Weak
Until today, "weak" was an adjective that had never before been used to describe my brain. My upperbody? Most certainly. My singing voice? On occasion. My affinity for interpretive dance? "Weak" probably isn't a strong enough term. Granted, my I.Q. may not be particularly Hawkingesque, but never has anyone used "weak" when referring to my intellect or cognitive functions; that is, until I met M.L.
Dr. M.L. is a sociology professor here at the Faculty, charged with teaching us about social justice in eduction. The main assignment for this pass/fail course module was the production of a digital story using Microsoft's Photo Story 3, or iMovie if you're a Mac and not a PC. The instructions for the story were simple enough:
"Students will prepare a digital story, three minutes in length, of their choice; addressing one Social Justice related issue, as it exists within one specific context. Within your story, you must demonstrate the ability to describe, synthesize, analyze, and critique your chosen topic. The story must be connected to the course through the concepts developed in the readings, discussions, presentations, and the Social Justice Approach of this Module of the course."
So simple, only a witless dolt such as me could screw it up. Almost twice. My first submission lacked narration. Not being a fan of hearing my own voice as others do, I thought I could instead opt for stirring music and text laid over images. I was wrong. Apparently, I had missed the entire point. It seems that Dr. M.L.'s life, and my assignment, would not be complete until the emanations of my vocal folds were recorded for posterity. Dr. M.L. chose to notify me of this fact 10 weeks after I had submitted the assignment, in an e-mail with the subject heading "S.C.: Impending Failure".
Somehow, I managed to maintain my composure long enough to ask what more was needed for me to receive a "pass" on the assignment, and reproduced my Photo Story with the text stripped out in favour of my narration. I resubmitted the story the very next day. I subsequently received the following e-mail from Dr. M.L. (and remember, she's talking about what is basically a high-tech version of a film clip no more than three minutes in length):
"While I have given you a Pass on your Digital Story, your text remains very thin and not conceptually informed. Nevertheless I have accepted it."
How gracious of you, Dr. M.L. In speaking with the esteemed academic, I was informed that I am a "weak conceptualizer", that it should be something I really work on should I wish to go any further in the field of education theory, and that likely my classroom techniques suffer as a result.
Luckily I have only had to inflict my weak conceptualization abilities on fewer than one hundred students so far. Hopefully, in doing so, I spared them being educated by the M.L.s of this world.
Maybe I should re-engineer my graph to reflect an 11% contribution from negative student-teacher interactions?
Comments
Sarah, you are one of the strongest people I know. I have had many discussions with you on various topics, and I would not say you are a "weak conceptualizer" by ANY means.
What normal person can really FULLY address an issue in 3 minutes (unless you are the micro machine guy), when people can write a thesis on them?
I think this is the type of teacher who tries to crush students for unknown reasons...you remind her of a snot in high school, you pronounced a word differently than she does (toe-mate-to vs toe-mot-toe), etc.
You passed and she is an idiot. That’s what matters!
Posted by: Tracy at April 17, 2009 09:55 AM
I completely agree. You passed, she is an idiot, and you are not weak at anything. Including your snoring. :-)
Hopefully you're completely done with her now, and can put her behind you? It'd be TOTALLY funny if one day you ended up teaching her own kid(s) and they loved you. Sweet. Of course, that would require her to procreate, which I think would be a very bad idea.
Posted by: heather at April 18, 2009 11:12 PM
I would take her critique with a grain of salt. In my experience with other Queen's education faculty, that seems to be the general criteria they are looking for in their hiring practices. I could name names but we can get to that over a bottle of wine or two this weekend.
Posted by: Dee at April 21, 2009 04:58 PM
If you are weak, then the rest of us are slugs... or perhaps amoebas. These types of assignments are so incredibly subjective... and sometimes the profs expect you to be able to read their minds. They have a vision of what it should be and sometimes can't look beyond their expectations when something outside the box is submitted. Unfortunately for them, and their tunnel-vision, this class is not called Give-Me-Exactly-What-I-Want-Even-Though-I-Give-You-No-Direction-Or-Constructive-Feedback 101. So to M. L., I say... perhaps surgery to remove whatever seems to have embedded itself where the sun don't shine might be required. ;-) I'd tell you to be strong... but you already are... without a speck of a doubt. T. xo
Posted by: Tara at April 21, 2009 09:41 PM