvious erudition, now however, I’d be stifling a laugh and an argument. I’ve become much more of a “show me” girl. Call me cynical, but you’re gonna need a lot more than Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams to prove that Hitler took command, co-opted whole countries and ethnically-cleansed at his whim because Mumsy couldn’t nurse little Adolph. But at least I got a couple of great anecdotes out of the class and an A as I recall.
I haven’t met this semester’s professors yet, but I look forward to it. Until I do, however, I get to recall my previous education, apply my current skills (mothering) and hermetically seal my textbooks. Anyone have an isolation booth I can borrow?
Now, my very used, yet still very expensive books will be treated as gingerly as a Gutenberg Bible in hopes that they will be able to be re-sold to some other poor student. I realize that I hope in vain. If a text is used 3 or 4 times, that’s a lot in the life of a textbook. Profs rotate in and out of texts as often as Britney forgets her bloomers, requiring new editions or altogether different titles. I recall one my professors requiring his class to hunt down and purchase a “supplemental guide.” It consisted of a spiral bound collection of illegible hand written notes coupled with unreadable articles on indiscriminate topics. If Mad Magazine put together college texts, it would look a lot like this. We used the proto-door stop once since no one, not even the professor who compiled it, could make heads or tails of it. I think he inhaled…a lot.
I had almost forgotten the fiefdom of the classroom. Most of my former professors could ably be described as benevolent dictators but some were full-on despots and a few, outright sociopaths. Those ivory towers of higher education can function as insane asylums if needs be. After 40 though, I’m a lot less cowed by the egos, the brilliance and bizarre behaviors exhibited by my professors. I still remember the hushed awe that swept through a historical survey class I took when the professor (complete with a Chief Inspector Dreyfus facial tic) concluded that Hitler’s megalomania was directly derived from his mother’s cancerous breasts. Allll-righty then. At 19, I sat quietly in honor of the prof’s obvious erudition, now however, I’d be stifling a laugh and an argument. I’ve become much more of a “show me” girl. Call me cynical, but you’re gonna need a lot more than Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams to prove that Hitler took command, co-opted whole countries and ethnically-cleansed at his whim because Mumsy couldn’t nurse little Adolph. But at least I got a couple of great anecdotes out of the class and an A as I recall.
I haven’t met this semester’s professors yet, but I look forward to it. Until I do, however, I get to recall my previous education, apply my current skills (mothering) and hermetically seal my textbooks. Anyone have an isolation booth I can borrow?
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