I’m in this English class that’s killing off my brain one cell at a time. Keep in mind I got 5s on both AP English Exams and have been writing literary analyses for at least three years. My grade in any English class in high school was never below a B.
Yet I’m stuck in this stupid 100-level “How to Study Literature” course because I need a bunch of essays that I wrote while enrolled at this school in order to pass out of an even stupider course, College Writing (shudder.)
This is one of these classes where you already know how to do absolutely everything the professor’s teaching. It’s not the assignments that bother me - a few pages of bad poetry every other night and some short essays - but physically sitting in this class and passing the time.
So lend me your tips. How do I keep my brain alive in this class? (It has about 15 other people in it, so doing my other homework’s not really an option.)
Go get a copy of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction (which I see has a spiffy new look - nicer than the one I bought 10 years ago). Available in every campus bookstore I’ve ever been in - and I’ve been in a LOT!
Read up on some of the more intresting schools of lit crit thought and each week make a point to find a way to apply one of the lit theories to the text you are discussing.
First assignment: do a marxist-feminist analysis of whatever “bad poetry” you’re reading for the next class.
OK, that was only partially tongue-in-cheek.
I did this once to stymie a very annoying classmate who monopolized class time with her wacky theories.
It was fun to tout my OWN wacky opposing theories to piss her off.
Memorizing poetry is pretty good: pick a poem you like, and work on rewriting in until you can do it cold. Memorized poems often come in handy elsewhere.
Mathmatically percise doodles are great for engageing just enough of your brain to keep you sane. Here’s my favorite:
Using a piece of lined paper to write on and a second piece of lined paper (same brand) as a straight edge:
Make a tic-tac-toe design on the center of the paper. This needs to be perfectly square. I usually make mine 6 units (lines) on a side. There are many tricks to doing htis which you can discover on your own.
Go up to the top right hand intersection of the tic-tac-toe design. What you want to do is construct an equlateral right triangle where the hypt. is the same # of units as the sides of the square in your tic-tac-toe. If your tic-tac-toe is 6 units, this works out to about 4.2 units/side. What I do is guestimate one side, use my straight edge to measure 6 units diagonally to the other side, mark that spot, and then see if the two sides I have marked are the same. If they are not, I adjust them.
Once you have this lengh determined, go around hte tic-tac-toe and mark this lengh from each intersection.
Connect the dots with the straight-edge. If you do this carefully, you have a perfect octagon.
Testing it:
(This is my favorite part)
Draw a line through the vertical and horizonal axis. Tte horizontal will be easy–just follow the notebook paper line–the vertival you will have to measure out.
With your straight edge (you likely need a fresh piece of paper by now), try and draw a diagonal line through the X formed by the axis and the X’s formed by the old tic-tac-toe structure. If you have done everything perfectly, you should be able to draw a single straight line through all three points. Repeat in the other direction.
Take your straight-edge and line it up agaist the outside diagonal lines. If you are perfect, the line you drew will bisect the outside wall exactly.
Using it:
Put a dot in the middle of your octagon.
2)Carefully draw flower petals that come to a point at hte premarked centerpiece of each octagon wall.
3)Shade in to taste.
4)Erase scaffolding.
Believe it or not, this whole convoluted process arose as a way to make my normal doodle–flowers–look more even. The challenge of trying to freehand perfectly uniform flowers kept me interested through the first year or two of college, but then I started needing something more.
I probably blew whatever credibility I had here with this post. Now you all know I am insane. Does anyone understand what I am describing at all? It is so hard to explain it with out sketches.
I wish. We’re not allowed to have our own wacky theories. I might get a copy of that book though and read it under the table.
I don’t know… I can draw flowers pretty well too.
I can memorize the ONE poem in our textbook that doesn’t suck. It’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, so that could take me some time.
Normally, I wouldn’t recommend this, but here’s a thought:
Is any part of your grade in this class based on attendance? Does the professor have a policy on lateness and/or absenteeism? If the answers to the above are no, then just don’t go. Hand in your assignments and take the tests, and spend the rest of your time diddling yourself in the bathroom. Many professors, especially the ones who teach boring pre-requisite classes, simply don’t care if you show up.
But after surviving an undergraduate and two masters degrees why blink at realities?
It’s very tricky filtering out classes bearing great stuff buried under lack of teaching skill, lame curriculum, whatever from pure wastes of time. Truly, some hapless profs are inarticualte/bored/frustrated but still have some some great things to impart if you’re willing to wait. And dig for it. No, it isn’t fair, but so 'tis.
For the others, how about crossword puzzles? In one famously useless “Foundations of Theory” class (4 dreary, crawling hours every Friday morning) I hit the library, photocopied the Sunday crosswords (and solutions) from major newspapers. Worked great. Angle your notebook right and you’ll look very studious and intent.
True fact: they’re fun and painlessly absorb time while imparting a lot of gonzo knowledge along the way. (Though they’re best suited to language/general culture freaks. Scrabble on crack, but with puns, offbeat allusions, etc. Mind floss.
Hey, you’ll still be learning, even if it ain’t what the course description said. Funky, self-help education, y’know?
Oh, I hate this delimma. Especially when attendance is required. I guess you should do what my Chem Lab teacher said.
See it as a “flaming hoop”
and then jump through it.
Yes, sometimes in order to complete requirements, we have to do things below us… it sucks, but you’ll get through it. Write letters to people that you have no intention of ever mailing. Tell your first love how much he broke your heart. Cuss out your best friend for forgetting to call the other night, write a letter to Antonio Bandaras… just something to keep your imagination going… and time passing at the same time.
Or doodle. That is what I usually do. or write lists of things you have to do that day, that weekend, that month… whatever time allows.
ARose swore up and down that his Journalism class flew by after he and a friend decided to rhyme everything anyone said.
(from across the room)
“Hey, do you really mean it?”
“Hell, I’d like a peanut.”
“This test-man, I’ll have to wing it.”
“Take this CD and fling it.”
“If I wrote a song, I’d sing it.”
Etc, etc. Annoying to anyone and everyone around you if you choose to do it out loud, but it does amuse you for a while. Ever sat and watched the little floaties in your eyes? That takes up some time.
Btw, Mando JO gonna make my Chem teacher hate me, cuz once I’m done with my test tomorrow I’m spending the rest of the class trying to engage in some mathematically correct doodling.
I really liked some of those first movies you were in, where you were always playing a guy who was a total unrepentant psycho. Why have you started making such crap? You know, you are allowed to turn stuff down.
At the local college I am at right now, last year they switched to mandatory attendence also- the reason was for the govt grant programs. The school has to be able to prove that the student attended to get reimbursed, or something like that.
Which rather sucks for those of us on our own nickel. In previous years, most of the instructors used to give out test schedules at the beginning and clearly state that all you had to do was show up for the tests and pass them. They did not care if you were there the rest of the time or not. Some warned that you wuld have a rough time if you never showed up for class, but the choice was up to you if something else more important occurred on any particular class day.
~
Now it’s like you’re being treated like a little kid again. I say, put that requirement on the grant recipients, and leave the rest of us alone, but that would be discriminatory, you know, against those people too fucking lazy to get a job at a fast-food joint to be able pay cash for their second-rate education.
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The “dumb courses required” doesn’t stop either. After taking college trig and calc, I have to take a course in “business mathematics” to qualify for an associates. “Business Math” starts off with simple math (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers) and goes all the way to----->figuring simple interest.
And I have to take it. It is the prerequisite for all the other business courses, such as accounting. And I need/want the accounting courses, so I have to attend.
WOOO HOOOOOOO! DAMN I feel so smart now! - MC
If you arn’t in to the whole doodling/sleeping/paying absolutly zero attention bit, you can do what I do and take notes. Not just notes, but really elaborate notes. I write down what the teacher says. I illustrate. I draw charts and diagrams. I relate it to personal experience. I tie it in with my other classes. I form opinions on everything. I connect to my life philosophy.
I have good thick notebooks from even the most boring classes. For one, taking notes makes me feel like I am getting my money’s worth out of college. I also noticed that things move faster when you are paying attention and keeping busy. The classes that are the slowest are the ones where you are looking for any way to waste time. Kind of like how a fast day at work is easier than a slow day. Taking notes solves those problems, makes you look really hard-core studious to everyone and makes time flyyyyyy byyyy.
All my classes this semester suck, but fortunately they are all only about an hour long.
Come on, College Writing isn’t so bad. It sounds better than what you are going through now.
I might get a copy of that book though and read it under the table.