2001-10-29~~10:45 a.m.
Health *yawn* Education...

Bleh. Could there possibly be anything more boring than a class with a totally lame teacher? Seriously, I have had dental procedures that were more entertaining than this class. I wouldn't have minded actually learning something. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist about my own education. I tell my own students to just "do the best they can do and to be proud of their work", yet I accept anything other than an "A" on my own work as a sign of failure. I am an excellent "student". I've mastered the art. Unfortunately, being a student doesn't exactly pay the mortgage.

Anyway, back to the boring class. We will meet for three Saturdays, eight hours each day. Each of us is there for the same reason. It's a required class under the Ryan Act. We HAVE to take it and you can't get it over-with much more quickly than three eight-hour days.

Somehow this all seems to have escaped the teacher. She seems to think that we are there to play games and get to know each other. I do use getting-to-know-you activities with my students. I think they are a valuable way to begin to establish a group of individuals as a learning community. But, HELLO! We're not there to form a long-term bond. We just want to know what we need to know about health education so we can get back to the business of doing our jobs.

We spent THREE of our eight hours "getting to know each other". Swell. Y'know what I learned? The only thing more boring than this course is the people I am trapped in that room with. Yawn. What a bunch of stiffs. I cannot even begin to articulate how happy it makes me that I only have to spend 24 total hours of my life with these people.

So, after three hours of details about the most incredibly dull people on the planet, our *professional college instructor* proceeds to read to us from the book. Of course she has it all copied onto overheads so that it looks like she has actually done some work, but the fact remains that as literate adults we wouldn't have even needed her in the room.

Oh... but the real *fun* begins next week with the first six of our TWELVE hours of student presentations. I'm planning on a very LARGE cup of coffee.

~Alice