So I always look forward to the beginning of the school year because it's an opportunity to finally see who's gonna be in your respective classes and whether or not said classes are gonna be any good. That all being said, is it just me or did the 1st day of school just sneak up on us this year? That sumbitch came outta nowhere. I mean, maybe it was because I've been working at the bookstore quite a bit as of late, but I turned around and it was right there staring me down. Well meet my eyeline, opening day, game on.
I'm also pretty sure that classes normally start on Tuesdays but this year they started on Monday, so today is part 2 of the first day of school. What I mean is that obviously in college, we don't normally have the same classes on two consecutive days. So yesterday we fulfilled our Monday/Wednesday/Friday slate of classes, and today we do the Tuesday/Thursday ones.
As for yesterday's classes, things went fairly well. Well, relatively well. Well, I guess it could have been worse; at least I made it to all of my first day classes for the first time in my college career. I kicked off my 4th year of undergraduate work at MU with back-to-back 4000 level English classes, which were 19th Century American Literature (which thus far emanates much more of a history class vibe) and then Old English. Naturally, the Old English class ended up being a little more than I bargained for, as I thought it was more like the jargon in which Shakespeare penned his plays, but as it turns out, it's not that simple. It's gonna end up being more like the ancient Norse, Anglo-Saxon mumbo jumbo seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English. Not only do we hafta read this shit, but we're gonna hafta learn to speak it for various presentations in class (it stands to be mentioned that the phonetic sounds of the alphabet that we use in English now mean next to nothing when being employed in Old English context). When we found this out, the only sound in the room was that of the collective OH SHIT that coursed through our heads, kinda like what you were just thinking, blogosphere.
But more important than the old Norse language that will most certainly become lost in translation over the course of the semester, I would like to address a phenomena that is becoming increasingly more prominent in classrooms these days. It happened to me in all 3 classes yesterday and I DONT LIKE IT! For years, it's been an unwritten rule of first-day etiquette that teachers should just barely introduce the course (and for non-large lecture classes, maybe a short icebreaker type of exercise) and then allow the students to get out and be on their merry way; the past has taught me that I can go into class allowing the professor 20 minutes, but anything more than that is just greedy. But suddenly, more and more teachers are leaning in the direction of keeping class for the entire allotted time frame of the class, even on the first day, even if it means they hafta employ obvious bullshit-for-time techniques like READING THROUGH THEIR ENTIRE SYLLABI. Why is this happening? For instance, my 19th Century American Lit. class was kept in class for 15 mins longer than necessary as our professor was clearly trying to single-handedly keep this trend alive, reaching around trying to come up with things to talk about. He was like "Ummmmm....... soooooo, how many of you see author names on the syllabus that you don't exactly recognize?" Ummm sir, considering the length of the average century, odds are that in a class featuring works from writers of just one particular century, there will be a couple of names that come up that we all haven't become completely acquainted with; I call B.S. on that question. He then showed off some versatility, moving onto geography: Okay, so ummmmm..... who in here is from Missouri? Where in Missouri? North? South? East? West?..... Oh yea? Emily Dickinson is from Massachusetts, but outside of Massachusetts, I believe Missouri has the richest literary history in the United States. That's nice I suppose, but not only do I not really believe you, but even if I did, I would be less inclined to do so today because you brought it up outta nowhere on THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS, meaning that you sir, are clearly stalling. Stop embarrassing yourself.
He did end up letting us out 5 minutes early (after conceding defeat to the aforementioned first-day rule), but the trend for the day had been set. I got another dip in the bullshit-for-time pool in the Old English class when, after the obligatory icebreaker go-around-the-classroom-and-tell-your-name/major/something-you-did-this-summer exercise, the teacher decided it was time to pass out an Old English poem, read through it, and invoke the clause in every professor's contract that say they hafta ask if we recognize/don't recognize any words in the text in front of us, essentially killing another ten minutes of the time that we could be spending walking out of the building and towards our next destinations. The next thing I knew, the class was balls-deep in another handout about Old English and the various components of the human vocal apparatus (mouth, throat, lips, uvula, etc) that would hafta be used to correctly pronunciate the words, another 10 minutes had gone by, and I was now looking at something else that has become a huge pet peeve of mine: I was gonna be late for my next class. As I was telling Gossip Girl yesterday, I fucking HATE being late for anything, especially for classes, especially when I'm late for a no good reason such as a teacher keeping class the entire time (and then some) on the first day of class; It's a dick move, and ya HATE to see it. Compounding the issue was the fact that for the class I was currently in, I had already had to go outta my way to a remote side of campus where there are no true classroom buildings, and for the class after it, I would hafta go back to the polar opposite side of campus. We have 10 minutes in between classes and I'm a known power-walker, but even I couldn't walk that fast. When my Old English professor finally hit the mute button on her mouth, it was 11:53 and I now had 7 minutes to complete what was realistically probably a 15 minute walk; I arrived at the next class at 12:06, and again, that's only because I walk faster than most. Here's a tip for all professors: one sure-fire easy way to get students (or this particular student, anyways) to dislike you is to bullshit so much as to keep them for the entire 50 minutes of class and then overflow into the allotted 10 minute transmission period, especially if they have a long trek to embark on to their next class anyways. Repeated offenses will not be conducive to a very healthy or working relationship for the semester; you have ben warned.
The next class was for Leisurely Studies (the irony of me hustling to this particular class was, of course, not lost on me) and because I got there late, I arrived to a packed house. My ire towards the Old English professor only grew once I saw this, but I just found a seat in the back of the lecture and tried to sit down without bringing too much attention to myself. I sat next to a cute, friendly girl in the back row and now added the worry about being the late, foul-smelling guy to the other issues of the day; no one wants to be that guy. Once again, this class ended up staying most of the 50 minutes, though it wasn't completely the professor's fault. He was given some help from another one of the many tools of class time-prolonging, the-asks-too-many-questions guy/girl. There's always one of these kids in class. In this particular case, it was a girl. It's no secret that when a teacher asks "are there any questions?", that's the cue for students that class is about to wrap up. But, that one particular student always has to ask a question and prevent class from being let out for the duration of the the question/answer conversation. This can prolong class by 15-20 minutes sometimes. I'm convinced that teachers plant these people in their lecture crowds, that way if/when students inevitably complain about being held in class too long on the 1st day (like me), they can just deflect the blame onto someone else in the class asking alotta questions; I will not argue this point. I will allow these people to ask one question just outta curiosity, but anything after that is excessive. So these types of students need be stopped because they are only contributing to a growing trend of keeping students too long on opening day, and that means ur only hurting urself, honey.
Anyways, those are just some of my burning thoughts on the nuances of first-day classes. There are certainly many more than that, but those are the ones that I came across head-on yesterday, and I wanted to share them with you all, because sharing is caring, right?
Until next time, this is Sir Marcus T. Williams signing off.... Yall take care now.
