If you have ever taken a night class, or even worse a Saturday class, you will know exactly why I have taken time out of my life to write this rant. There is nothing more annoying than a “continuing education” college student. A continuing education student is one who is not of typical college age, or in other words - OLD! For some reason or another they did not complete their degree when they were in their 20’s. There are an infinite number of reasons for this - but typically it has to do with a prison stint or the popping out of a few crack babies - or both.
But I digress - the point is not what got them where they are - but how they handle it. The last thing I want to do in class is listen to the fucking life story of some forty-something, trailer-trash bitch that has decided on a mid-life career change from crack-whore to college educated crack-whore. They always find a way to manipulate the lecture to their advantage. If the topic is the Reign of Queen Mary of Scotts - her hand shoots up immediately to discuss her ex-boyfriend Scott who currently resides at Attica for playing hide the sausage with a middle school girl. If the lecture is on Jim Crow she will tell you that that motherfucker Jim still owes her ten bucks. You may think these examples are exaggerations - which they are - but what you are about to read is a real story.
On the first day of an evening 100 level history class the beleaguered professor spent a solid half an hour explaining to a woman that yes he was a doctor but no he did not work at the hospital during the day. She thought a PHD was a competitor of KFC.
The only thing worse than having one or more of these people in your classes is being forced to do group work with them - or even worse - being forced to peer edit one of their papers. I was once forced to read “Betty’s” paper on the nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In addition to the poor grammar and apparent lack of any sort of spell check option on her Commodore 64, she referred to the people of Japan repeatedly as “Japs“. I pointed out that this might be taken as a bit racist. Betty took this critique in stride - she looked my straight in the eye and said - with not even a slight hint of humor - “well I didn’t think it would be right to call the little bastards Chinks.” I told her she was absolutely right - Chinks would be inappropriate - I told her to go with Zipperhead instead.