Before I start my liveblog (for which I will have AC power, thank the Good Lord), I should give you a picture (and some examples) of my US History professor. I deliberately used quotation marks above because this man tells some amazing stories in my US History I class, and very few of them are actually true. This class covers America from Pre-Columbus to 1877, which is a random cut-off if you ask me. Sure, Reconstruction and all that, but it was a hip and happening world in 1877.
First, let me describe the man. He looks like George Carlin but without the facial hair. His voice is a dead ringer for Al Pacino's. He wears dress slacks and either sweaters with button-downs underneath, or just turtleneck sweaters by themselves. He always, always comes to class bundled up in a coat and with a really long scarf wrapped about thirty times around his neck. My friend Spidey tends to sit closer to him than I do, but he claims that there is a certain aroma of wine about the man just about every day. Which explains a lot. He works blue, as if a plenitude of F-bombs is going to help him connect to the clueless teenagers that sit in front of him twice a week. He digresses with regularity.
My notes in this class started out serious, because I thought I was in a regular class. Nevermind the fact that he told us on the first day that he will never take attendance. And also nevermind that every test is open-book, open-notes and even open-Wiki if you bring a laptop or a smartphone. (Wiki is more accurate than this man.) As time went on, I realized it wasn't that he was treating us like adults. It was that he really did not give a shit. I used to not write down the digressions and weird things that he said, preferring instead to write what I actually already knew to be true to help me remember when it came to be test time. Then I realized that I don't really give a shit, either, and it was more entertaining to write down what he was actually saying than any real facts about the nation's history, which clearly I can just get from the book or the Google or whatever on the day of the test.
Some examples taken from my actual notes:
- From February 7th (it did not take me long to start amusing myself with my notes): "For some reason, he started talking about the Llano Estacado, which he pronounces "Yah-noh Esk-a-tah-doh," and then No Country For Old Men, which he believes was directed by the same guy as Biutiful."
- Also from February 7th: "He also claims that all North American mustangs derive from a single release of a string of horses in 1680. Mass generalizations about Native Americans and horsemanship followed, and then a stroll down memory lane where he talked about that one time he rode a horse."
- From February 16th: "He just pronounced it 'deus ex machine-ah.'"
- Also from February 16th: "Did you know that all Black Irish descended from fifteen shipwrecked Spaniards?"
- More from February 16th: "He just claimed that all Spanish settlements were completely homogenous from LA to Buenos Aires."
From misappropriated terms to strange jokes and completely erroneous stories about how we, as a culture, came up with certain idioms and such, he's a real treat as long as I can forget that I'm paying for this class. Sadly, I don't forget that very often. Hence the physical tic that tries to keep my eyes from rolling out of my head.
I've gleaned a few key bits of information about this guy from various sources (and by various sources I tend to mean people who sit down next to me at picnic tables and start talking randomly to me - there will be an entire post about that little phenomenon) and I think they're pertinent here: he is a jazz musician and he has a girlfriend from Paris. The jazz musician-ness explains the clothes. The French girlfriend makes sense because she probably doesn't know anything about US History and is content to believe his version of it without question.
We have to write a term paper for this class. It's supposed to be five pages. In the syllabus he says that we can choose anything in American history until 1877. Or, you know, a movie you saw once. Or a book you read. Anything, really, as long as it's five pages. You don't even have to have source material. Sadly, I am not making this up.
Today we get our first tests back. His tests are five short answers, and then you choose two of four essay questions and expound upon them to your heart's content. This included such earth-shatterers as "Briefly explain slavery in North America. Why did such a practice exist?" and "Describe Pre-Columbian Native Americans."
It took everything I had not to respond to the latter with "Oh, you know - not too tall, not too short. Two eyes, hair. A nose, a mouth. Probably some exotic body paint or a fur thrown rakishly over one shoulder."
This class has been sent from God to test my self-restraint. I know it.
You have to pay for this?! That's crazy.
ReplyDeleteAnd I totally would have given that answer on the pre-Columbian Native Americans. He might have given you extra points for creativity on that.