You know I thought that once this whole semester thing was over I'd be blogging more again. Then I started working 4 days a week and painting a house when I got home.
I realized it's just way easier to post stati on facebook and watch TV. Blogging requires actually putting my mind to work. Haha, I guess I am just really lazy.
Anyways, what I've been wanting to say for a while is...
I have only written two scathing class reviews in my life and then there was another that was mildly mean. The mildly mean one preceded them all and one of the scathing ones was the same professor who taught the mildly mean one. (Did that make any sense?)
Lets use a diagram Undergrad = 2 = 1 mildly mean + 1 scathing = same professor. Graduate = 1 scathing.
I could have done a chart, but time crunches and well, as we know, I'm lazy....
Anyways... the mildly mean one was my first, during either my 2nd semester Sophomore year, or my 1st semester Junior year. Either way it was probably only mildly mean because I probably didn't feel worthy enough to write a meaner one. I mostly critiqued the class. I'm pretty sure I was confused most of them time about what the heck was going on and put little to no effort in and I still got an A in the class. It was a class done mostly by student led seminars, however these were Sophomores in college. I mean I know what I was like as a Sophomore in college, I couldn't really have cared less about learning something truly meaningful so long as I did enough work to get an A. That's how most of the seminar presentations were, pointless and completely unrelated to the class. ( I am far harsher here than in my review believe me.)
Now the second time around I had this professor I was pretty livid about a third through the year. Unfortunately, attendance was mandatory and it was the same thing. I had especially high hopes for the class because it dealt with gerontology; if there was anything I knew less about it was this subject and, therefore, I was excited to be able to actually go more in depth to the theory and stuff of the subject. By this time I was a Senior and far more desiring to learn stuff. Well, again, we had stupid seminar presentations that did no more than spit stuff out people got off random websites and pamphlets. It was a waste of an hour for the semester and a waste of my [parents'] money. I'm pretty sure I wrote something similar and probably more harsh in my review. I'm glad to say, though, at least as far as I recall, that there were no personal attacks. That would just be unprofessional.
This past class, well, it had so much potential. I think, of all the classes I had this semester, I had the most hope going into this one. I know next to nothing about theology and history of the church before Jonathan Edwards. I mean I know some names, but they might as well be darts on a dart board because there is nothing connecting them, no continuity. So I had hope, and because I'm the kind of guy who gets excited to learn about stuff I don't know I have more emotion involved in it, and the equal amount of opposing emotion if I don't like it. The professor this time was, at least, ridiculously intelligent and if I had had them for a seminar it would have been fantastic, I'm sure. Unfortunately, however, all I have now is more of what I had before. I know more names and of the names I knew I only know more about what they wrote, it was not the type of history I was expecting, nothing that we went over helped me, in any way, to put church history and early Christian thought together.
I was a history major once. I wanted to teach it. Ultimately, I found out it was more of a hobby than a passion. When I actually started doing history in undergrad, which was the 1st semester, I hated it. Well, mainly because I was a freshman taking a 300 level class, but we read The Prince by Machiavelli and it was miserable (that's the most I recollect of the class), I look back and know that I would enjoy it far more now. At the time, though, I really preferred to dig into secondary sources, they read more like a novel. I got a B or B+ in the class, so I didn't do half bad, considering I didn't read much of The Prince or much else.
That was the last serious history class I had... like 8 years ago; needless to say I've been out of practice.
This class was the same way, a lot of primary sources. I don't have beef with them, in fact I love them, but it was supposed to be a survey course; instead, the professor saw fit to make it less of that and more in-depth for certain figures. Thus, we were supposed to be putting things together as we went along and not doing it in conjunction with the teaching. I'm glad he told us this the last day of class, because knowing that beforehand might have actually helped me to know what was going on. Instead, I was bumbling around trying to make sense of what was actually going on and not what I was actually reading. Questions like "Why am I taking this class?" or "What is the freaking purpose of this class?" or "Why do I harbor such disdain for this professor, and class, and The Life of St. Anthony?" You know not the questions like "Hmmm, I wonder what sort of psychosocialhistorio circumstances the writer of The Life of St. Antony was reacting to."
I was gracious, scathing, but gracious, on my review. I didn't say the class was a waste of money or time, because it wasn't and the professor actually was intelligent. I mostly vented my frustration that they decided to "unsurvery" the course. Had I been Catholic, or studied it in undergrad I might not have cared, but being Protestant we really don't care much about after Jesus and before Luther, so I know nothing. Had I known early on that it was going to be completely different than the catalog description I might have understood. Had these frustrations not grown apathy in me I might have actually pulled out an A, but I half-assed a B, which was incredible because my apathy led to me take naps and not read... well, until I realized that I was being way too apathetic and started to read (a lot of unread stuff) at the end of the semester.
There you have it, the only two mean reviews I have ever given. I'm a nice a guy, so I'm I guess their not that mean... but I could have been!
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