Today has been an interesting day. I took my Wellness final, which I am confident I did better on than last time. I also confronted Professor D about laughing at us in English Comp. I've never mentioned that in here, because I don't usually think of it outside of class, but it has definitely been a problem in my mind in class. He asks us questions on grammar that we don't know the answers to (well, I do and Amanda does and Gina does and Tyne does, but we don't speak up often), then usually laughs at us or throws jokes at us that have an insulting nature.

Let me think. If you guys have been reading my diary or keeping contact with me for very long, would you say I am the confrontational type? I'm not. I am DEFINITELY not. I hate confrontation. I only do it when I get really mad (and then I usually make an idiot of myself). Today I got really mad.

There are 25 minutes between the end of that class and the start of the next, so at the end of class I stood in line in front of his table to speak to him (there were about 4 others with questions on our worksheet and stuff). I was boiling but desperately trying to calm myself down to find a practical confrontational way of saying, "You make us feel stupid, you jerk, and we're not!" (That's how I felt at the moment.) I did finally find what I wanted to say and stood, scared to death, waiting for him to look at me.

I cried. Oh, I cried. I started crying after the first sentence was out of my mouth, but persevered through it. That's one thing, at least--if I have a point to make that I feel strongly about, even if I start bawling, I will endeavor to make it.

It would have been a really, really awkward situation, except I thankfully was able to explain to him that I was crying because I am not good at confronting people. He listened to me, I guess, through my bawling--gosh, I was a mess--and told me the most surprising thing. He said he laughs to keep from yelling at us. Basically, he does think we're stupid! Well, not those of us who know all the answers. (He has seen our quiz scores.) And he says one of the boys could be the smartest kid in class if he didn't spend all his time playing video games and reading fantasy books. He also said another of the guys (we have 3) had been working really hard and trying to succeed, and he was glad for that guy. But he can't believe my class doesn't know all the stuff he is teaching us in class.

That is what irks me, I think. I had simple grammar in elementary school. After that the only grammar I had was a little bit in 8th grade, and it was only nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, I believe. He is expecting us to know about dangling modifiers, parallelism errors, relative pronouns, nonfinite verbs, and the list goes on.

I understand all of this because God has wired my brain for strength in English grammar. All I need is to learn the stuff once and I know it for life. All the other students in my class are not wired for the particulars of the English language. They are wired for the particulars of history, science, math, whatever! And if their schooling was anything like mine, is it any wonder that they don't know what the heck a dangling modifier is?!

Anyway.

So I cried because I hate confrontation and told him (nicely!) that he could be nicer to us. Didn't change his mind one bit. You know, I think it would be perfect if he just offered our class one apology for ever making us feel like idiots, explained that he just finds it surprising they don't teach us this stuff in school anymore, and then went on with class. If he kept on being his "You don't know what a such-and-such is?" self, then at least we'd have the explanation and the apology to look back on and make us feel a little better!

There's one day of that class left. Man, I have good timing, don't I? {rolls eyes} Oh well. Maybe he'll remember what I said in further years and be a little gentler with us. Sigh.

Thank God this year is almost over.

-Stephanie