I don't know why it is that I am so protective over my teachers. Not all of them, just some of them. But most of them this semester. I may get frustrated at one thing or another with them from here to there, but usually it is due to my own short-comings in the class.
What truly irks me is when I am in a class full of students who complain non-stop about a professor who they feel doesn't teach anything and yet sit in the class talking, texting, passing notes, studying other subjects, having conversations about what they're going to do together this weekend, drawing on the tables and in notebooks.
When did college become elementary school? Didn't we all learn not to draw on ourselves or the desks in the first grade? No! Kindergarden, actually!
This happens in every single class that I am in and it causes me to wonder what happened to humanity?
In film, granted the teacher has no structure in his class at the moment, but he is looking for "do-ers". People who have a natural drive to succeed. You need that in the industry and I think that it is an important thing to learn. I have my own difficulty in the class due to the lack of structure, but that is on me. My professor suggested texts, some of which I did not buy. I could have learned a lot had I purchased them. It is not my professor's fault that I did not, and thus hit a lazy spot in class where I claim I don't know where to go with producing my film. The thing is that you just get out there and do it. What are we waiting for?
In algebra I am surrounded by a class of people who I feel are, for the most part, the equivalent of prepubescent fifth graders. They talk during class and complain when the professor doesn't speak loudly enough for them to hear over their own conversations about their children who are in jail. Other students slow down the class by asking questions at the end of a semester in Algebra class which have to do with how she got a negative number--something that was learned in the beginning of the class and should have been a review for the person if they entered the class anyway. The professor is criticized, even talked back to in class, and she is 80 years old, and when paid attention to, a very easily comprehendable person.
In Geology, I seat myself at a table where a kid that I clicked with immediately sits and I'm finding I will have to sit elsewhere. The kids at that table behave as high school students, because most of them are not too far from being out. But what is the point of being enrolled in and attending a class in which you are going to refuse to listen, and then because of your refusal to listen to lectures in class, get Cs or Ds on exams with the rest of the class who behaves the same as you, demand a curve, which the professor stated in her syllabus that she does not do, and threaten to go to the Dean should the cycle be repeated. And is it really necessary to make comments, during class, when the teacher can most definitely hear what you are saying, about the repeated phrases and speech patterns that the professor has and giggle?
What has happened to people taking responsibility for their own actions? Does anybody do that anymore? Is anyone honest enough with themselves to be honest with everyone else and say, and really mean "it's not you, it's me"?
Perhaps it's that I've taken a long break from school and am appreciative that I am able to reap the benefits of financial aid to put me in the classes which give me knowledge on the subjects that I am curious about.
Perhaps it is that I am an optimist almost to the point of being flawed, that I will find at least some aspect of even the worst class to be interested in that causes me to want to listen, to respect my teachers for their knowledge in a class which I may or may not have a deep interest in.
Perhaps it is the way that i was brought up, and perhaps the way that others were not, that I learned to respect my elders and people in a position of authority despite whether or not I agree or disagree with their methods of teaching or their points of view.
The point is that I am disappointed not in the quality of professors that I have at my school but in the quality and quantity of students that are permitted to waste the underpaid time of those who do make an effort to teach a group which has, apparently, no real interest in learning.
These days, more and more, I am realizing just how disappointing our educational system is in America. And it's heart breaking. Because education is the key to a nation's growth and survival. If our citizens are not learning, or willing to learn, or put in an effort to learn and take responsibility for themselves, how can we, as a nation, be expected to take responsibility for it, find creative solutions to our problems and learn from our nation's past mistakes?
This is a problem. And it shouldn't be.
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