Today I was asked us to write about my best and worst experience with teachers. I then shared my worst experience with the class. I’ve written a little bit about my worst experience before…though I mainly shared my hatred for that bitch, Cathy, and the drawings I violated my text book with.
My worst teacher was a psychology professor. The first problem with taking a psychology class is basic: people are cheap, lazy and fucked up. Psychology courses attract people who should really be in private therapy, rather than use a community college class (do-it-yourself solution to their personal problems), AKA, creepy over share time, bad boundaries, etc, etc.
Not only was the professor regularly late, but he did not lecture. During each class he had the students summarize the assigned reading…I learned very little. The only time that we had discussions were when he would use our class time to share his mental health issues. He had some “new” form of bi-polar disorder (not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association) that he developed from exposure to crop dusting as a child. BUT, only men were capable of contracting this specific disorder and they had to be of specific age criteria. Uh, huh…hello crazy town!
Our final paper was to be written about a major life event and its affect. We were to relate our experience to the psychology models of our text book. We were also required to give an oral presentation on our paper. If the subject matter of our paper was too personal we were permitted to make an oral presentation on a different subject.
I wrote my paper on the events that led to my official exit from Mormonism. It was an extremely personal experience and I didn’t feel comfortable sharing the trauma that led to the worst fight I’ve ever had with my parents, along with a slew of additional sordid shit that was left in the wake. It was really hard for me to write the paper but it was damn satisfying to put a frightening and emotionally charged experience into words. It was cathartic, though I did not want to share my experience with the class.
Then I heard some of my classmates give their oral presentations. The subjects varied and touched on nearly every taboo/horrible experience you could think of (except for murder). The topics included: divorce, a child kidnapped by her biological father, abuse of all sorts, pregnancy resulting from infidelity, abortion and the clincher was a guy who admitted to embezzling $70k from a job – a crime which he had not been prosecuted for, yet he felt comfortable sharing it with THIRTY-FIVE STRANGERS! WTF?!
After hearing a slew of over share from my classmates, I decided to “put it in the fuck it bucket” and talk about my descent from Mormonism. It went great. Much better than I thought it would! It was oddly satisfying to share my experience with a group of strangers and see all of their jaws dropped at the end; so much easier than to make up a bullshit oral presentation.
The final straw was when the professor “graded” thirty-five, single spaced, three page essays during the forty-five minutes in which we took our final. I received 10/10 on my paper but still felt ripped off. I poured my fucking heart and soul into that paper and all he gave it was count the number of paragraphs I’d used before writing “Excellent!” across the top. Though my paper was excellent, it deserved more than one minute grading period.
