Mixed emotions.....

WEEK 3

There are a number of issues I have for this final semester.  My goal is nearing its end.  I am nearly done.  Although I have sometimes had the feeling of "what the hell am I doing?" before, it is particularly poignant at this stage of the game.  

I expected to feel done with it all, but am committed.  It's like a marathon that was fun, exciting, painful, and horrifying and now you see the finish line and for some awful reason your feet don't want to move anymore.  Frozen in place.

 

Many of my professors have demonstrated total organization.  Each class has it's own agenda, power point, readings and explanations.  Last semester our professor was the best example of this.  Although obvious that she has been teaching this class for years, I appreciated her power point presentations, and the mini break when she would show us clips of Monty Python's Holy Grail.  She knows what she is doing, because she's been doing it for years.  

My current instructor is a graduate student.  She obviously knows her stuff.  But her class is disorganized at best.  She will start to make a point and then rush on into another before finishing the first one.  I missed class on Thursday when we were to have the first of 5 in class writing assignments.  (Most of my co-workers have been sick the past week and shared).  I offered to send her the assignment in an email and she agreed (which she didn't have to do).  And in the email I sent her this: I want to take a moment to admit to you that I am having a little bit of trouble in class.  I am not familiar with Central America, and so the terms and theories you put forth are unfamiliar to me.  It is so much easier to grasp the ideas when you explain them thoroughly.  Your enthusiasm gets the better of you, and sometimes you don't finish your thoughts before you move on to something else.  Anything you could do to help would be so appreciated!  And that is the problem in a nutshell.  She throws out terms, many times in Spanish without explaining what they are.  She was discussing 3 points of what the Spanish were doing and moved on to another subject before mentioning what the third point was.  And I have yet to discover what she thinks are the important points in the reading assignments.  

Plus, I'm tired of all this.  I don't want her to spoon feed it to me, but I do expect that after 3 weeks I would have a feel for what she wants to concentrate on (is it the political? the history? the dates and people?).  Yeah, the truth is I really don't want to work that hard to figure her out.  

Last Tuesday I stayed after class to ask her a few questions.  Another student was there with me.  And when we left, I asked her if she was as frustrated as I am with her lectures, which she emphatically agreed were chaotic.  

But I will get through this.

I haven't had her reply to my email yet.  And it's possible she won't take criticism well.  I get it, she's a graduate student who hasn't taught that many classes.  But it's my last class.  The time to speak up is now or never.

Now I'm wishing I had taken the other class even though it would have led to a loss of work hours, and eating lunch at my desk every day.  But, it's too late now, we're nearly a month into it.  So, it's true that "I didn't come this far to only come this far".   

Love, 365