Monday, February 20, 2012

Academia Beef

I love to learn.  I love reading and then coming to class to verbally rehash the concepts with others.  Academia holds the potential for such stimulation and personal growth!  However, lectures are all too rarely well-presented and all too often chock full of the individual professor's precious mental property that is all too often out-dated and stale.

I am taking a Social Psychology class this semester in order to finally finish up my Sociology degree.  The concepts are miraculous and revelations and my mind is like a child on Christmas morn unwrapping these beautiful nuggets.  Now especially, after I've experienced more of life and people, I can relate these concepts to human behavior and I am enthralled!  

But I just spent the last 2 hours in a class room where we were given lots of notes that relate more or less to the text we read.  Our professor is fairly intelligent but her brand of humor is that tired old cliched brand of scoffing and sarcasm as though she is well aware of her above average mind but too entrenched in that knowledge to find anything new and fresh.  This makes her come across as a know-it-all and I have learned just enough to know that she doesn't.

How frustrating to put up with a stodgy professor once again and know that it does not have to be this way!  When is it okay to release the need to show off your mental prowess to students?  They are students!  

I hear Dr. Nobles make remarks that I am sure could be challenged and some students laugh or agree whole-heartedly with her like she's making total sense.  She has her points but her lack of humility distracts me from learning.  And I can't help but muse on how unfair it is to the students who don't know any better.  But all I want to do is get out of class early so I don't say what I'm thinking.  I let it go.  Let her have her day.  Let them all have their day.

And when the test has zero questions from her long, boring, incorrect lectures, I'll be glad I read on RateMyProfessors.com to only study the textbook.