I’ve been noticing the way most people type, and the fact that I do it differently. Because, you see, I’ve been trained… I use all ten of my fingers, while most people just hammer furiously at the keyboard with their two main booger-hooks, their backs all hunched-up like a giant fetus.
No, I have the proper posture, start with my pointer fingers resting gently on the keys with the ridges at the bottom, and put every soldier to work.
And the reason I type in the correct manner, is the inspiration for this update. Today I’d like to discuss the stupidest and most embarrassing classes we’ve ever taken. I’ll start by sharing my experiences, and you guys can it from there. How’s that sound?
In 1980, or whenever it happened, girls were the only people who signed up for typing classes in high school. There were no personal computers, and typing was closely associated with secretaries and receptionists. Not too many guys were drawn to such a thing; it was considered to be one step away from a tiny pink bow on the front of your underwear.
But I wanted to be a writer, or at least a journalist, and figured I’d better learn how to type. And I’m glad I threw masculinity to the wind, and enrolled. Because it was one of the few things I learned during high school that’s continued to pay dividends on an almost daily basis.
Most of the typewriters were manual models, I remember, which required that every key be hammered with a great force. By the end of the semester my fingers were completely muscle-bound; it looked like I had five miniature Schwarzenegger arms on each hand. There were a few coveted electric typewriters in the classroom, but I was quickly banned from using them, because I kept tucking things inside, and launching them across the room by hitting the keys.
So, the class was embarrassing, but ultimately useful. I’m glad I took it. The mistake was signing up for Typing II…
Yeah, that was a tactical error of the highest order. There were only two boys in the class (down from four or so), and all of us had to do one endless packet – for the duration. Each period was designed to replicate an hour in a business office: filling in forms, writing letters, addressing envelopes, etc. And the next day you’d start where you left off, and this continued for months on end.
There was a schedule for all this boolshit, and I kept getting farther and farther behind. No matter how hard I worked, I’d finish each class in worse shape than when I started. It was like Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory.
I ended up failing the course, because I was roughly seven years behind with my forms ‘n’ stuff. And there was a lot of wrinkling, water damage, and shoe prints, as I recall… If I’d been a secretary, I would’ve had to resort to low-cut blouses, or worse.
Oh yeah, it was definitely one of the stupidest and most embarrassing classes I ever took.
Another was something called Singles Survival, which was basically Home Economics for boys. We had to sew buttons on shirts, wash and dry clothes, and cook food with real stoves and stuff. Wotta fiasco…
For one thing, everybody kept mixing up the cooking supplies, to sabotage other peoples’ projects. I remember one guy was almost in tears because he made a chocolate cake using salt instead of sugar. Wherever he is, he’s probably still harboring deep-seated resentment over the episode. I’m fairly certain Rocky was involved.
I also remember putting an apple pie in to bake (it was a thing of beauty), and the teacher telling me I’d need to leave my next class to remove it, once it was done. She wouldn’t help at all; it was fully my responsibility. Talk about a hard woman…
And the teacher of my next class was the assistant football coach! So, I had to approach him (already tainted by all the questions my typing classes had triggered), and ask if I could pop out for a few minutes – to take a pie out of the oven. The man couldn’t stand the sight of me, and this didn’t help matters. You can probably imagine the expression of complete and utter disgust on his face.
One time, after I’d already completed my sentence in Singles Survival, Bill and I loaded up the clothes dryer with a couple handfuls of silverware, a stew pot, and two or three metal trays. Then we turned the thing on. The noise was unbelievable, and we walked quickly away with no expressions on our faces. Until we were around the corner, anyway… Then we laughed until we almost puked.
Another stupid and embarrassing class was called Rock/Pop Music Survey. It was taught by a big blond-haired dancing bear poofter, whose ass was much wider than his shoulders.
The students who signed up for this so-called learning opportunity were comprised mostly of stoners in Army jackets, uninterested black guys, and me and a few of my friends. The teacher had no control over the class, and the stoners dominated.
We were left alone for a few minutes one day, and people were practically hanging off the rafters; it was complete pandemonium. A couple of the hoods were throwing blackboard erasers at a big clock that was embedded in the cinder blocks, just repeatedly hurling Nolan Ryan fastballs at it. Eventually the thing came loose, and when ol’ loveseat ass returned, the clock face was hanging halfway down the wall on wires.
“What happened here?” he said, while considering the scene. There were a dozen or more chalk blotches all around the hole, where the erasers had hit.
“We don’t know,” one of the criminals snickered. “It just fell.”
I could see a flash of fear in the eyes of the dancing bear, and he muttered, “How strange.” And he never said another word about it.
Sometimes he’d turn the lights down real low, and make us listen to Barbra Streisand records. The black guys would always say stuff like, “Hey! Whose hand just touched my dick?” The whole “class” was ludicrous.
Our final exam (ha!), was to record a thirty minute radio program, with certain elements present. Things like news, weather, a PSA, station identification, etc. And Rocky turned in a tape that was loaded-up with swearing and Zappa tunes that bordered on pornography. I remember he introduced “Come Sail Away” by Styx, as a song about a guy jerking-off in front of an electric fan.
Any other teacher probably would’ve had us all arrested, but this guy was terrified and just let it go.
I also took French for three years and learned nothing, as well as some kind of stupid crap called Consumer Math, where they taught you how to balance a checkbook, and estimate your cost before arriving at the grocery store cash register. I mean, seriously. This was quite possibly the dumbest class, populated by the dumbest students, I’ve ever encountered. I felt like a full-on Jeopardy champion amongst that gang of slack-jaw slingblade idiots. And mister, that’s saying something.
What were the stupidest and most embarrassing classes you ever endured? Please tell us about it in the comments, won’t you? Did they offer ridiculous crap like Rock/Pop Music Survey at your school? If so, we need to know about it.
And I’ll see you guys again tomorrow.
Have a great day!
First? sumbitch!
I’d like to thank the academy…… ok now i’ll go read the update
Right now. I am taking a class on preventing bullying in school for my masters in Education.
What a bunch of crap. You want to stop a bully? Punches.
What won’t stop a bully? Posters of people that have been bullied. Bullies don’t care about posters. They laugh at the people in them.
In high school I got kicked out of Honors English with my Buddy for making sexual jokes toward the teacher. We got put in shorthand. This was a year before everyone had the internet, but no way was this a skill anyone needed. Everyone knew computers were the future. What the hell, they were training people to be in Mad Men or something?
Anyway, it was full of girls. Hot girls. Stupid girls. The teacher was senile, and we would ask (and got permission to) see their underwear. We also turned on the TV with a universal remote and every time the teacher would waddle over, shut it off, and sit back down we would turn it on again. The best was when I convinced one of the girls to join me in the drama room for extra curricular activities.
There was another class called Principals of Technology. That’s right POT. Well, you can imagine that it was full of the best and brightest. Also the teachers name was Maury Ballser. The first day someone shouted MORE HE BALLS HER, THE MORE HE LOVES HER! That was it. He had no control. His punishments were push ups. Of course this just made us laugh. We would do pushups without being told to in the middle of class. Then, sleeves were rolled up and we flexed picking up pencils or anything else. Sad thing was, that class could have taught me a lot of things I have had to teach myself later in life.
Lastly, Debate. We faked evidence, would go to “do research” the entire hour and come back with McDonalds. I once flew a kite out the window for an entire hour, just to see if the teacher noticed. He did not, but the principal did. The funniest thing I did was stick a small friend of mine in a truck box and we drug him around to teachers rooms, knocked on the door and ran. He would explode out and scream. However, someone called the principal and we were running to get the guy in the truck box back to class. The principal rounded the corner and we decided to run down the stairs. The truck box went tumbling with my friend in it. Being high schoolers we ran away as my buddy was trapped in a truck box the principal was trying to turn over. He did not rat us out, despite his concussion.
When I was in 7th grade, I attended a school that was “alternative”. We called all of the teachers by their first names, and I had a few very memorable classes. One memorable class was”Fishing”. This is a class where we studied the different types of fish you might possibly fish for. We never actually did any fishing. I also had a class called “Farm Out”. Farm out consisted of the two married teachers at this school (Lyle and Marti) taking us to their rural home/farm where we leaned skills like pat the pet goat and paint the teacher’s barn. Many “normal” classes, such as English, were spent sitting around on big pillows on the floor trying to learn speed reading. My speed reading book of choice was usually the one about all the various and sundry serial killers over the years in the United States. Yes, this was a classroom text. My physical education class was “Karate” where were were encouraged to read the biography of Bruce Lee and do knuckle push-ups.
If you’re interested, I can tell you more about the types of edible fish in the Upper Midwest, just let me know.
Nice use of the edit button Jeff… 🙂
(shhhh….I won’t tell)
We had Speech class and I took that for a year. It was like Dale Carnegie for zittsers. Sophomore year I’d guess. We had a text book and the “teacher”, who embodied Ichabod Crane and also taught the Drama class (I took that too), would flit about the room at class beginning and put up a few posters The book and the posters had a red and white bullseye as the logo. Develop the out lining rings and end at the bullseye thus hitting your target of the speech. Simple enough I would think.The entire year was spent listening to kids mumble through a presentation of the type of speech for the week, while filpping through their index cards with head bowed down,wishing they curil-up into the dais.
Although a keep to myself kinda guy even back then…I had no problem with the class but felt embarrassed for the kids whose faces would still be red the next day.
Yeah…I thought I fix my errors….crap!! @^*%$!@)?^%$#
(one more beer and I’m going to bed. Switch is in the off position for two days….IN A ROW!!!).
Typing was the only class my dad specifically asked me to take in high school. He said it would probably come in handy later. Fifteen years later, PCs began their relentless march to ubiquity and, in my IT role at the time and going forward, that 40-50 wpm came in real handy and saved me many hours of consternation. I will stipulate that the course was a little gay, but it was the most useful class I took in high school. Thanks, Dad. Miss you.
john
I think most of my school classes were a joke. We used to spend a lot of them pretending to be in the WWF. Each of us had a name and wrestling moves were the norm every time someone walked past. Headbutt by the Dawg! Off the top rope! Oh my! The Hit Man nails him with a chair! The teacher just gave up and pretended we weren’t doing it in the end.
Oh, I just remembered a fire brigade class for sexual harassment. God, that was funny. This sour bitch from HR was trying to be very serious and no one gave a shit and the conversation always came round to porn in the end. She left in tears. So did we come to think of it.
And I guarantee you that my high school offered no classes in pop or rock music. Hell, the majority of school administrators still thought that rock was a passing fad. They figured that by 1967 or so, we’d be back to Rosemary Clooney and Vaughn Monroe.
Instead, they got the Summer of Love and we were outlaws in the eyes of America.
jtb
Film history consisted of watching old films.
Film making consisted of making our own short moving….and watching the movies made in the previous classes.
I took a geology course with one other band nerd but the rest of the class for some reason were stoners. I have no idea why.
We went on a field trip to the museum in the big city. The was a police action that we all wanted to stop and gawk at but our teacher suggested “perhaps we should all just move along”. A lady standing near by didn’t realize he was talking to our group and turned to him and told him to “go fuck yourself asshole, I’ll do what I want”. Slowly throughout the day, all but 3 or 4 of us disappeared.
My high school just had it’s 50th anniversary. It was funny to see pictures; everyone was so old. Now I wish I had gone – I can pass for anywhere between 35 and 55. (I’m 48).
I took a class all on Hitchcock filsm. The professor, although eccentric, knew his stuff and it was actually a very cool class to take.
Our Senior year physics class was insane. We had a short, portly little teacher with coke bottle glasses and the only way we knew she was a she and not a Pat was that she called herself “Ms.” Other than the monicker it was really up for debate. We would pull stunts like taking out this battery operated tractor and let it go driving itself down the hallway, would throw erasers across the room when she wasn’t looking – even the nerdy kids got into the act. One time we even hooked up this little radar/sonar thing that made a God awful ear-piercing noise and threw it into the courtyard. The teacher searched the room up and down for that thing the entire class – and because my next class was directly upstairs I heard the noise going until the battery finally died an hour later. The best though was when we convinced her to have “snack day”. This is where we actually put math skills to work trying to compute how much vodka we needed to get drunk based on how many beers it normally took us to get drunk. Then on “snack day’ we brought in “orange juice” laced with vodka and “water bottles” filled with extra vodka. Of course you guessed it – I got an A in the class and graduated with honors haha. The next year water bottles and snack day were banned from the entire high school even though we were never caught…
The bunker-cam is hands-down the best “stupid drunk girls in a bar” snapshot ever!!!
I gues the autocomplete was only doing the first 3 letters this morning.
Oh man, home ec. and sabotage just went hand in hand……… Once we were making pizza, and the “group” on the other side of our work area was tossing pepper and other such spices over the counter onto our prized pizza creation in process, before it went into the oven. At the end of the class ya got to eat whatever ya made, and dammit, we were looking forward to that pizza. After a quick huddle / tactical discussion, we came up with a plan.
We took a cheese grater and ran half of a bar of soap through it. Then one “agent” caused some sort of disruption, while another “planted” the mozzerella looking shavings onto the ready to bake pizza.
Yessir, the looks on those dumbasse’s faces as they bit into a piping hot cut of pizza with “1 free topping” was priceless, and sticks in my memory like a snapshot even though it was 30 years ago.
So imma teacher now (middle school), and these stories make me laugh and also cringe.
My dumbest class in high school was Chemistry– the teacher was very old and close to retirement. He would walk around and check to see if we did our homework every day, and we would just show him old homework (from the two times we actually did it) and he would nod, check his little book, and go uh-huh!
Two memorable incidents– I also happened to be in play production and i came to class with a massive shiner– a true work of art, and Mr. Gorshe thought it was real, got really concerned, and i was so embarrassed for him that i played along. Next day it was gone, of course, and he commented that I looked much better!
The other was that he would get this sub– can’t recall her name– and she was Asian, very flightly, didn’t speak the language real well, and we would just torment her. One day she was threading the projector and her very long scarf got caught in the wheel. She screamed, we laughed until it hurt, and when she managed to extricate herself she fled the class bawling. Funniest damn thing, even though i still carry residual guilt.
Oh I knew, Miss Shelby. I knew.
In my high school in a fairly rural part of the Oregon coast, in the mid-80s (I graduated in 1987), typing was required for both sexes, and you had to have completed this in 9th or 10th grade (if you transferred in 11th or 12th, hello to a new requirement and you “got” to take the class anyway). Turned out to be a lot more useful than any of the advanced math classes I took. 🙂
I had typing. It was the last class of Senior year. I never learned how to type.
I also had Singles Living as it was called where I went to high school. I don’t recall much about it, other than sewing a pillow.
I don’t recall having a music class past the 8th grade.
I took a college course in ‘Retail Display’ thinking it would lead on to a glorious career in set design. I was the only heterosexual guy in the class. I did get a qualification in what most people call ‘window dressing’, but I don’t tell many people about it.
(I was smoking far too much dope back then to make important career decisions!)
Also, the stoners and rednecks were my friends.
Bowling. I took a course in bowling in college. I needed a phys ed course and I chose bowling. I have nothing against the game. In fact, it’s quite enjoyable and made me appreciate The Big Lebowski even more. What killed me was the WRITTEN FINAL EXAM.
All you saw were a bunch of kids, pencils in hand whipping back their right arm and pointing their feet in a certain position in order to guess at an answer. I did pass the course (how do you explain failing at bowling). but that test was a fuck. I think it may have even been graded on a curve.
You had to bring up typing, didn’t you, Jeff.
Well, I’ve got the al-time story about THAT class. Can you say TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS? That is exactly what typing class cost me in real dollars, not to mention interest, missed opportunities, and productivity.
I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, a poet. (Don’t laugh, jockolas — poetry and cute hair got me laid a lot more often than football exploits and manly muscles did you.) And I did eventually publish 40-50 poems, until I realized there was absolutely no money in it.
Anyway, I knew that editors only accepted typed submissions (way before email), so figured I’d sign up.
It was like enlisting in Hitler Youth. A teacher in her first year of teaching. It was so bad, that at semester break when you could drop a year-long class with no penalty, she was left with exactly 4 out of 53 students (one being my sister, who claims she stayed just to spite the bitch). Said teacher’s contract was not renewed.
As for me, I couldn’t make it to semester break. I went to the guidance counselor and dropped after two weeks. Had to take an F on my transcript.
Now, I’ve always liked school and to this day a lot of my recreational web surfing is dedicated to learning stuff just because learning is fun. So I was making straight A’s in high school (while continually stoned) because I actually got off on acing tests.
Were it not for that typing F, I probably would have been valedictorian, and THAT would have embarassed a lot of people, because the administrators knew perfectly well why we always showed up at the parking lot well before school started. (“Parking lot guys” was a euphamism for stoners that even the most clueless parents knew.)
Anyway, with that single F I fell from easily top 5% — if not first — in my class to top 10%. And the scholarship I got (mainly because I kicked righteous ass on the ACT while on 20 mgs of Valium) was therefore for half tuition rather than full tuition.
It was still the largest scholarship awarded in my class, and the hearfelt applause (“he’s a parking lot guy but he’s nice”) I got at the awards ceremony was quite heartwarming.
But it cost me ten grand plus the interest on the student loan to drop-fail that hellish typing class.
Nowadays I’m essentially a four-fingered typist but rocking along quite well — I don’t need to see the keyboard, although it does help. My wife just shakes her head, because she can actually TYPE and I can almost keep up with her. My biggest problem is keeping the base of my palms from contacting the touchpad on the laptop.
Ya lost me a poetry and a “cute”haircut.
T Smith and I were in a class at State where we were forced to sing the alma mater in unison. I still have nightmares over that.
I just remembered there is someone here where I work that types like their fingers are daggers, and they are stabbing someone.
It is loud and annoying.
In high school for one of my required gym classes I took square dancing, for another I took something called “walking” with the dyke lady gym teacher. What did we do in walking? We took walks off of the school property….over to Burger King and back. Sometimes some of us would just keep walking and not go back to school.lol
In college I signed up for a Speech class sophmore year. The guy they brought in to teach it showed up the 1st day and introduced himself. …”Hi, I’m Scott Black and II’ll be your instructor for this class.”
He spoke with a lisp.
After he introduced himself, I said quite loudly, “Hell NO!”, got up, walked out and over to the admin. building to drop that class.
I also took a course called Sports Medicine to satisfy a phys. ed. requirement in college. It consisted of us students preparing & running whirlpool baths for each other. Nice…..
Oh, I also took typing…1970’s..all manual typewriters….everyone HAD to take it to graduate. The teacher was a short, pruney old Nazi-type. She’d crack you with a ruler if you didn’t sit correctly or fingered your keyboard incorrectly.
I did ok but then my buddy(who planned on being a secretary as her life goal) talked me into taking Shorthand from the Nazi.
What was I thinking?
The Nazi was a totally diff. person in this class….human even.
But geez, shorthand? Hadn’t these people ever heard of a dictaphone? What a useless mind-numbing skill.
heh, you said fingered!
The most useless class I ever took was in college. I signed up for a cross country skiing class to satisfy my phys ed requirement. The head basketball coach taught the class and the first few times we met we watched videos of how to ski. Then the coach announced, “You can only learn so much about skiing without actually doing it. Don’t show up for this class unless there’s snow on the ground.”
Nobody ever showed up again. I can’t remember if it snowed or not, but we all got an A in that class. At first I thought it was a rip-off, but now that I’m older I can see the pure genius behind it – the kids get out of their phys ed requirement, the coach doesn’t have to worry about teaching a class – everybody wins!
“I remember he introduced “Come Sail Away” by Styx, as a song about a guy jerking-off in front of an electric fan.”
Fucking classic. I almost passed out.
Joe
Yep. Once again my wife sat across the room wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I had tears running down my face and couldn’t breath properly for a few minutes there.
My parents put me in a high school summer school typing class after I finished 8th grade. Actually, I was too young to be enrolled, but my mom was a teacher, and I’m sure she pulled some strings. We all had to use old, manual typewriters, excpet for the son of the band director, and some other suck-ass, who got to use IBM Selectrics. Every once in a while, we got to trade off and use the electric for one day, only. I never memorized the keyboard completely, but the class sure helped. I still use all my fingers. In college, I took a ballroom dancing class for PE. That’s all I remember about it. Swimming was a required PE course in college. I was deathly afraid of it, because I couldn’t even pass the Red Cross classes offered during the summer at the local city pool. I could never get the synchronized breathing technique down. I thought I would drown every time I got water up my nose. Well, it came to take the swimming final, which consisted of swimming the length of the pool, using that dreaded breathing technique. When I arrived at my designated appointment time, scared out of my ass, ’cause I knew I’d never pass, the instructor checked my name on his clipboard spreadsheet, and told me I’d already passed it! He had obviously, and mistakenly, put someone else’s passing score in my slot. He should’ve smelled a rat when I showed up the “second” time. I never said a word, and got the hell out of there. Passed the course.
I took French class in highschool. A total waste of time. French teacher, Miss Piggy or a reasonable facsimile thereof, was a total asshole. She had the hots, and didn’t hide it, for some dude in my class who was our “star” football QB. She acted like a total idiot when he was in class. All of her attention was focused on him with “private” french conversations…even though he had no clue what she was saying. It was funny…he just played along with her knowing what a moron she was.
Another class was astronomy. It was really fun though. Looking at the stars. Our teacher looked like Beaker on the Muppets. And walked real stiff like hime too. Yes..we had the whole Muppet cast in our teacher faculity..
Yeah, that Pop Rock Music Survey class was a sure bitch. I don’t recall doing ANYTHING in that class but listening to AC/DC and Aerosmith albums. It was held in the band room and poofter teacher didn’t really give a shit what went on. Easiest A ever.
I’m printing out this article and bringing it to the reunion next year. Make sure you invite all our old teachers, lol!! You guys are crazy!! I’m glad neither of you were in my typing class, there were a couple of guys in there but I don’t remember who it was.
The first 12 years of my education seemed to be all about trying to teach me to sit still, shut up, do what I’m told, and conform. Things got a little more interesting in college, but just about everything I learned in school, I taught myself.
By the way, I am pretty good at sitting still, shutting up, and doing what I’m told. For all appearances, anyhow.
You’re what my ex-wife would consider marriage material.
Today’s WVSR Classic: Priceless!!
could you provide your website address (again)? It was marked favorite at my other job’s computer, but I don’t have it here. thx
So the typing thing…I took typing in summer school after my freshman high school year to pick up an extra credit to hasten my release date (and to be around a room full of girls in summertime attire). We typed (manuals) along to a metronome that would notch up as the days moved on. We’d count the number of words, minus out the mess-ups and come up with a WPM. After eight weeks when it was over, I topped out at 23 WPM and six dates. Excellant numbers as far as I was concerned.
…(I just typed that with two fingers…even the space bar.)
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters…..
Ah yes, the memories….
My “Singles Survival” was just good old Home Economics. The class was divided evenly between guys and girls, the girls taking everything quite seriously, while the guys tried to create as much mayhem as possible. However, the teacher was a 6 foot tall butch dyke and didn’t take any shit. She was above grabbing some class disturbing hooligan by the scruff of the neck and shaking the bejeezus out of him.
We had a class called “Mass Media” which was very similar to Rock/Pop Survey. Mostly stoners / pre hip hipsters attended. The difference was the teacher was very cool. He didn’t allow us to call him by his last name, he was just “Chuck”. He only had one rule in the class and that was you weren’t allowed to use the words dumb, stupid or boring. Other than that, it was anything goes.
We watched “Easy Rider” in it’s entirety save the graveyard scene where they’re tripping and getting naked. There is no way in hell that movie could be shown to a 10th grade class today.
Man I wish the comments section had an edit feature. She wasn’t above grabbing a hooligan……
I took a fucked up art class at a community college. The first day I went in there was a toilet sitting on the floor with a can of green beans sitting atop the tank. It was labled “the struggle of man” and we were supposed to write a paragraph or two on the meaning of the “art” and how it affected us. My paragraph went something like this:
“What a load of shit. The struggle of man. A toilet and a can of green beans? Go fuck yourself. I’m outta here.”
I’m still steamed about it. Fucking idiots. I’m sure lots of people can go on and on about how the man cultivates the beans, cans them, eats them, but in the end they still end up in the toilet (back to the earth, if you will) and it’s all a load of bullshit. Stupid fucks.
Jason if you put a toilet in our high school we would put it over the entrance to the front door. a place of honor n Dunbar!
I took 3 years of high school French. Yeah, that turned out to be real helpful. Who the f**k speaks French? Spanish or Chinese would have been a bit more useful.
Pardonez moi….
Most worthless class, something coach Caldwell taught, I don’t even remember what it was. Also work/study. I thought it would be an easy “A” since I already had a job. Nobody in there but a bunch of stoners. We filled out our time sheets for work and talked not much else. I think Miss. Burdette taught that one.
Most of my high school classes were typical, and I remember little about them.
College, however, was another story. I took a CAMPING class to satisfy my PE requirement. We scheduled a 4 day camping trip (class final) at the end of the semester. A BLIZZARD hit the day before we were to leave, and temps dropped below zero. The prof. tried to make us go anyway. We all cried foul to the Dean, who insisted that “Acts of God” could surely cover us. We had to unpack, clean, and re-pack all of the camping equipment instead…and received A’s for our efforts.
I’m glad it snowed, since there were around 15 people in the class – and I was the only girl.
Tears, nothing but tears of laughter….
I’m in my third year of college. You’d think that shit would stop, but it just gets “deeper”.
Taking fire protection as a major, jackassery goes without saying. One class in particular stands out even in that major.
I was taking a “tactics of fire suppression” class on the same days right after and an “ethics of suicide and depression” class (required). The tactics instructor was a 30 year veteran Captain and had all the warmth and softness of the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. One day in class, my book bag fell over while sitting next to my desk and out spilled a the ethics book, “A discussion of suicide and depression: feelings and thoughts”.
He saw this and launched into a rant something to the effect of “Jesus fucking Christ Boot! Those limp wristed little pussies over there (other campus) have you boys dressing up in fucking Martha Stewart dresses and *discussing* your feelings over a hot cup of Earl Grey! You boys aren’t listening to John Denver are you?! Holy fucking shit I got me a bunch of Opras here!”
Yea, I didn’t live it down either.
You couldn’t believe the amount of jackass shit that could happen when you give students forcible entry tools.
Jeff,
Todays update was great. I am reading the archives , (currently on 2002)and this update reminds me of your earlier stuff. You are a storyteller , that’s your gold. More please!
I went to a private school, clear through high school. Typing was sophomore year, I think. I got up to about 25 WPM, as i recall. Had “Mass Media” too. And some bullshit reading class, where we all sat around and did nothing. The science classes were mostly taught by the the coolest teacher in the school. Earth Science once found us on a field trip to draw pictures of the strata of a local bluff. Since we were seniors, we took our own cars. My buddy and I also took a cooler full of beer. We used to get a pas to leave school if we had two study halls in a row. To do “research” for another class. We did our research at a place called wittenberg’s Cigar Store, where they sold 15 cent draft beers to anyone with 15 cents. Then back to whatever science class was after the beer break. In chemisry my end of the semester project was making a still, and distilling moonshine in class. The teacher gave the bottle on graduation day. I think the only reason I graduated was because I was supposed to report to the Army 8 days after high school. And they didn’t want me back.
Took a typing course in high school, wasn’t terrible at it, and I can do around 70 words per minute now–but the teacher was kind of a nazi type, as it seems to be the consensus that most typing teachers are nazis of some sort. I took a lot of BS classes in High School…Television Production, which was supposed to be one semester, ended up being about three years for me, as the basketball coach/teacher and I struck up a good friendship. I’d teach the class, he’d watch film. I got A’s in every semester of it, so I couldn’t complain, and he’d pay me to take care of stupid errands for him during my work/study time. I spent a lot of time just grocery shopping and doing yard work for that man. Took a “Studies in the Novel” course, which consisted of reading 4 books in a semester and writing a report on each, once that was done, it was “goof off and hit on all the pretty girls” time. Took an archery class in college,and as a bowhunter, made it pretty damned easy to pass. I brought my own bow in the first week, took out the final exam targets from double the distance required to pass, and spent the rest of the quarter hanging out and bullshitting. Also got college credit in an independent study of firearms and the blue collar worker…talking to my buddy’s dad and shooting guns on the weekends. Thank you, Ohio State, for the free credits!
I was in a pretty stupid class yesterday. It was about how to keep soldiers from doing drugs that are lega, but off limits, to them. Things like spice, and salvia. Well it was stupid because the commander actually identified a new legal drug I didn’t know existed.
It was something called “ivory”. Does anyone know about this? Or is he full of shit?
Nope it’s real.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/17/ivory-wave-drug-alleged-death
WOW – that’s some article, Thanks, Chuck.