I heard what happened when grades where posted and I'm not happy about it and for that matter I'm glad that I decided to come to work rather than stick around and see the final grades. I know that I passed and to be honest I don't care by what degree. However what I do care about is that I strongly believe that the course was unfair for our class. Let me ellaborate on that further. I have been going to school almost non stop since 1983. That makes up for 22 years of school counting a break I took for medical reasons. In that time I have taken classes ranging from basic fingerpainting to AP/Honors classes in high school and in college, took almost every single 101 course in existence and have a large number of graduate level courses under my belt as well. I have also taken military courses that were taken during my brief enlistment in the Army most of these being taken after severe lack of sleep due to how basic training works and I can say that the semester we just completed has got to rank as the most "interesting" semester of all.
Granted this class unlike others is a block program where you see each and every classmate almost every day for a whole semester so you develop a type of familiar bonding with them that you normally don't develop in a normal classroom environment. Without going too much into anthropological and sociological theory regarding groups and bands we were essentially just that, our own band, or to but it easy for the layperson to understand we were a tribe. And that is one of the reasons that I find this quarter to be so offensive and unfair, at least in respect to the sanctity of the tribe.
Our tribe survived it's first round of ritual and ceremony and had moved on to the next. However it was here when we came to learn that the head elder was ill and would not be able to guide us through the next phase of our trials. The key word being guide. And so we had a replacement along with a junior elder. And it is here where I believe that the real problems began. For you see instead of molding to the curriculum and adapting to it as the head elder had intended, the replacement decided that he could simply toss information out there without guidelines or even a clear idea of what exactly we were supposed to be doing. And whenever an exam came scores were low for that specific reason, either we overstudied or we studied the wrong thing or we were so confused that we figured we would do just as good or bad if we didn't study. By the time that this issue was realized and corrected it was almost to late for a few.
And then there was the clinical element. Our instructors, our "elder's" sole purpose, sole job was to supervise us in order to make sure that we were doing well and to answer any questions that may be perplexing us. Yet after roll call it was easier to find a client that could recite the Gettysberg Address than it was to find any of our instructors. And this was to the point where staff members often inquired about their whereabouts. This is secondary to the fact that the replacement was often overstepping his authority and making threats about how he had the power to fail any particular student who may not be following protocol line by line. Granted we are dealing with clients and we should follow all guidelines but you NEVER threaten a student, EVER for a very important reason. That reason being that your job is to instruct, to correct, but more importantly to ensure that the student will be the best damn whatever that he or she can possibly be. By making a threat you are crushing their confidence and instilling both fear and hate, neither being good things to have in an environment such as the one that we were in.
There were the countless other things such as the hair issue, the constant demarcations based on trivial things. Threats to go to the dean for something that should be taken cared of in-house. But above all his inability to instruct, to teach and to provide a nurturing environment where a student could feel comfortable learning in and have the desire to learn more. As for the other instructor. She is sweet and nice and she cares about the student and really, really tried to do her job but she lacks the assertiveness of an instructor. Not only in taking control of her class but in having her co-instructor look at her as an equal and not as someone that is just along for the carpool lane. And that's why I feel that it was unfair. We were not being graded objectively based on the same criteria that previous and most likely future classes will be graded on but instead based on the lack of observation and personal whims of what amounts to a substitute teacher. No offence to subsitutes.
I love my classmates, for all their strenghts and faults I really do care for them and we are family of sorts. Like a family sometimes we want to say "hey shut up!" and other times we just wanna chill and relax but regardless I think we will all go far. There is a year left, two whole semesters and I feel as if this may be the only real bump on the road. Compared to this anything else should be easy. Then again what the hell do I know.
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