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So, the recent threads by LingualMonkey and ArcticChicken have reminded me of who I think is the worst professor ever. Not that I'm trying to make this a contest, but I still get mad when I think about this, and it was years ago now. I haven't even started to tell this story and I'm getting heated.
Anyway, the class was English 102 - Honors, freshman year. I'd scored well enough on my placement tests to test out of EN101 and be placed into honors (and - thankfully - tested out of the math requirement altogether. Not that I'm bad at math, but Honors Calculus in high school had burned me out on math).
The professor was a woman, and was a feminist, as it turned out. I have nothing against feminists or feminism, but this woman.....gaah....just hear me out. I will try as much as possible to avoid Fratching territory.
The first half of the semester went reasonably well, though I was struggling a bit. As I recall I got a C- on my midterm paper, along with a "see me after class" type note whereupon I was told I needed to shape up or there was no way I'd pass the class. In retrospect I should have dropped the class after that, but since it was after midterms, it would make no difference, since it'd earn me a "Withdrawn - Failing" on my transcript (which was just as bad as actually failing, even if I had been getting an A at the time), so I decided to tough it out.
That is when things took a turn for the worse.
First class after midterms (the day I'd been given my warning) we were told to to the campus library, check out copies of two article she'd provided there, make our own copies of them, and read them.
Three things about that.
First of all, she only furnished ONE copy of each article, they were themselves copies, and poor ones at that. She's also assigned the same articles to ALL her sections of EN-102H, so there was quite a line to wait to copy them.
Second, why the hell didn't she give them to the campus copy center and have them make a bunch of copies? Well that'd make sense and it'd be too easy! Not to mention it'd also have been cheaper for us. See, the library doesn't allow this sort of thing to leave the building, so we had to use the slow, battered copying machine in the copy room on our own dime. Cost me almost $10 to copy these things.
Yes, $10. These were about 40-50 pages each. More like small books than articles.
The first article was about the technical aspects of film-making (lighting, framing, camera angles, even f-stops).
Lastly, the second article was "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Film Theory" by Laura Mulvey. (THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK!!!)
OK......
First of all, these were articles about film. They had nothing to do with writing, literature, or anything else you'd expect to be doing in an English class. And since this WAS an English class, not a film class, I though for sure that the library had screwed up and tagged the wrong articles for this class. So much so that I sent an email to the professor about it. Wait wha---? This ARE the right articles?
That was only the beginning. The technical article wasn't too bad, but the Mulvey article......
If you've never read this, then you are lucky. Laura Mulvey is a FUCKING NUTCASE.
The entire article was written with a downright vicious misandrist (man-hating; opposite of misogynist) slant that was physically painful to read. I mean that quite literally; I got a headache trying to read this thing.
Emphasis on trying to read.
It did not help that the entire article made absolutely NO sense.
The premise of the entire article....well....it's Fratching-worthy. you can see the above Wikipedia link for more details, but I'll sum it up by saying that Mulvey's premise was that ALL forms of media (the article focused on Hollywood, but heavily implied that ALL media, including TV, newspapers, books, and radio) were inherently and deliberately sexist and objectified woman.
Every film (and every TV show and every book) ever made is deliberately sexist.
Including those written by women?
Also included were enough phallic references to make Howard Stern blush.
And for the record, I'm not exaggerating about any of that.
The article was - in a word - absurd.
So absurd that I found myself incapable of finishing it. Nor could I fathom any reason why I'd have to read this for an ENGLISH class, even if the instructor was a woman. Seriously, this article was better suited for a woman's rights/history of feminism class, or for an all-female college, than for a co-ed English class.
Moving right along.
A week later, we watched a BBC television production of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." Now this was more like it. I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare, but at least this is more on-topic than radical feminism.
"Take copious notes."
Erm....what?
Yes, that was what we were told. She said that this was the ONE and ONLY time we'd ever see this. It was her personal copy, no copies existed at the library or at the local rental stores, it wasn't available to buy even online (and this was before NetFlix), and she had no intention of loaning out her copy.
OK, so what are we supposed to take notes on, and what are we going to be using them for.
Take notes about how the film relates to the two articles we read; I'll tell you why later?
That's just terrific! Thanks for the warning about that last week! Thanks for telling us how little time we had to actually read all that...er.....stuff! Might've helped if I'd been able to FINISH reading it, which was IMPOSSIBLE because I'm a guy and can't think like a radical feminist!
Oh, and thanks for not telling us the point of this whole exercise!!!!!!
I tried. I really did, but even if I had read and understood both articles, I was having trouble trying to WATCH the play AND take notes at the same time. I just couldn't write fast enough. And I just could not see any sexism in how the BBC had made the film. Seriously, one of Mulvey's points was that "cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking" but all of the female characters were dressed in downright stuffy Victorian wardrobe that left EVERYTHING to the imagination; there was nothing to look at, let alone anything "pleasurable."
Plus, the acting and the editing was dry and stuffy as well. Very low-budget all around. So there was also little to note about the technical aspects either. Jeeze, I thought this was an English class.
The next class period (it was a twice a week, 1 hour 15 minute class) we watched the last 15 or so minutes of the BBC "Much Ado About Nothing" and were then told what this was all about.
"Much Ado About Nothing" was our final paper topic!!
Specifically, we'd have to discuss how the BBC version and the 1993 Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing (starring Keanu Reeves) fit into Mulvey's articel.
I am not kidding.
WAY TO TELL US THIS BEFORE WE WATCHED THE FIRST ONE!!!!!!!!!!! WAY TO PUT THAT ON THE SYLLABUS!!!
Oh my God, I was beside myself with rage at that point, as was about half the class, including some of the girls.
I tried my very best to actually finish that Mulvey article. I really did. But I just. couldn't. do it. I felt like I was trying to read something someone wrote on LSD. I just could not wrap my head around it. It made NO sense to me. I tried asking some of the girls in the class, and THEY couldn't wrap their heads around it. Finally I scheduled a meeting with the instructor, and damn near left the meeting in tears because after I explained the problem, she pretty much tore me up one side and down the other. She said if I didn't understand it then I could go to the tutoring center, and that it was my own damn fault for not taking enough notes. She also implied that I'd wasted her time asking for the meeting.
Oh, by the way, not only was this paper pretty much impossible for me to actually do at this point, but it was also a "make or break" assignment. It counted for more than the final exam AND midterm did. Seriously, it was half our grade for the class.
Now, at this point I'd had a pretty much flawless academic history. I wasn't totally straight As, but I had done very well to that point with only a couple of Cs, the rest being As and Bs, but mostly As. So to be facing the prospect of actually FAILING a class was so totally foreign to me that I couldn't even begin to figure out how to deal with it. So I tried to do the paper, but didn't even know where to begin. I pulled out the Mulvey article one last time and tried to grind through it, but since I didn't have anything approaching adequate notes on the films as they related to Mulvey, it really wouldn't have helped.
I didn't know what to do. I could have gone to the help center, but without seeing the BBC film again they wouldn't be able to provide meaningful help. And of course plagiarism was out of the question, though with such an.....esoteric topic I doubt I could have done that if I'd tried (no, I didn't try).
Then it dawned on me: I was screwed.
Not that I hadn't thought I was screwed before, but I realized that I was screwed no matter what I did at this point. I didn't have what I needed to even BS my way through the paper, and that paper was so heavily weighted that even had I aced everything else (and I hadn't) I'd fail the class anyway.
This revelation came at about 2AM the day before the paper was due, as I was preparing to pull an all-nighter to try to BS the paper.
So I said "fuck this" and went to bed. I didn't go to her class that day, nor did I go to the rest of the class sessions for that course (the paper was due the week BEFORE the last week of classes so we could spend the last week reviewing everything before the final, which seemed pointless since the paper was weighted so heavily), nor did I bother showing up for the final.
Let me tell you, I felt like a TREMENDOUS burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I slept well that night, and used the extra time to focus more on the papers/finals for my other four courses (which I did quite well on). Needless to say, I did fail that class, but I later retook it with a different (male!) instructor and got a B+. Thankfully, we didn't have to do film analysis or anything feminist, nor did we read Shakespeare, oddly enough. The major book we read was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I had thought I'd hate, since I've never been into horror stuff, but to my surprise I actually really enjoyed it.
I did at least get the opportunity to strike back a little against my feminist instructor. She had us do the instructor evaluations early (in fact, that was the last thing I did in that class; I skipped all the ones after it), and I very calmly and methodically torched her in writing. I said she wasn't teaching to topic and was pushing a political agenda and really didnt' hold back. Took the entire 75 minutes and I still wasn't done, rather to the annoyance of the student she'd picked to proctor the evals (the instructors could not be in the room while we did them). "Yeah yeah, we all know you hate her, now just finish up and give it to me so we can get the hell out of here."
So while I was glad I made the decision I did, since it put an end to a lot of stress, it did come back to bite me later. Fs hurt your GPA, and at my school, Magna Cum Laude required a GPA of 3.5. My final GPA was 3.49. I missed Magna Cum Laude by 0.01. If not for that evil woman, I'd have gotten Magna Cum Laude. I can't begin to tell you how much that pisses me off.
I did however, still get Cum Laude, and have the Honors Tassels to prove it.
Anyway, the class was English 102 - Honors, freshman year. I'd scored well enough on my placement tests to test out of EN101 and be placed into honors (and - thankfully - tested out of the math requirement altogether. Not that I'm bad at math, but Honors Calculus in high school had burned me out on math).
The professor was a woman, and was a feminist, as it turned out. I have nothing against feminists or feminism, but this woman.....gaah....just hear me out. I will try as much as possible to avoid Fratching territory.
The first half of the semester went reasonably well, though I was struggling a bit. As I recall I got a C- on my midterm paper, along with a "see me after class" type note whereupon I was told I needed to shape up or there was no way I'd pass the class. In retrospect I should have dropped the class after that, but since it was after midterms, it would make no difference, since it'd earn me a "Withdrawn - Failing" on my transcript (which was just as bad as actually failing, even if I had been getting an A at the time), so I decided to tough it out.
That is when things took a turn for the worse.
First class after midterms (the day I'd been given my warning) we were told to to the campus library, check out copies of two article she'd provided there, make our own copies of them, and read them.
Three things about that.
First of all, she only furnished ONE copy of each article, they were themselves copies, and poor ones at that. She's also assigned the same articles to ALL her sections of EN-102H, so there was quite a line to wait to copy them.
Second, why the hell didn't she give them to the campus copy center and have them make a bunch of copies? Well that'd make sense and it'd be too easy! Not to mention it'd also have been cheaper for us. See, the library doesn't allow this sort of thing to leave the building, so we had to use the slow, battered copying machine in the copy room on our own dime. Cost me almost $10 to copy these things.
Yes, $10. These were about 40-50 pages each. More like small books than articles.
The first article was about the technical aspects of film-making (lighting, framing, camera angles, even f-stops).
Lastly, the second article was "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Film Theory" by Laura Mulvey. (THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK!!!)
OK......
First of all, these were articles about film. They had nothing to do with writing, literature, or anything else you'd expect to be doing in an English class. And since this WAS an English class, not a film class, I though for sure that the library had screwed up and tagged the wrong articles for this class. So much so that I sent an email to the professor about it. Wait wha---? This ARE the right articles?
That was only the beginning. The technical article wasn't too bad, but the Mulvey article......
If you've never read this, then you are lucky. Laura Mulvey is a FUCKING NUTCASE.
The entire article was written with a downright vicious misandrist (man-hating; opposite of misogynist) slant that was physically painful to read. I mean that quite literally; I got a headache trying to read this thing.
Emphasis on trying to read.
It did not help that the entire article made absolutely NO sense.
The premise of the entire article....well....it's Fratching-worthy. you can see the above Wikipedia link for more details, but I'll sum it up by saying that Mulvey's premise was that ALL forms of media (the article focused on Hollywood, but heavily implied that ALL media, including TV, newspapers, books, and radio) were inherently and deliberately sexist and objectified woman.
Every film (and every TV show and every book) ever made is deliberately sexist.
Including those written by women?
Also included were enough phallic references to make Howard Stern blush.
And for the record, I'm not exaggerating about any of that.
The article was - in a word - absurd.
So absurd that I found myself incapable of finishing it. Nor could I fathom any reason why I'd have to read this for an ENGLISH class, even if the instructor was a woman. Seriously, this article was better suited for a woman's rights/history of feminism class, or for an all-female college, than for a co-ed English class.
Moving right along.
A week later, we watched a BBC television production of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." Now this was more like it. I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare, but at least this is more on-topic than radical feminism.
"Take copious notes."
Erm....what?
Yes, that was what we were told. She said that this was the ONE and ONLY time we'd ever see this. It was her personal copy, no copies existed at the library or at the local rental stores, it wasn't available to buy even online (and this was before NetFlix), and she had no intention of loaning out her copy.
OK, so what are we supposed to take notes on, and what are we going to be using them for.
Take notes about how the film relates to the two articles we read; I'll tell you why later?
That's just terrific! Thanks for the warning about that last week! Thanks for telling us how little time we had to actually read all that...er.....stuff! Might've helped if I'd been able to FINISH reading it, which was IMPOSSIBLE because I'm a guy and can't think like a radical feminist!
Oh, and thanks for not telling us the point of this whole exercise!!!!!!
I tried. I really did, but even if I had read and understood both articles, I was having trouble trying to WATCH the play AND take notes at the same time. I just couldn't write fast enough. And I just could not see any sexism in how the BBC had made the film. Seriously, one of Mulvey's points was that "cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking" but all of the female characters were dressed in downright stuffy Victorian wardrobe that left EVERYTHING to the imagination; there was nothing to look at, let alone anything "pleasurable."
Plus, the acting and the editing was dry and stuffy as well. Very low-budget all around. So there was also little to note about the technical aspects either. Jeeze, I thought this was an English class.
The next class period (it was a twice a week, 1 hour 15 minute class) we watched the last 15 or so minutes of the BBC "Much Ado About Nothing" and were then told what this was all about.
"Much Ado About Nothing" was our final paper topic!!
Specifically, we'd have to discuss how the BBC version and the 1993 Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing (starring Keanu Reeves) fit into Mulvey's articel.
I am not kidding.
WAY TO TELL US THIS BEFORE WE WATCHED THE FIRST ONE!!!!!!!!!!! WAY TO PUT THAT ON THE SYLLABUS!!!
Oh my God, I was beside myself with rage at that point, as was about half the class, including some of the girls.
I tried my very best to actually finish that Mulvey article. I really did. But I just. couldn't. do it. I felt like I was trying to read something someone wrote on LSD. I just could not wrap my head around it. It made NO sense to me. I tried asking some of the girls in the class, and THEY couldn't wrap their heads around it. Finally I scheduled a meeting with the instructor, and damn near left the meeting in tears because after I explained the problem, she pretty much tore me up one side and down the other. She said if I didn't understand it then I could go to the tutoring center, and that it was my own damn fault for not taking enough notes. She also implied that I'd wasted her time asking for the meeting.
Oh, by the way, not only was this paper pretty much impossible for me to actually do at this point, but it was also a "make or break" assignment. It counted for more than the final exam AND midterm did. Seriously, it was half our grade for the class.
Now, at this point I'd had a pretty much flawless academic history. I wasn't totally straight As, but I had done very well to that point with only a couple of Cs, the rest being As and Bs, but mostly As. So to be facing the prospect of actually FAILING a class was so totally foreign to me that I couldn't even begin to figure out how to deal with it. So I tried to do the paper, but didn't even know where to begin. I pulled out the Mulvey article one last time and tried to grind through it, but since I didn't have anything approaching adequate notes on the films as they related to Mulvey, it really wouldn't have helped.
I didn't know what to do. I could have gone to the help center, but without seeing the BBC film again they wouldn't be able to provide meaningful help. And of course plagiarism was out of the question, though with such an.....esoteric topic I doubt I could have done that if I'd tried (no, I didn't try).
Then it dawned on me: I was screwed.
Not that I hadn't thought I was screwed before, but I realized that I was screwed no matter what I did at this point. I didn't have what I needed to even BS my way through the paper, and that paper was so heavily weighted that even had I aced everything else (and I hadn't) I'd fail the class anyway.
This revelation came at about 2AM the day before the paper was due, as I was preparing to pull an all-nighter to try to BS the paper.
So I said "fuck this" and went to bed. I didn't go to her class that day, nor did I go to the rest of the class sessions for that course (the paper was due the week BEFORE the last week of classes so we could spend the last week reviewing everything before the final, which seemed pointless since the paper was weighted so heavily), nor did I bother showing up for the final.
Let me tell you, I felt like a TREMENDOUS burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I slept well that night, and used the extra time to focus more on the papers/finals for my other four courses (which I did quite well on). Needless to say, I did fail that class, but I later retook it with a different (male!) instructor and got a B+. Thankfully, we didn't have to do film analysis or anything feminist, nor did we read Shakespeare, oddly enough. The major book we read was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I had thought I'd hate, since I've never been into horror stuff, but to my surprise I actually really enjoyed it.
I did at least get the opportunity to strike back a little against my feminist instructor. She had us do the instructor evaluations early (in fact, that was the last thing I did in that class; I skipped all the ones after it), and I very calmly and methodically torched her in writing. I said she wasn't teaching to topic and was pushing a political agenda and really didnt' hold back. Took the entire 75 minutes and I still wasn't done, rather to the annoyance of the student she'd picked to proctor the evals (the instructors could not be in the room while we did them). "Yeah yeah, we all know you hate her, now just finish up and give it to me so we can get the hell out of here."
So while I was glad I made the decision I did, since it put an end to a lot of stress, it did come back to bite me later. Fs hurt your GPA, and at my school, Magna Cum Laude required a GPA of 3.5. My final GPA was 3.49. I missed Magna Cum Laude by 0.01. If not for that evil woman, I'd have gotten Magna Cum Laude. I can't begin to tell you how much that pisses me off.
I did however, still get Cum Laude, and have the Honors Tassels to prove it.
. One guy missed class that day, and he was so disappointed when he found out. The prof got a nice 20-page book to read (not that he probably bothered to read it, anyway).
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