Ah teachers. A good or great one can inspire you to learn or do things you never thought possible and fall in love with a subject, while a bad one can make you want to bang your head repeatedly on a chalkboard.
When I was in grade and high school I had some truly horrific instructors, some of whom would definitely get fired or face severe discipline in today’s hyper-sensitive society. (Not that being PC is always a bad thing mind you! But some places really go idiotically overboard!)
After graduating and then going back to school a bit older and wiser, I figured I could handle whoever would be in charge of class. Wow, was I wrong, and greatly overestimated my confidence while pursuing a woefully wrong program. One instructor literally bullied my entire class, drove everyone to tears, taught nothing and then claimed to be the victim of some disorder. It was beyond a dumb waste of time, and she, I learned later, was driven to quit by her own incompetence and shitty personality.
Being in a completely new program in a new, and better school, I have been very lucky to have had some excellent instructors. But no place is perfect, and of course I took a bad and painful class with a largely MIA instructor. Once it was done, I enrolled in a similar course with a different teacher. “It will be different this time,” I said, along with “I really need the credit”. Yeah, I must have been on some crazy pills at the time!
He is better, but it is still a painful and largely lonely experience, where I feel miles away from everyone else, some of whom are clique-y and annoying. They also tend to do really conceptual stuff, super artsy, whereas I’d rather not spend hours explaining what a random smudge or line means politically.
He also tends to change his mind, telling me to do one thing, which I do, and upon showing him my hard work, frowns and says to go in another direction.
It wouldn’t be so bad if his new direction wasn’t done already a million times by other people! Really it just sucks and makes me hate the subject, which is a shame, since I’ve always considered myself pretty apt at it. The end of the term for this one class really cannot come soon enough!
But I will just do my best, finish this assignment and strangely enough, continue working with his first suggestion, because it actually made a lot of sense to me and I enjoy it! It just would be nice if it was appreciated in class..
