the colorful cast of AACC
I will be double-posting today, because I had an interesting epiphany this morning and wanted it to have its own post. Meanwhile, here’s the errata.
I reiterate this post almost in entirety for this morning. Particularly the part about the incompetence of the state. I was fishtailing getting on the interstate this morning, because Maryland can’t be bothered to plow or sand slippery powder. Of course there was a five-car accident (possibly more cars had been towed; the police were already there) immediately after the on-ramp. From the looks of it, I’m guessing that a car or two had fishtailed like me but couldn’t pull out of the skid, and oncoming cars came along, and crash bang boom. This is actually my favorite kind of snow, i.e. the only kind of snow I sort of like; it’s big and fluffy and as long as you sand or plow it’s perfectly safe to drive in. One of the (many) occasions I am upset about my windowless office.
Last night’s class was…awesome! Surprise! The teacher led us through the syllabus with common sense and a toughness of expectation that pleased me, and she was friendly, engaging, and smart. I really enjoyed myself. Also, it’s Legal Research & Writing II, but the class is entirely focused on writing. SCORE. Our first assignment was to write a client letter in-class and turn it in before class was over and then leave. I had mine printed out before most people had finished typing the letterhead in, because I do letters 80 times a day. Yaaaaay! Good class that will involve commonplace tasks, yet challenging and fun!
However, some of the characters in my previous classes were back for another round. Career-Change Guy, who has 30 years of experience in the Navy, consulting, and real estate brokering, was in two of my classes last semester and I found him annoying in his show-offiness and also his attitude towards the classes (I must be the best, even if I bring in thoroughly unrelated material and experience to show that I am the best). He also mutters comments about the class under his breath to whoever’s sitting next to him (once it was me, and I was actually rude to him just so he’d shut the fuck up and never sit next to me again) (I am pretty much never rude) (he never did), and is ugly as sin. Chronic-Pain Girl, who was in my Legal Research class last semester, was there again. She opened up her introduction to everyone by explaining that she had disabling head pain and could either work or be in school but not both. She dresses like a nerd from 1992 and while I would have sympathy for her, she used any excuse to talk about her suffering. Undeniably Odd Guy, who was in Torts with me first semester and then dropped out of two of my classes last semester, was in last night’s too. He has this very strange, self-conscious manner whenever he’s talking, he laughs very loudly at any joke that other people also laugh at, he picks at the skin of his forearms when he thinks no one is watching, and he seems to wash his hair only occasionally. For all this he is friendly, fairly intelligent, and nonthreatening, so I chat with him while keeping my distance.
A new character from Monday’s class is probably going to be the best one this time. She works with the county police doing something legally-related, I don’t remember what, and on Monday she got in a 10-minute argument with the instructor about the boulevard rule. She was looking at the issue the wrong way, so technically the instructor was right, but she was right about the particulars, and he failed to take the time to explain what he was trying to correct, which left her resentful, I’m sure. Then, at the end of class, there was a mix-up with how he made the assignments, and when he asked her which assignment she would prefer to have, she said “Whichever one’s the hardest.” Yes, she actually said that. Whichever one’s the hardest. I stopped saying ambitious shit like that in eighth grade, because I knew it would make everyone hate me.
It’s 9:30, I’ve been here since 7:40, and I still have done virtually no work yet. Do you know why? There are three of us in the office: me, EP, and MD. And it was just me and EP until about 20 minutes ago. The phone is barely ringing, except for OG to call and hover about who’s here and who’s not. So hopefully this will be a day when I can break out the thumb drive and write a little. Unless MD makes me dance “Swan Lake” for his amusement. Lord knows I’d be as equally qualified to do that as I would all the other shit he’s been asking me to do lately.
February 4, 2009 at 10:01 am
I had one of those snarky commenter types in my very first class in grad school. She was a teacher, teaching (that subject) in high school at the AP level, and was quite confident that she was the shit.
We all wrote our first paper after a few weeks, and the instructor graded them and passed them back out. Mine was covered in so much red ink that looked like it had been used to clean up the scene of a stabbing.
The instructor then said, “Okay, everybody flip past the cover sheet and hold your paper up in the air so you can all see that no, it was NOT JUST YOU, EVERYBODY got ripped.” We did so. It was true.
He then started passing out a small stapled paper. “THIS is a copy of MY last book review, which was edited by [other professor in the department.]” It was similarly carved to bits.
He said: “This is graduate school. Your writing may have been fine for undergrad, but now you’re writing for the profession. You should get used to being edited, and brutally, and to learn to not only expect it but respect it when people try to help make your writing better.”
AP-teacher lady spent the rest of the semester muttering under her breath about how lousy the instructor was, blah blah blah. Which wasn’t entirely untrue, but it had nothing to do with why she was complaining. I never saw her again after that semester.
The guy who ripped up the instructor’s book review turned out to be my advisor/mentor. And after Dys went over my thesis chapters, he barely touched ‘em. (Dys is among the most brutal editors on earth!)
Great story.
I actually got the chance to get this guy back, in a way; at the end of the semester of LOPT, if you’ll remember, we were all required to do a PowerPoint. Career-Change Guy asked me if he could email his presentation to me so I could check it over, and I said yes because I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. I ripped into it, fully, with relish and joy. When we gave the presentation, neither of us really had the last laugh; he didn’t take any of my suggestions, and his presentation was one of the longest, most detailed, least relevant presentations in the class, but mine was one of the thinnest, with the least substance. Ah well.