Man this had to have been the worst conversation of my life…
I blame her lazyness.
Student A and I
Student A: Your in Anthropology of Religion right?
I: Yes I am…
A: Do you think he really wants eight pages worth of material for his paper?
I: Thats what he said he wanted… why?
A: I did mine and i just can’t get eight pages out of the ritual i evaluated.
I: What did you evaluate?
A: Well i evaluated a Catholic Mass which i had never been to in my whole life, but he did express concern about the topic. I’m not sure he wanted me to do it.
I: Then why did you do it?
A: Because My other option fell through, and other people are going to a baptist mass, so why can’t i go to a catholic?
I: I don’t know.. but if he suggested not doing it then your already starting out on a bad foot… here let me–
A: But I couldn’t do anything else…. i had to do it.. i was interested in it…
I: Well why don’t you go to the cathedral down town and take some notes on the decorations and iconography there and put it in your paper? —
A: He will be fine… He will like my paper i think…. How much is the paper worth?
I: Look i’m telling you, you really should write eight pages worth of material. If you don’t you will not get a good grade. Why don’t you go down to.. give me a second i’ll draw you a map…
A: It isn’t that big of a deal… i have a B in the class already and i’ll be fine…
I: I think the paper is worth a lot of credit in his class. He-
A: I’ll be fine i’m sure my paper is good
I: I can’t stress how awesome a sight this cathedral is, it is a mixture of modern day design and older architecture. There is so much gold inlaid around the walls and the marble pillars and the statues of jesus and the stain glass windows. It is an interesting place to go you could easily get four or five pages on simply describing the setting of the church….
A: Yeah… well i’ll see if i can get time to do that… but i don’t think i will have time…
I: It isn’t far…
A: Thanks for your help…
WTF did she want me to say? Oh sure your shitty paper is fine.. you did everything your little ignorant lazy ass could do so why should he expect more from you? Fuck you. What pisses me off most is that he is going to probably grade her lieniantly and give her a C…. AND SHE IS GOING TO BITCH ABOUT IT! and he is going to feel bad about it.
fucking lazy people.
P.S. I left out this major part but i don’t remember how it fit into the conversation. There was this point where she kept bringing up what everyone else was doing in the class and why it justified her actions… “such a such a person is evaluating a baptist mass… why can’t i do a catholic… such and such a person is doing a catholic mass and just because he is mormon it is ok.. me on the other hand i can’t do one?” something like that….
November 17th, 2004 at 8:05 pm
Welcome to the real world of teaching older kids….they always think they really know everything and want you to just confirm it. They don’t really want you to disagree with them. Correct, she will just write what she wanted on the paper. If lucky, the professor will be generous, but if he is like me…he would not. Of course, I do not like to teach older children, because I have trouble with that type of attitude. That is why I am having so much trouble with the fourth graders. They are the only ones I have to punish.
November 18th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
I hate punishing! That was what I was worst at, when I taught high school. Teaching college at least means I don’t have to *punish* anyone. Thank God. And I think I have solved problems with students like the one above by giving the beginning papers a lower weight and grading them pretty harshly, which tends to freak them out and make them all try harder. So what if they fear my wrath in the beginning? My second papers were so much better… 🙂 Hey, David. Why *didn’t* your professor want that student to evaluate a Catholic mass? There’s so much there. It’s so highly symbolic. Maybe because you have to have been schooled in the meaning of the symbolism to figure it out? (I, for example, have two years of Catholic school and ten years of Continuing Catechismal Development…) But seriously, when you step back and evaluate it, they’re so cultish, it’s really interesting… With a lot of effort, that *could* have been a really good paper.
November 18th, 2004 at 5:20 pm
Ugh… I hate people like that. I agree with Mary, though… I’m wondering what the big deal was about the catholic mass. Of course, I’m also wondering why the student kept justifying writing the paper on the catholic mass because others were writing about baptist masses… weird. boggles the mind
November 18th, 2004 at 7:31 pm
Dr. Brassieur did not want people doing the cathlic mass because it was too indoctrinated in our current culture. Everyone around here is catholic. Not to mention there were several people who had asked to do a catholic mass. His idea is to expand their minds by forcing them to do other religions. He didn’t want anyone who was christian to do a christian mass. The problem is that he didn’t validate/invalidate your topic unless you went up to him and said, “hey this is what i’m doing is it good?” Since most of the class didn’t ask whether their topics were acceptable, their topics are against what he said to do in class. I’m not sure the class listens to him also. He said he did not want anything to do with christianity because it is so indoctrinated into our society. That is why i went and asked him if my topic was ok, seeing as it was interpreting christian themes. In the end the students did what they wanted to do and he will suffer for it.