Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Gone Post-Al

Every week i need to assign a short answer question to the students in the genetics class. It has always been the worst part of my job, particularly this year. It seems they go out of their way to give me the most incoherent, wrong answer they could muster. It's like a challenge. "Chris, I dare you to fail me... I DARE YOU!!! Yeah, i wrote that genes were something you wear on your legs! I did that!"

I received a short answer question the other day where by the student tried to define what non-random mating is. I should be understanding. There is no crime in not knowing something. Or is there? When I read this particular answer I thought back to the previous week when I assigned the question in the first place. I openned the chapter we were studying to the very first page and asked a question based on exactly what is written. All they needed to do was copy that information out of the book, they didn't even have to read the chapter. But that's not all, so desperate was I to make the question easy for them, I actually told them the answer. "This is the answer class! It's in your book! Write this! You can copy out of the book, or you can write down what I'm saying right now!"

So I sit down to correct these questions and I go totally nuts. Wrong answers??? VERY WRONG ANSWERS??? How is this possible?

Non-random mating. The answer in the book: "Individuals may mate at random or they may mate preferentially with close relatives, or preferentially with individuals with similar or disimilar traits.

Among the answers I received from students, "Non random mating... When people mate outside of their own subgroup...ie.. When a Russian mates with a Chinese."

Russian mates with... Sub... group??? What the bloody hell is this??? Man, I marked up his page with some good sarcasm and condescending rhetoric. Then I got even angrier when I realized he would never read what I wrote cuz it was the last class. Sometimes I feel like emailing this guy. "Are you mental? Did you do this just to provoke me? I gave you the answer you stupid piece of s**t!"

I'm also pretty frustrated with the buses. The 162 is one of the most foul buses to drive the roads. It should come every half an hour and it can't even commit to that! I mean, fine, there was a snowstorm last week. Yet, this week, I still find myself waiting for a bus for at least half an hour. And I stand there, staring into the horizon hopefully thinking to myself, "It hasn't snowed in days. The streets are clean... I can't live like this." Then the bus pulls up, busdriver scowling. Don't scowl at me! I know this bus starts it's route just down the street. There's no reason for you to be late, and every reason for me to pummel you until I'm satisfied that your physical pain is proportional to my emotional pain resulting from waiting for your sorry behind for so long. I pay 65$ a month for this s**t, so get your mother f**king act together and drive. I mean... why?!? Why even give out bus schedules. Just give out little pamphlets. On the front it would say 162 Bus and then you open it up and it says, "F**K YOU!" No times, no street names... Just a sincere expression of the true intention of all bus drivers, in two simple words. Hell, I'd even keep it in my pocket, so when the bus actually does show up I can say, "Hey! You're right on time!" And show him the inside of the pamphlet. Then he would nod and smile and we'd be on the same wavelength for a change.

But perhaps the thing that really got to me last week, was when I had been working all day, and at around 8:30 at night, I decided to get a little something to eat. The Loyola campus where I work, has no significant restaurants. There is the vermin infested greek place, dagwoods and subway. Then finale, there is a little diner called new moon. I hate them all. But, i need to eat, no? So I go to new moon, figuring I'll get something quick. I order some hot dogs. For half an hour I wait, while these morons are chatting with each other, looking at me with big smiles on their face and telling me, "It won't be long sir!"

It won't be long? It has been long! And when i get up to ask them about my food, the cashier, as if she forgot I was sitting 2 feet away from her becomes animated, "Where is this gentleman's hot dogs?" The guy who made them for some reason decided to pack it up and put it on top of some shelf instead of the counter where the food is distributed. They give me the food and I gave that old lady such a dirty look... Half an hour... for a few f**kin' franks!

I'm the kind of person who tries to find meaning in everything. I try and justify the fact that in any given week I literally spend hours, standing in the snow, fretting and fuming, or in a restaurant waiting for ironically named, fast food. As for students, i always thought I was super patient... But when they can't just regurgitate what I said in plain english...

I wish every second of my life was packed with action!!! Constantly stimulated like James Bond... You never see him waiting around. Or Chev Chelios from Crank. All the productive things I could do with those many forfeit hours... You know what I need? A car! I could drive to the beginning of the bus route to see exactly what it is that happens between the terminus and my stop that results in a 15-30 minute delay. Then, when I find the bus parked there, with a bunch of bus drivers, reading comics or doing God knows what, I would smash the bus to bits so they would actually have an excuse to be late. Then I could run over the dumber portion of my students... repeatedly!!! Then I would turn New Moon into a drive thru. Just put the pedal to the metal and drive right through the front of it. "That's the old school s**t!" I'd declare.

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