Well I’m almost finished
with this semester at MCC. It’s been a strange and interesting portion of my
life. Last night was my last class for Health and Wellness promotion. I still
have 1 more quiz to do for that class (online) and then the final will be on
Tuesday (also online) but there will be no more class time. That class started
off being very interesting and fairly easy and ended up being still easy but less
interesting. I really like Professor Magee but it felt like after the mid-term
she was just pretty much phoning it in. That sounds like a strange thing for
the student to say about the teacher. It’s usually the other way around. But
all we were doing is going over stuff that was already in the book only she was
putting it up on a screen in a PowerPoint format.
Last
night she went over our last chapter (about Alcohol Addiction) and honestly she
was going so fast I decided to just pull out the book and take the info from
there for my notes. It’s not like there was anything really NEW to say anyway;
everyone pretty much knows how alcohol will ruin your life if you get addicted.
She also handed back 2 quizzes we had taken in previous weeks. On each quiz I got
1 answer wrong. There was a question I got wrong that I wanted to know the
correct answer to because we still have the final to do. The question was: Men
in which of the following ethnic groups have the highest risk of developing
prostate cancer? When I asked her what the answer should have been she
hesitated and then said look it up in your book. Translation: I don’t know the
answer. And in that small moment I knew
why I had been feeling less enthusiastic about the class then when it first
started. She doesn’t know the information. She only knows what she’s read….just
like us. And if she doesn’t have the answer sheet in front of her she has no
more idea of the correct answer than anyone else in the class. I was
disappointed in her and I looked up the answer myself. The answer is: African
American and Jamaican men.
Another
reason why I felt disappointed was because I was hoping to learn NEW
information in this class…and to have some class discussion/debate about this
information. We did a little of that in the beginning but it went steadily
downhill as the semester progressed. I also realized that she either has no
concept of the many health debates going on in the world (GMO’s; radiated
foods; factory farming, etc) or she chooses to remain ignorant of them. She
only ever had the sanitized black and white version that came from the book and
no opinion of her own.
She
rushed through our class last night….there were only a handful of students
there. I guess they wanted to get out of the class early. One of the students
had asked me last week if I was going to bring in any baked goods for the last
class. (I had brought in chocolate chip cookies earlier in the semester) She
told me she’d love some brownies…..so I made them. Then when I got to class she
wasn’t there…no big deal; lots of them wander in a few minutes late. Eventually
she showed up with her little boy and a teenage girl….told the teacher she didn’t
feel well and was only staying for a little while. She stayed long enough to
help one of the older (clueless but nice) women get her report downloaded to
the teacher’s inbox. When she was leaving I told her to take some brownies with
her. She looked at me and said: Do I look like I need brownies? (not rudely; in
a laughing manner). Now it’s true she is a little overweight but hey, she had
ASKED me to make them! And that’s what I told her….also in a joking manner but
I meant it. Her little boy took one on the way out.
At
the end of the class one of the other clueless older women (one I’ve been
avoiding all semester) heard me talking to another woman about how there is no
class offered for my program, as a night class, until next Spring….and I’m
pretty pissed about it too. Now she started grilling me and not understanding
what I was telling her. This is the same woman that took up valuable class time
making the teacher repeat herself over and over in several classes….about how
to do the big final report we had to do. She is arrogant and ignorant about
seemingly everything. She constantly flies off the handle about things she
doesn’t understand…..I don’t need that crap. My customer service skills kicked
in and I repeated the information (called the broken record) at her until she
stopped asking me. She then moved on to badger the professor about how she “better
get a good grade on her report because she busted her butt” doing it. Nervy
huh?? (This is a woman that doesn’t have a computer at home and doesn’t know
how to use one anyway. She’s been a problem all semester because she lacks
these skills. Everything is done on line in these schools now) Professor wasn’t
taking any crap from her. She told her you’ll get graded according to the
outline that is listed on the syllabus, just like everyone else. I started
saying my good-byes at that point. The professor actually hugged me and thanked
me for bringing in the foods I had baked for the class. She’s a nice woman; is
a personal trainer in her profession; and I like her very much. I just don’t
think she makes the best teacher. I shouldn’t be complaining I guess. The class
was easy and I’m fairly sure I got a good grade. I still have to do a quiz and
the final before finding out for sure however.
