I hate hate hate when professors have office hours in fucking cafes or random places. Or especially when they say they’re having them in a cafe and then they actually have office hours SITTING ON A WALL BEHIND THE BUILDING. This is one of those things where I bet everyone else thinks it’s SO COOL (just like the project we had in my history class last month that involved social networking as a historical character and I had no idea how to get a good grade, when or how much to work on it, etc.--I was blindsided when I got a B because I thought I’d do badly because thinking about the project made me cry and I got the bare minimum done at random intervals).
First off I feel like it implies that everyone knows where a certain place is and has familiarity with it, but I don’t have familiarity with this place and had never been there before, and felt anxious about going. I’m sitting here feeling all anxious about: will they tell me to leave because I haven’t bought anything? If I asked for the wireless password, would they say no because I haven’t bought anything? What if my professor doesn’t realize I’m here, since he’s NOT EVEN INSIDE and only came inside for a minute to collect the person he’s meeting with before me? Should I go outside and creepily sit there so he can see me from the wall where he’s meeting with the other student, which will probably make it look like I’m telling him to hurry up, when I don’t even care because I’m doing work (except that it’s annoying that I don’t have wireless)? I tried to go into the bathroom and it was locked and instead of assuming that someone was in there (which turned out to be the case when I tremulously asked for the key) I just assumed that it’s one of those bathrooms where you have to ask for the key because that’s how things go for me usually, awesome.
I can’t even email my professor to inform him I’m here because of the NOT WIRELESS.
Dear professors of the world: please, please, please, be boring forever. Don’t have class outside. Don’t randomly have class involve a group activity if it’s a lecture class. Also, no group projects ever please. No fun projects unless you provide a boring alternative such as a PAPER. Even if the paper is intellectually/academically more challenging the fun project, I will suck it up, that’s how much I loathe fun. Have office hours IN YOUR OFFICE. IN YOUR OFFICE. IN YOUR OFFICE. Not at a picnic table, not in a COFFEE SHOP, and not ON A WALL BEHIND A COFFEE SHOP. Or if you have to do this because you’re SO QUIRKY (and I admit I’m being a bitch, and my professor probably just has a whole day of meetings and wants to be somewhere he can eat/drink), make it super 100% easy for students to find you and know that you know that they’re here.
Sincerely,
The lone voice of super boring, uncreative, wonderful, less-anxiety-producing liberal arts education,
AWFV
Update: It got worse.
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ReplyDeleteI feel similar anxiety trying to go to meetups in pubs I've never been to before.
<3
ReplyDeletei had a huge comment here expanding on your points, but then blogger ate it.
ReplyDeleteso i'm just gonna go with a generic 'i agree with you' comment.
The "fun" things kind of blow my mind, too. There was a class I was having a lot of trouble in (mainly because of how it's taught, though I guess most people's classes are taught like this) where we were supposed to write a letter from the perspective of Mozart. Or something. I don't really remember. I think we were talking about sonatas then too so maybe there were sonatas in the assignment. Anyway I dropped the class and I won't have time to take until 2 years from now so hooray for procrastination.
ReplyDeleteI am kind of remembering a high school teacher when I asked about what a particular symbol meant and he says "oh that means you ghost the note." Okay what is ghosting notes? "It means you play it- but you don't." WHAT. So like 5 years later I learn how to play ghosted notes when someone tells me that you don't tongue it and you play it quieter.
I guess the point of all this is that people assume a certain level of knowledge/experience that not everyone has and that's not actually related to what they're teaching, and that really screws some people over.
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION AUTISTIC PEOPLE OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO EMPATHY/IMAGINATION/THEORY OF MIND
Requiring people to meet you in a cafe is nuts, offering to meet busy students somewhere is nice. I had a community college teacher do that although I always went with the office.