I emailed the head of the Arts faculty with my concerns over Professor Mark Glouberman. So the die is cast there. Probably nothing will come of it, at least from my end of the process. But I had to do it. That guy should not teach.
And I said as much in my email.
I’ve already dropped his Intro to Philosophy, which means I am, for the third time, swept up in hunt for that mysterious and elusive creature, the Fifth Class.
I better get this shit decided soon, because the Add/Drop period will probably be ending soon and it won’t be so easy to shuffle stuff around.
If there is another section of Intro to Philosophy open, I will take it. As long as it’s Glouberman free, I am freaking golden.
Turns out, the other Philosophy I have from him is not Intro to Ethics, it’s Philosophy, Culture, and Identity. And I can probably do without that one too, but I will leave it for now because I don’t want to end up hunting for two replacement courses at the same time.
The very thought of fills my heart with fear! Cause course hunting is such a bitch for fussy ol me.
Oh right. Before we leave all things Glouberman behind, here’s my notes from yesterday, verbatim. Editorial comments will be in [square brackets].
MY ACTUAL NOTES FROM INTRO TO PHILOSOPJHY
JANUARY 6, 2016
AS TAUGHT BY MARK GLOUBERMAN
Sure, wait until class starts before emailing the booklist to us.
My god this man is a twit.
30 mins in, still waiting for him to finish w/computer. Now a student is helping him – god bless him. [The student, not the prof. ]
Time appears to have stopped.
Now he is scrolling through [an online version of] the textbook [and] telling us there’s lots of stuff in it. That’s nice.
OMG, the “course description” [he handed out] is just random pages stapled together. No info. [Turns out that was source material for our homework. I still think my initial impression was justified, though. ]
Now he is looking for the original [course description] document. Found the old one.
THIS MAN IS SUCH A TOOL. [It is of note that I have a four color pen and I practically carved those words into the page with each one of them, on top of each other, for emphasis. ]
Managed to find the right document – online.
7:30 – Finally started teaching.
Philosophy = thinking about stuff. [Those four words summarize about twenty minutes of rambling. ]
Oh great… math. How fun. [This summarizes ten minutes of him trying to explain to us what calculus was. ]
Apparently, arithmetic is interesting. [Never said why. Just repeated it over and over. ]
This man is a triple dunk dipshit.
Must. Not. Heckle. Moron.
I think I will officially complain.
Half an hour to get to “philosophy can be done anywhere”. Mercy. I give up.
Two more hours of this.
This man says more nothing per minute than any other person on Earth.
And bing goes my hope that he is better with a lesson plan.
I can’t take four months [at] twice a week of this. I just can’t.
Fellow student approached me in men’s room to confirm prof is very confusing. I feel pity for him. English is not his first language. This must be hard for him.
More evidence that I should complain.
I wish I spoke Mandarin so that I could talk smack about him with [the] other students in front of him. [Clearly, this man is bringing out the poet in me. ]
I must Google him. [Did that. He has a 5.5 out of 10 on RateMyProfessor.com if you can believe it. Far more than he deserves. ]
He illustrates the futility of asking students to fill in the blanks when you suck at communicating the setup. [Also when you ask bewildered students whose eyes are glazing over with boredom at random moments. ]
I hope he has a headache too. [Proud of that one. Says so much in so few words. ]
This man should not teach.
I’d like to think he’s drunk.
He just said “it’s supposed to be clear”. So he knows.
I…. (sigh) never mind.
He belabors and repeats because he thinks we are not understanding him. But people are just confused.
Class almost over and now he gets somewhere near the point.
And that’s it. Thus endeth my record of a night of mental torture.
Went to therapy. Talked to my therapist about the Glouberman Situation, and told him about the anxiety attack I had in Creative Writing class.
He wanted to know what it was about having to catch someone’s eye that made me freak out big time. At first I couldn’t answer because I was reliving the moment and in the moment, I wasn’t conscious of anything but the full body freakout I was experiencing.
But it didn’t take too long for me to connect it with all those situations I experienced in school where there was something where we had to partner off, or pick teams, or otherwise set up the boy everyone hated (me) for being socially crushed when nobody wanted to have anything to do with me.
On some level, in that moment of total panic, I felt like all of that was going to happen again and I woukld once more be at the bottom of the heap with everyone jumping up and down on me.
Now as you know, that didn’t happen, and in fact people approached me . That’s like the opposite of rejection. And that’s a good thing.
But I am not feeling it. When that panic attack hit, I went numb. Ice covered in snow wrapped around my heart and I won’t be able to feel the good things until my frozen heart thaws.
Story of my life, really. Sometimes I wish I could get rid of the cold forever. Live life in the hot hot sun, no matter what I have to feel to be there.
But it’s just not that simple.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.