College Days

Going to Penn State oh so many years ago, I made a lot of new friends and met many people. The teachers were only human and as such, there were all sorts. Some on the most pompous and egotistical people were the professors. One in particular couldn’t be bound by the scheduled time allotted to him by the administration. His words were too important and it was necessary for him to share his infinite wisdom during the class time. He scheduled his tests on completely different evenings and in a different time slot. If you couldn’t take the matching and true false test at that time, he would give you a very difficult essay test.

I tried it only once. The test time always conflicted with my nursing classes and felt that since I was there for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, I should attend the nursing class. I found out just how hard his essays were. The course he taught was psychology and one of the essay questions he asked was to “list all of the attributes of a three year old according to Piaget.” Now I’d read Piaget, but I surely didn’t memorize such a miniscule section of the reading assignment. I barely answered enough to get by with the skin of my teeth. After that, I skipped my nursing class to take his tests. Today, I would have gone to the school administrators and had them rein in this selfish jackass.

Some professors were easy to read. Listening where their thoughts were coming from, I could discern where he or she wanted us to go and would search for words that would mirror their ideas. By blowing smoke, it was easy to walk with them among the stars.

Another professor I met got roped into teaching logic. She spent the first fifteen minutes complaining how she was abused by the administration and forced to teach logic. I am not a logical person and had great difficulty in this class. I passed, but not by much. The things I understood and actually pointed out mistakes to her weren’t on the tests. I could have wept. I tried to take the class pass/fail, but was one day late. If I subtracted the time she complained and didn’t teach, I would have been within the time window.