Ohh Back to School....Back to School

So, I started classes again last Wednesday. Sometimes, I feel a lot like my good friend Billy Madison over there on the left. Everyone else is like 10 and I'm about 40. It wasn't so bad when I was exclusively taking night classes with other people like myself, or younger people who were there to take care of business and get out. Unfortunately, do to the fabulous education budget cuts in Michigan and the reluctance of professors at EMU to actually teach night classes in the literature department, I've been forced to start taking a couple of day classes. Let me just say that classes with daytime students and classes with nighttime students are COMPLETELY different. For starters, I want to kill my daytime classmates. I have to listen to the girl three seats down from me complain that she has to get up at 11:00 to get to our 12:30 class and that "totally sucks". She says this as I'm sitting there thinking about how I got up at 6 a.m. and have already put in 5 hours of work before class and then have another 2.5 after I leave class, and then I have another class as soon as I get off work that night. Yes, please complain about how horribly early it is to get up at 11:00. Then get hit by a bus.

On top of that, I have a bunch of classes this semster that I just can't force myself to get excited about. Winter semester I had a few really interesting classes, and even Spring and Summer weren't too bad, but this semester is day after day of "Suuuuuuuuucks". I'm taking two classes for my education program, one of which seems like it'll be really helpful, and another that seems like a whole lot of BS. My professor seems nice, I guess, but honestly, I don't feel like it's going to help me be a better teacher. I left the whole experience last night highly annoyed and ready to drop the class. Unfortunately, the class isn't going to be any better with any other professor because it's just a ridiculous and pointless class, so dropping it won't do me any good. I have to take it, or I don't finish my program. Sometimes I wish I could just test out of some of this BS. Most of it is touchy feely crap that you actually can't use in the classroom because you don't get that much time with your students. It's set up as if you have infinite time to teach lessons and be a therapist and fix everyone's life. I'm all for that, but the reality is incredibly different. Yes, I find that sad, and I'd love to see it change, but the system isn't built for that yet. Plus there's a lot of talk about teaching strictly to be able to pass standardized tests, which I find sad. Plus, everything I've learned so far, aside from cirriculum writing, has been geared toward people teaching elementary school. I'm going to teach middle and high school. I can't use some of your tips that work in elementary schools. I will be eaten alive by my students. I wish that there was more focus on the secondary education environment.

But....mostly I just wish I didn't feel like Billy Madison.