You may or may not have noticed that the updates have been pretty frequent around here lately. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve essentially dropped out of school for the semester.
Yeah, I never thought I’d do it either. The reason I did, you see, is because I got stuck with one professor for three of my four classes this semester. In some cases, this might be a good thing, except you’ll notice that I used the phrase ‘Stuck with.’ See, this professor has a reputation. He prides himself on making one third of each class drop, and not passing another third. He’s been on ‘sabbatical’ for the last two years, and Wayne State’s Electrical Engineering department has had record graduating classes since he’s been gone, because people have waited to finish the program until they can do it without dealing with him.
I thought I could handle him. This of course, was stupid of me. I lasted about two weeks before getting into two arguments with him in one day. He decided to give us a Tuesday pop quiz in two of my classes on homework that was due on Thursday.
“The prepared student will have already started working on the homework,” he said.
I wasn’t prepared. I had spent all weekend preparing, playing and recuperating from a benefit show in my brother‘s memory. The little bit of the homework I did manage to cover on Monday night (Which I worked on until 3 AM) was not covered on the quizzes.
Needless to say, after the first quiz I argued about the validity of testing us on material that we technically were not yet required to know. He would hear none of it.
By the time he handed out the pop quiz in the other class, I was already fuming. Looking up to his desk and seeing him smiling in my direction sealed it: I didn’t need to deal with this right now.
I had scheduled my classes mere days before my brother was killed, and I had bitten off a pretty difficult semester. It is my firm belief that, given a different instructor, I could have done alright. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a power-tripping egomaniac who, naturally, has tenure.
Anyway, long story short, the dean let me drop the classes, and I was unable to add any new ones. So here I am working almost full time, taking one techinical writing class, updating this site a lot, and most importantly: not being wound like a watch from the stress.
Here‘s a pretty interesting, if extremely dorky discussion of whether or not humans are the only animals who conciously commit suicide.
…and Fred was nice enough to dig up the full text of the book Morrissey published on the New York Dolls.