I took a class this semester called "Alabama Trial Practice and Procedure." It was awful. It was awful in a "The Office" sort of way. Our "professor" decided that, in lieu of teaching, it would be a good idea to assign every student in the class a section of the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure and let the students teach. Seriously. She just sat there and said maybe 30 words per class.
It was worse than the blind leading the blind. It was like a bunch of blind people got together and hired a person who could see to lead them, and the seeing person shrugged and laughed while the blind stumbled around. I can't make this up. I have no idea how she thought that our combined ignorance was somehow going to be less than the sum of its parts.
Being mostly third year law students, we realized the futility of the class rapidly. We turned to the internet in vast numbers. People brought headphones and watched movies. Dedicated chatrooms were created to provide a commentary along the lines of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Dave Barry's live blogging of 24. I tried to listen to the drivel, but lapsed in a sudoku-induced stupor most weeks. I don't want to exaggerate, but I would be surprised if there were more than 3 or 4 people (out of a class of 70) paying attention at any given time.
Last week, when the last student presented his lame presentation, our fearless leader (in full Michael Scott form) acknowledged that some mistakes were made and "the presentations were a kind of failed experiment."
Indeed.
Does anybody else have a brief story than could tell me that would make me feel better? Can anybody relate to me an exerpience that is so bad that it will make me willing to study for the exam I have coming up?
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do not fret, sir. i have a similar story, but it might now encourage you to study.
we have a class called 'doctoring' that is supposed to be discuss general health care issues and mental health issues. it lasted 2 full years, once a week, and was taught by guest lecturers. it was also the first year it was set up like this, and hence an experiment.
the guest lectures we got were RIDICULOUS. one cat comes in who has 6 doctorates, however they are all in alternative medicine. he has chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbology, and some other weird things on his resume. he called medicine a quack science, and when his doctor recommended he go on statins to lower his cholesterol, he refused and went on alternative medicines. 6 months later he suffered the consequences.
we had tests that featured questions like "true or false, it is ok to punch patients in the face if they are being rude to you?" and then the final was a national board test. since no one taught us a thing we needed for the test, i got a 11 percentile grade. but i didn't study, so it's ok. and i passed the class.
why schools would consider it a good thing to drastically change a good thing is beyond me.
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