Gehhhh! Gack! I've been trying for years to erase the memory of first-year seminar from my brain. I'm sure some people had a fantastic experience with it, but Paul and I were team-taught by a pair of professors who were completely certifiable, both in unique ways. One behaved at all times as though she were senile (she wasn't), and the other was one of those people who was very concerned about the poverty in South and Central America. A fine cause, don't get me wrong, but she tried to relate every facet of every conversation or topic of study to Guatemala and Nicaragua, both of which she pronounced in a nasally pseudo-Spanish accent. Also for some reason, that two-semester-long grapple with hell was choc-full of athletes who had come to a $20,000+ - per-year school for the sole purpose of finding creative ways to hide full kegs under their bunks. I remember one class discussion where we were talking about (I think) Socrates, and one of the nutty professors was explaining something about him. One of the jockgirls was like, "Wow. That must be awful to have to think like that. I would never want to be that smart." Paul and I held onto one another and wept for the children. The subject of the class was rhetoric, and Paul's notebook was filled with sketches of our cartoon professors beating cartoon dead horses in an assortment of ways. Sometimes the horse was being kicked; sometimes the horse had "RHETORIC" written across its back and was being pummeled by a giant club; once there was an entire cartoon strip of a horse being beaten and buried, then exhumed from its grave by a cartoon professor and beaten again. Paul's cartoons were the only thing that kept me from slipping over the edge.
posted by Kate at 9:29 AM link/comments
