Three updates in as many days. Be even more afraid! Nevermind that the quality each day has lessened, but hey, you should be used to it by now.

A certain teacher of mine, who has a history of not thinking before speaking, continues to pave her way to the future.

In my technical illustration class, we had a project to do requiring we create realistic looking smoke and fire using an art program that is less than ideal for the task. This was assigned a while back and the due date just rolled around.

At the conclusion of our critique session, she made the comment that "just fire and smoke isn't something you can put in your portfolio." That alone bothered me because, as with all of our projects, she is supposed to have our portfolio's in mind, but I've long since given up the hope my teachers might one day show signs of brain activity. Of course, she also plans our future out like we'll only work in this backwoods city and never try to go elsewhere, so perhaps she was correct. She stated that we need to put them in an environment of some sort, which is all fine and good except that she should have thought of this beforehand. Here comes the point, worry not.

After a moment of quiet reflection she said, "I know, maybe next semester we'll put them in a picture with the Twin Towers or something" and then happily began to talk about something else. And everyone shook their head in unison. I try to keep my cursing to a minimum, especially in class, but I couldn't help an audible "what the fuck?" from slipping. People downstairs could even be heard singing a chorus of what I only had the talent to gruffly speak.

It's bad enough that I'm likely not going to get a job because my school is so crappy. I'll walk in, people will look at my work and say (hopefully) "not bad" and then look at my resume where they will see "graduate of Calhoun College." That's when security will be called and Ill be escorted out of the building. So in addition, now they'll see a digital image of my own version of fire in the twin towers and have me arrested. That is, if I would do such a project, which I laughed at her for even suggesting (in a "damn what a sick, twisted moron" type manner). Others, this time, noticed the bad comment, unlike the previously linked incident.

It was clear enough the school didn't want us getting any jobs by their lack of quality and teaching, but I think this is pushing the limit a bit.

I've not had time, nor would I if I had a thousand lives, to tell about all the insanity at my school, but here is a brief little summary to give you an idea. The teacher mentioned above always pulls stuff like that for one, though it doesn't reflect the quality of teaching (though if you just take her analogies and such and apply it to teaching, you pretty much have their quality there). Which is just as well because there isn't a slice of quality of be found (despite what my past parenthesis said) [note to future employers: pity me and hire me (I do decent work at least, no thanks to them) or stop reading now...and unread the last few paragraphs]. She doesn't do much besides that, including lecture, which I am thankful for. The rare times she does, she'll give a demo of how to do something and take 15 minutes to figure out how to do it, all the while confusing the people who are new and have no idea what is going on in the first place. Her demos manage to suck knowledge away rather than bestow.

One thing she does manage to do well, however, is assign us projects no one will care about except that school, (since they supposedly owns any work done there), who wish to use it for their own personal gain. I've done Calhoun campus maps, Calhoun interactive CD's, Calhoun brochures, and so forth, nevermind that the teacher has said many times "you don't need the same type work in your portfolio more than once...now here, go make another Calhoun map which, by the way, we will own, so I want a hard copy of it so I can send it to the head office to use and screw you over". As I've said to many of my friends in frustration, we are paying them, to teach ourselves, to do free advertisement for them.

My web design class (you see how much I don't learn there) is likely to contain the worst teacher, who apparently was hired of the street. To keep it very brief of all I've seen of this "professor", she can't even do the most simplistic task. A girl next to me wished to know how to download an image from the internet, the woman said "I don't think it can be done" and when asked how to make a URL link, the woman said "I have no idea how to do it in [this program], I do it in [another program] that automatically makes the links for you." I need to get ahold of this magical device which can read my thoughts and perform my will without my lifting a finger. But damn she should at least know how to do such a simple thing by hand. She's the HTML teacher!

Besides being unqualified, she's pretty dramatic. When she couldn't figure out how to save an image, she exclaimed "once again I have failed you, students!" and walked away looking miserable. The other times she just acts hostile towards everyone, probably because they are all smarter than she, even Harold the dead house plant, who can download images (mostly garden porn) like nobody's business. Despite her shortcomings, she somehow has the nerve to try and tell us how all this works "in the real world" or "in the industry". Ha.

Only 1 more semester to go, unless of course they drop more surprise classes on me out of nowhere, as is their wont.

devolve | evolve