Diary of a Mad College Professor

It is now deep into the second week of classes at my college and the expected problems I experience each semester are beginning to emerge.

Many students are showing up for the first time only now. I had new students yesterday, I had new students today. I’ll no doubt have more tomorrow. Getting such a late start makes it difficult for these students to catch up, but that doesn’t seem to deter them.

Similarly, attendance that was nearly perfect the first week has already begun to drop off. Like with a new diet, the enthusiasm and good intentions evident in the early days are very short lived.

I carefully explain on the first day of class that students who miss the calling of the roll will be marked absent for that day. I don’t mark anyone tardy. You’re either there when the roll is called and you’re counted present, or you aren’t. This is also spelled out in the syllabus that each student receives in each class. Today, after each of my classes, students came up to tell me they came in late, and to ask to be marked present. In each case I told them “I have mentioned on several occasions that coming in late will get you marked absent. I have also said as much in the syllabus that each of you got. The reason you don’t know this is that you either weren’t here during any of the many times I voiced my policy in the past two weeks, of if you were, you were so busy talking to your neighbor, or daydreaming you didn’t hear me. That’s why I spell out the policy in the syllabus I know I gave you, but also know you haven’t bother to read.”

I tell them on the first day I do NOT tolerate sleeping in class, or even the appearance of sleeping in class. Today, one of my late students closed her eyes and put her head on her desk. I awoke her and reminded her that I don’t tolerate that, and that she may NOT sleep in my class. Twenty minutes later she had her head on her desk with eyes closed again. I stopped lecture mid-sentence and waited a good 30 seconds for her to open her eyes to see what all the silence was about. She did not. So I woke her. She claimed she was not asleep (the liar) and I said to her, “You know, don’t you, that I have the right to bounce you out of my class?” She said she understood that. I then said “If you continue to sleep in my class, I will either withdraw you from enrollment, or have you explain yourself to the Dean of Students. You will NOT sleep in my class.” I turned to the rest of the class; you could have heard a pin drop. “THIS is why I’m not allowed to carry a gun to class.”

After my 11:30 today, one of the students said “This is my favorite class.” She also said the same thing after Monday’s class this week, and after Monday’s and Wednesday’s classes last week. Once is good. Twice is even better. Four times in four classes seems excessive.

In the same class one of the students commented that not everything I talk about is found in the text. You think? Why don’t I just read it to you paragraph by paragraph like you’re used to, and we’ll both be happier pretending you’re getting an education?

Yesterday, a student showed me the results of an IQ test she had taken. The report was a technical one written by the licensed psychologist who had administered the test. The student was measured at a WAIS IQ of 89. The average IQ is 100, so this student tested below average. Half of the population is below average. No big deal. Normal intelligence is defined as an IQ at or between 85-115. The student told me she was showing this report to all her teachers (most of whom I doubt would understand it, it’s pretty technical). I suspect the student wants her teachers to think “Oh, she’s not too bright. I shouldn’t expect too much out of her.” What I told her however was “Your IQ suggests you have normal intelligence. Normal intelligence is sufficient to succeed in this class. Therefore if you don’t do well in class, I’m going to assume that you’re failure is motivational and I’m gonna kick your lazy ass all over this campus.” She looked very surprised.

This woman already has a Bachelors degree. She earned it from the worst college in Oklahoma. From what I know of the school, it may be the worst college in America. So now she’s in a community college and expecting to have academic problems. Sad.

Systine Chappel

I dreamed last night about the first woman to become president of the United States. I dreamed her name would be Systine Chappel.

Dr. Phil’s dad, Old Joe McGraw, had a story he told time and again. He enjoyed this story so much that every time he told it he laughed at it harder than he did the time before.

According to Joe, some big ol’ cop had stopped a car load of teenage boys, and one of them had gotten out of the car and run off. The cop went up to one of the boys who remained and said “I’m only gonna ask you this one time. What was the name of the kid who ran away?” The reply from the boy, with a sneer, was “Sam Sausage.”

The cop immediately decked the kid. He then approached the second young man and said “I’m only gonna ask you this one time. What was the name of the kid who ran away?” And this fellow said in a frightened voice “Officer, the only thing I know about that fellow for sure is that his name is NOT Sam Sausage!”

I don’t know who the first woman to be president of the United States will be, but I’m sure her name will not be Systine Chappel.

Seen and Obscene at Wendy’s

I was eating a late lunch is a mostly deserted Wendy’s yesterday with my squeeze. As I did so a rough looking man with a ragged beard and even rattier clothes entered the door and walked by me muttering fiercely to himself and glaring angrily at someone seated behind me. He then exited through the door in front of where I was sitting and turned to stare once again at whomever it was over my shoulder.

I finally turned to look at the object of this intense rage, and there was no one there. The man was apparently directing his venom at me! When I looked back at him, he put both hands on top of his head with the palms open in my direction, giving him the look of a deranged bunny rabbit. Then he began to paddle the hands back and forth on his head making me think he was trying to build up enough speed flapping them to lift off the floor and hover near the door.

By now, one of the Wendy’s personnel had noticed my strange adversary, and went outside with a broom to chase him away.

Being a psychologist, I have learned to recognize “special people” on the street, usually in a matter of seconds. Apparently this psychotic fellow had learned his own immediate recognition of psychologists.

Dreamscape

“Once upon a midnight dreary,
As I pondered weak and weary...” - E.A. Poe

Something is amiss with me. For the last several nights I have gone to bed at my usual, early, bedtime at 9 p.m. and awakened, fully rested and incapable of further sleep, at 12:30 or 1 a.m. It is just past midnight, after a three hour sleep, that I write these words.

I’m wondering if it doesn’t have something to do with the dreams. The incredibly disturbing dreams.

Everyone has weird dreams. I know this. Yet, I think mine are stranger than most. My dreams tend to be in color, which is a little unusual, and are fully fleshed out with sounds, smells, and tastes. Most singularly odd is the tendency for me to dream dark and twisted plots that are beyond strange, and are quite disturbing. My dreams have somber songs, and music, and dance, like something from the Tolken Ring Trilogy. When I awaken, I’m amazed that the music is completely original, the songs correct in meter and rhyme, set perfectly to the music I’ve composed spontaneously and perfectly in my head in mere moments of REM. How did I do that? Or did someone else do it before me?

Unfortunately, my inability to write music means my songs are lost to me after a day or so as I slowly forget them.

There’s a very creative author named John Connolly who has written a novel called Black Angel. I read it last week. It has a convoluted plot, but involves fallen angels, evil through and through, who are searching for one of their own who was captured by monks hundreds of years ago, imprisoned in silver, and hidden somewhere in Europe. The protagonist is a Maine private investigator improbably named Charlie Parker who tries to thwart the plans of the fallen angels at every turn. But we learn that Charlie himself may be a fallen angel, although he doesn’t quite know it yet.

This is what is disturbing to me - I’ve seen this movie. No, wait... it hasn’t been made into a movie yet. I’ve read the book before. But I haven’t. I know these characters. I know this plot. It is all familiar to me.

I have dreamed it.

Apparently, so has John Connolly.

Perhaps so-not-coincidentally, Connolly mentions in his novel the drug DMT (dimethyltryptamine). DMT is listed as a Schedule I on the federal Controlled Substances Act and is known about by only a relatively few people. Medical physician Rick Strassman has done experimentation on the drug and confirmed its street reputation. He had seasoned recreational drug users take the drug in a controlled clinical setting and then later report their experiences. Many had hallucinations that involved “entities” that were living, intelligent beings, but were not in any way human. This in itself is a very odd finding. Why would this drug, more than any other, create such a common, and odd, personal event? What is even stranger is when Strassman would comment “That was quite the hallucination,” the participants in the study would commonly reply “Oh, no man! I’ve had hallucinations before. This was REAL.”

If this research doesn’t give you the creeps, then something’s wrong with you.

Strassman hypothesized that DMT, or something naturally occurring like it, has been responsible for a human history filled with leprechauns, fairies, little people, space aliens, and the like. Or... that DMT actually opens the mind to other places and other dimensions not normally available to human perception, and that these encountered entities are indeed, real.

Have John Connolly and I tapped into a common source? Are evil fallen angels really living among us, mostly undetected? How do I know in so much detail everything about Connolly’s characters before I read about them in his novel? Do we share our dreams? Are there others who dream our dreams?

It is unsettling.


“’You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’ Abraham Lincoln said that. ‘ I’ll let you be in my dream if you let me be in yours.’ I said that.” - Bob Dylan

Least I leave you completely wondering about my sanity, let me retell the dream that woke me but minutes ago. This dream is one of a more humorous bent.

In my dream I was a man of some wealth. A woman my own age but of great avarice had made numerous attempts to siphon off my riches to her own coffers, largely unsuccessfully. The dream begins with her repeatedly sending her 14-year-old granddaughter to visit me and “hang out” at my house; this I accept and tolerate because I can’t see that the young teen can do me any harm, and because grandmother and I have a distant “history.”

To my surprise, grandmother announces one day that the 14-year-old is pregnant, and that I am the responsible party. This is a complete shock to me, and the girl friend (as opposed to the girlfriend) I consult suggests that if the teen is indeed pregnant that I insist on and pay for a DNA test.

The dream ends with a scene in court in which all interested parties are awaiting the outcome of the DNA analysis. We all stand as the magistrate enters the courtroom, and he quickly brings the proceedings to order. He tells us that the results are back and that he is holding them in the small blue envelope in his hand. He makes a show out of slowly taking out his reading glasses, opening the envelope and he spends a bit too much time, for dramatic effect no doubt, silently reading the report. He then turns to me, holds out his hand to shake mine, and says “Congratulations, son. You’re going to be a daddy.”

My last thought before I awoke - “Busted!”

This was a joke on myself. I didn’t know the punch-line until it happened. My dream had set me up. But think about it. Presumably, if I were messing with the young teen, I’d certainly know about it. In the dream I was, indeed, me. But in the dream, I was watching myself as if in, well... a dream, with no access to my internal thoughts or feelings. At least not until the end. How could I dream this dream, about me, and not know what was going to happen to me until the punch-line that the dream had been leading me to?

What’s going on in my head? I’m beginning to feel like the main character of Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla. He was going mad too.

Fall Convocation Blues

We had our welcome back convocation for my college yesterday. We do this every August.

It was set at our West Campus. We gathered in the new and shiny Fitness Center. It is a gorgeous facility, the equal or the better of any private club in town (but sans swimming pool). The weights and machines are state-of-the-art and very expensive. Of course, just as West Campus is a ghost town, the Fitness Center was a desert - no students to be seen pumping iron, or going for the burn. Perhaps it was closed for the day.

The formal greetings followed the traditional buffet breakfast. The President introduced one of the VPs who was asked to read the names and the professional histories of those faculty being honored as Outstanding Teachers this year.

Seven people from the four campuses were honored. As Dr. Barney R. said to me after the names were announced “Of the seven, only one has a doctorate degree.” And as I said to Barney, “Only two are men.” I guess men with doctorates aren’t seen as outstanding teachers too often. I know that the most consistently positive comments I hear from students about their teachers are about history teacher Dr. M. H. He’s never gotten this award, and, because he’s a political recluse more involved in teaching than smoozing, I doubt he ever will. Outstanding Teachers are often not all that outstanding as teachers. I know you’re not surprised at this.

The VP tried to read a professional biography of each. It was painful to listen to. He stumbled. He halted. He mispronounced words. When he spoke about one person’s involvement in Todos los Juntos, he pronounced “Juntos” with a hard J rather than the appropriate H sound required in Spanish. The first time he did it, there was a gasp from the audience. The second and third times, I saw a Spanish teacher physically wince.

Then it was time for the President’s address. The theme of the convocation was “One College.” The President began by saying “The dictionary defines ‘one’ as...”

I think every bad eighth-grade essay I ever read or heard spoken began in the same way “The dictionary defines ‘freedom’ as...” Or “The dictionary defines ‘patriotism’ as...” Or “The dictionary defines ‘pussy-whipped’ as...” I was embarrassed for him. It was puerile. It was vacuous. The former president was a much more entertaining speaker. The current president just read his talk in a wooden mechanical way.

Then B.S. was introduced. I’m not kidding, those are his initals. He spoke last year too. I guess he gets paid for his contributions, I dunno. Last year he spoke for about five minutes and then directed everyone to the forms found on each table. We were to fill these out, talk about them, and then report on them to the group as a whole. I’m not sure what his purpose was then, and, since we did exactly the same thing this year, what his purpose was now.

On our tables were beautiful, expensive, four-color fliers describing my college’s “Core Values.” On either side of an impressive school logo the words “Integrity” and “Quality” were prominently displayed. Below were the five core values that some committee had produced. These were “Student Success,” “Excellence,” “Stewardship,” “Innovation,” and “Diversity,” each defined with bullet subheadings.

We each had blank forms on our tables with three questions for each of us to answer. Question one asked “Which of Integrity, Quality, Student Success, Excellence, or Stewardship do you identify with most strongly?”

First, what’s the difference between Quality and Excellence? Excellence was defined, Quality was not. I imagine someone thinks they’re different. They were both listed in question one.

And what is Integrity? It wasn’t defined either. I spent two years on the last college self-study as the chair of the Integrity sub-committee and in that two year period, no one was able to provide a definition that all of us on the committee were comfortable with. But no one even bothered to try for this exercise.

Question two asked about how I as a teacher went about creating these core values in the classroom. Question three asked about how the school could achieve these values.

We each answered these questions as best we could, talked about them at our tables, and then B.S. had volunteers come up and “share” what they talked about. If he got only a free lunch for his involvement in this, B.S. was overpaid.

Barney leaned over to me and said “Can you believe that we’re doing this?” I sure can. My teachers in elementary school had the class do similar exercises when we were in the fourth grade so that they could sneak off to the teacher’s lounge for a tinkle and a smoke. It’s called busy-work.

When this meeting broke up, we were allowed to choose our next activity. I chose to hear a presentation about the new MyCollege mail system. We have Internet based Blackboard for communicating with our students. We have the Faculty Web. We have Lotus Notes for e-mail among ourselves. And now we have MyCollege to communicate with students. Yes, four separate programs, each with a different log-on, much of them overlapping.

The presentation was in a dark auditorium, darkened so that we in the audience could see the slides presented. Unfortunately, the slides were black type on a dark blue background, so they were nearly impossible to see. The presenter had a microphone available, but chose not to use it. This was a bad decision because he was very difficult to hear without it. We couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. The presentation was scheduled for an hour, but could have been given twice in twenty minutes. The presenter would show us a screen and then say “Do you see where there is a place labeled ‘Your ID’? That’s were you put your ID. Do you see the space labeled ‘Password’? This is where you type your password.” It is said that a job expands in time to fill the time allotted to it; that was certainly true for this presentation. At forty-five minutes in, the presenter asked if there were any more questions or comments. No, there weren’t. I had to pee pretty bad, so I sneaked out the back, sure they were wrapping it all up and that there was nothing else to be said. I took my whiz, strolled the campus for a few minutes, explored the bookstore, and about twenty minutes later I was passing the auditorium again and noticed that only THEN were people coming out. The presenter has finished twenty minutes ago, but had dismissed the crowd only now. I wonder what I missed.

My college amazes me more and more each year and I find I have less and less tolerance for it. My supervisor said yesterday that there are those who are very positive about these activities, those that tolerate them, and those who are actively hostile to them. I think I’m slipping into the third category.

When it came time for the all-campus psychology discipline meeting, I noticed that Assistant Professors Q. and F. weren’t present. Again. This, and Q. a former Outstanding Teacher winner.

I haven’t seen them at these kinds of things in several years, but I know they’re still employed because I occasionally get e-mail from them. Have they figured it out, while I still have not?

They’re gonna get in a lot of trouble.

A LOT of trouble.

Right.

P.S. In one of the meetings I had to endure today, the Provost for my campus said “I think yesterday’s convocation was one of the best we ever had.” I wonder which one she attended. It sure wasn’t the one I went to.

Yes We Have No Bananas, Part Deux

I’m just back from Washington, D.C., the town I grew up in, and near. It’s my hometown essentially. I was disappointed. Washington used to be a good place to live. Now I’m not so sure. It certainly is an expensive place to live.

I liked the new (to me) subway system. It was clean and efficient. It was also extremely low on security. There’s a problem waiting to happen.

In one of my excursions on foot I passed a quaint little Irish pub. The draught beers included some that I had not only never tasted, but never even heard of. I stopped in and was ready to order one of the beers when the barkeep told me that there was a problem with the “cooling chest” and that none of the beers on tap was actually available at the moment. I told her I’d be back.

I returned to the hotel. The hotel is now called the Marriott Wardman, although it’s been many other things since it was built in the late 1920s. It was once home to Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Barry Goldwater, and lies a little north of Dupont Circle. It boasts its own pub, Harry’s Pub. I walked into the pub and ordered a Guinness. The barkeep told me that all the taps were being cleaned, no draught beers were currently available, and if I wanted a Guinness, it’d have to be out of a bottle. “OK, so give me a bottle of Guinness” I said. “We don’t have any” he replied.