Frustration

Yeah so I finished an EP this week that I titled "My Better Half". I'm pretty proud of it and I hope if you get a chance to hear it that you'll find something off of it that you enjoy as well.








The ball is still rolling, but it's awfully difficult to find worthy stories to blog about when it comes to only my experience with college. Particularly when my classes are quite dull at the moment. There may be more times than most where I write a more general blog than one that is full of humor.

So for anyone that really wanted to see how my Lit class has been, here's some behind the scenes footage. Keep in mind that I had to hide the camera very carefully in order to truly capture the essence of the class.



Last Friday's class was seriously out of control. To the point that I almost walked out. I mean, we went over homework for 3 hours. homework? HOMEWORK? I'm supposed to be a franchise student and we are talking about homework? not a test. not a new chapter. but homework.

It really got me thinking about my experience thus far. I'm looking at these kids and wondering how this happened. How did these people learn to be so disrespectful toward everyone around them? I can understand if they don't want to be there, or if they were forced. But they aren't. That's what blows my mind about all of this. They pay 3-4 times as much (I don't have an inkling of an idea how much public school costs) than a high school class and they have to make the effort to actually get to class. Its not like a bus comes and picks them up right in front of their house. So after all of this money and effort, they arrive in class......and do nothing to contribute. That's fine if you want to be the guy in the back who doesn't say anything; on average a class participation grade is usually only 5% of the overall grade. But to come to class and just talk about absolutely NOTHING pertaining to the subject is downright fucking irritating.

Last week, during the first 25 minutes of class, I actually thought it was finally going to be an interesting session. We were actually discussing the stories that we had been reading, which was some thought provoking stuff ("The Lottery" and "A Rose For Emily").

But then 5-6 people walked in. yeah. 25 minutes into class. One girl was 45 minutes late. After that the professor lost all control of the class.

Here's the root of my frustration. When I was 19, living in Illinois, and enrolled to go to UCLA (University Closest to Larkin Avenue) aka Elgin Community College, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I was in great classes in high school with great kids in those classes, but I was on the bottom of the grading curve pretty much all four years of high school. My friends all wore different color sashes and shit at graduation. I was something around number 236 out of some 400 students. At the time I felt that seemed important. So here I was, enrolled for college after my poor mother spent hours upon hours digging up receipts to make a portfolio so I could receive financial aid. This entire time I'm thinking "I'm going to blow my parents money. I'm going to fuck this up and barely even make it out of classes. If I don't give a shit about high school then why would I care about college? Its harder, there's more homework, and the teachers could care less what your homework grade is."

actual high school conversation:

me: "Hey Mr. Wendling! (my math teacher for four years) What's up?"
Mr. Wendling: "Not your homework grade."

yeah that pretty much summed up my accomplishments at 19.

So I decided to go to join the navy.....literally the Friday before the Monday of my first class at UCLA. I never heard if my mom was pissed about that, but I can't imagine she wasn't very happy at the time given that she worked so hard to prove that we needed financial aid. Later my dad told me that she thought I'd never make it through boot camp. He said she figured "if he doesn't even clean his room when I tell him then why would he listen to anyone else." That, my friends is called Smock Logic. My girl, KB, created the term based on things I've said in the past year.

Smock Logic:

KB: "So are you watching Obama's acceptance speech at Grant Park?"
me: "Yup. CNN is claiming there are over a million people there right now. That can't be a million people because I've never seen a million people and that's not a million people."

Anyway.....I joined the military to grow the fuck up. To gain some responsibility for myself. Essentially because I knew I needed guidance and if I put myself in a situation where I HAD to listen and follow orders then I wouldn't fail. All I knew is that I wasn't ready for college yet, and when I would be, college would be free.

So my point is that now I'm ready. I'm excited to learn. I enjoy writing papers now. I enjoy reading things I normally wouldn't pick out for myself. I enjoy learning about classical music, psychology, and how I still can't stand Hemingway, yet I respect him. I actually WANT to learn, but I can't. Because of these damn meddling kids. And there really isn't anything I can do about it.


Sorry for the negative vibe. Here, I'll end on a happy note.