dear isobel

I have come to accept that I will not always have a competent teacher. I’m just taking too much classes in too many areas to expect that, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to expect that your teacher is not bat-shit crazy?

I’ve had boring teachers. Mr. Sheehan in the eighth grade was okay, but I honestly don’t remember anything about the class. He had a long neck and a small head. But that’s it. I’ve had incompetent teachers as well. Tommarchio in my junior year didn’t do a lot of teaching, but I should have known I wouldn’t do well in chemistry class, so that’s a failure on my part too.

I’ve had really excellent teachers like Professor Blass and Professor Howard, whom I have this semester. And Mr. DiSibio and Mr. Higgs in high school.

So one would say that I’ve been somewhat spoiled. I’ve had more good teachers than bad certainly, but until this semester I’d never had an insane one. So far, he’s insinuated that Barack Obama is a Muslim and associates with terrorists. He remarked today that he doesn’t think he’s ever had a student at our college break 1000 on the SATs. (I find this hard to believe….I had an 1150 but chose CCC because my grades in high school were kind of crappy and it’s a cheaper.) But yeah, insinuated that our class was stupid.

I wish it stopped there. We have been in class for a month now, eight classes. The subject is US History I, except I’m not sure how much history we’ve actually covered. Today we talked about abstinence, how we shouldn’t vote for the bailout package and…a lot of other stuff I stopped listening to. I could literally feel my brain cells dying inside.

In fact, in this class, I have done something that I haven’t since chemistry (and I had T’s cooperation because we both knew I was hopeless)…I have pulled out a book for the last three classes and I’ve read. And after he called Obama a Muslim last week, I listened to Ipod. I’m actually kind of disappointed in myself because I’ve never been driven to that place before.

But I figure…when he starts teaching the subject I’m paying to learn, I’ll put the book away.

Somehow a few years ago, I ended up on the mailing list for the Defense for Wildlife Fund. Not a huge deal — I didn’t mind it and I don’t donate because I can’t afford it. Occasionally, if I like the letter campaign, I do one of those but I don’t think about it much.

Until I got this ad in my inbox recently:

Maybe I’ll send it to my aunt, who sent text messages to everyone in the family (not me because she knows how I feel) that McCain and Palin have her vote. I don’t say that because I don’t agree with her political views. I only wish I felt that she was voting for them because of what believes. However, I know differently. She told me straight out a few months ago why she wasn’t voting for Obama and I have to say, I’ve never been embarrassed to be her niece before then. (If you knew my aunt, you’d know what I meant by that). You should vote for who you want, but I think you should have a good reason for doing so. Not just because you don’t want a certain race to be president.