Had an exam in the least favorite of my five classes, Ideology and Politics, the course I signed up for without even reading the description because it sounded so perfect for me.

Turns out, not so much. The subject matter is right up my twisted little alley, but the method… meh. Makes me think that I should not take any more political science courses, even though it may well be that if this course had been taught by someone else, I would be loving every minute of it.

As for the exam… well, I hope I passed. Nuff said.

Of course, not having the textbook is a serious hindrance. My fault, of course, because of my mighty fuckups. But it’s more than just not having the text. It’s a phenomenon I described on Facebook thusly :

Dear all my professors :
I can listen to what you are saying.
I can write down what’s on the slides.
But I cannot do both at the same time.
It used to be that the time it took for the teacher to write something on the blackboard automatically gave you time to write it down too.
But now its all education via Powerpoint, and the professors can press a button and give us hundreds of words to write down and just keep talking. And then they wonder why nobody seems to be listening to them.
It’s one or the other, professors. We cannot do both at the same time.

Of my three fact-based professors (Creative Writing and Journalism are not so much into the facts and tests thing), my Ideology and Politics professor is the worst offender for this, and that’s especially problematic for some without the text because my notes are all I have to go on.

Also, I have thought about this, and the questions on the test are pretty hard. Not unreasonably so, but still. They require a fair bit of mental muscle. If this was subject matter I had fully command of, I could do a decent job. But I don’t. I am honestly not used to having to learn this sort of thing. There’s a reason I don’t take History courses, and it’s not because of lack of interest. It’s that I don’t enjoy memorizing things and I have never had to learn to do it.

I got through school on my naturally high level of retention. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to be doing the job in this case. The difference might well be teaching method.

My professor can’t seem to decide if we should be trying hard to understand the concepts or working hard to memorize the facts. I think she may suffer from a lack of understanding (or remembering) what it’s like to be new to the subject. To her, all of this is basic knowledge, and I am sure that to her, this all hangs together naturally.

But to us, or at least to me, it’s mostly a string of facts that leaves little room for actually talking about the ideas, which is what I foolishly thought the course would be about. I suppose I imagined it to basically be a philosophy course with a political focus. If that had been the case, I would be enjoying myself a great deal more.

But instead, we’re covering more or less the entire history of modern Western thought as it pertains to Canada, and that’s a lot of ground to cover in a relatively small number of classes.

Oh well. At this point, I am just hoping to struggle through with a passing grade and a lesson learned about signing up for courses based solely on the title.

Otherwise, today’s been fine. I still have $20 left in the week’s budget, which is a nice feeling. Today was dark and wet and dreary and cold, but that’s par for the course these days. Today’s crazy person on the bus with me was a fellow across the aisle from me talking and gesticulating to himself in French.

It just occurs to me now that one of the stops for my beloved 405 is near where the Richmond Psychiatric Services, who only deal with psychotics and not us lowly depressives, is located.

You’d think I would have noticed a bus full of crazies before now, though. Perhaps they get more mumbly when it’s cold.

I am doing fine in my other sour courses, which is why I am not terribly worried about my marks overall. It just seems to be my fate that there will always be the one course that drags my average down, like gym, or the art class I took in high class in order to get out of taking gym.

I wish I could register for classes. But not till the finance issue is resolved. I am going to have to get moving on that soon, because the deadline is a week from this Friday. I am going to have to really put myself out there and ask for people’s help. It’s a loan, not a handout, but that doesn’t make an enormous amount of difference when the problem is the size of mine.

I know that there’s a site out there that is like Kickstarter but for people who need help with something important. Like, if someone needs a new wheelchair or their house burns down. I could really use some place like that. But for the life of me, I can’t remember what it’s called.

Instead, I am going to have to lean on my family and friends, and I am not happy with that. I am trying my best to get over this learned helplessness that has been dragging me down for so long. There is nobody coming to rescue me from myself. I have to learn to do things for myself. I want to be strong and independent. I want to be respectable instead of pathetic.

But I see no other way out. I have to save my own ass, and if that means begging for money, so be it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.