Worst class I have ever taken

Thursday, April 26^th, 2012

Right now I am…well WAS trying to study for my midterm in my class with Argentines (Touristic geography o f Argentina). I am so frustrated right now that I am at my breaking point. I know what you’re thinking—hey sounds perfect because you’re a geography major, somewhat of a tourist and you love Argentina! WRONG. This class is total crap. I haven’t been this pissed off about a class since…ever…

For our midterm, we have less than 2 weeks to memorize everything in Patagonia. All the lakes, rivers, mountains, volcanoes, beaches, circuitos, highways, cities, tourist activities, transportation methods, museums, national parks, EVERY SINGLE THING about the region. I would be fine with this if we’d actually ever talked about ANY of this in class. I literally just went out and bought a tourism book for Patagonia because that’s what our professor said we had to do to study. THEN WHAT THE HECK HAVE WE BEEN DOING FOR 3 HOURS EVERY TUESDAY MORNING FOR THE PAST MONTH AND A HALF!? Oh that’s right—listening to our professor play Trivial Pursuit with himself in front of the class, while we spend half the time looking up answers on google. Great class, maestro…

Our professor just likes to ramble on and make up pretend exam questions about completely arbitrary crap that he is so impressed he knows. We never actually study anything—we just make lists of even more arbitrary crap without any context as to where it is, why it’s there or what you can do with it. He’ll tell us to memorize all the National Parks, but then won’t proceed to even list nor describe them. It’s seriously like taking an anatomy and physiology class and having the professor say “hey, memorize all the body parts and how they work” then proceeding to tell you about a hospital in Germany (that you will have to name and locate on the exam). Yeah, ok, kinda related, but not really…

Normally during any given class, I smile, take notes with gusto and ask questions or get involved in the discussion. During this class, however, I think I make Lisbeth Salander look like a varsity cheerleader. I hate it. I hate it so much. It is 3 hours of me screaming in my head. I have never hated a class so much. I can only imagine what my facial expression of seething hatred looks like...

During class this week, somebody finally told our professor he was full of crap and that he needed to tell us what was actually on the midterm versus just asking trivial pursuit questions about random geographic features. He seemed upset that we were telling him “hey, prof,  you’re an awful teacher and your class is a total disaster.” He originally was going to test us over all of Argentina, but was “nice” and narrowed it down to Patagonia. Oh, ok thanks.

I still have almost 2 weeks to study, but there’s only so many lakes and rivers and arbitrary BS I can memorize before I have no space left. I’m totally fine with receiving a less than perfect grade when it reflects an effort that was the best I could give; I am not OK with getting a grade that reflects the poor effort of a professor who was too preoccupied with satisfying his ego in class to the point that he just handed his job over to us. I could have just bought this guide book and read it in my free time—why am I wasting time waking up at 6am every Tuesday to attend this nonsense? I don’t want a professor that only teaches to the test, I just want a professor that at least teaches SOMETHING. Wish me luck. I'm gonna really try. Because if I get higher than a 7, I don't have to take the final, which means 0 FWBG after May 8th. If I have to take the final...I might get deported for heinous crimes against humanity...