2/16/2014 in Journal Stuff

2/4/14

My communications teacher seems to have a raw nerve when it comes to drug overdoses. And so far has straw man’d every comment by students that aren’t short answers so that she can make a bigger point. And considering the class was fairly non-assertive with their opinions to begin with, everyone’s now getting quieter. We started class by talking about fame in general. The teacher brings up a hypothetical situation where someone was in a car crash (completely non-descript on the severity) and asked whether we would look at the crash on the way past. A few people timidly voiced that they would. She starts breaking down our reasoning (based solely on the action of “looking” at the crash, whatever length of time she attributed to that) as us stroking some sort of schadenfreude impulse by “oogling” the crash. She was literally claiming that we have a built in mechanic that makes us feel pleasure at other people’s pain and that that was why we were looking at them. Nobody corrected the floating head on the projector screen (she’s too big to wheel uphill, so she skyped the class from her home). She also had to repeatedly move the cats off her because they’d wander from other parts of her over to her chest where the camera was pointed up her face.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was brought up as “news of the day” considering it fit in with Mustafa’s “what is life?” discussion question and someone else’s question over whether anyone would want to be famous (with all the vagueness that the word famous entails). So, we were talking about PSH and someone mentioned something he thought was interesting. Someone else online was perturbed and vocal that everyone kept referring to his death as a tragedy. Their claim was that the Boston Marathon bombing and 9/11 were tragedies and by comparison a guy dying over choices that he made (knowing the consequences) shouldn’t be put in the same boat. One of the more annoying CS guys stated that he understood the sentiment and that he could see why someone would feel that way. The teacher then makes the comment :

“From what I’m hearing you say (brings back memories of family counseling we went to with…what’s her name... something greek, like ariel), his death has split people into two extremes. Those that feel his death was tragic on one side and people who don’t see it that way on the other. Based on your tone and connotation (both buzzwords she taught the class previously) I’m extrapolating that you aren’t tolerant of his drug choices.”

The guy asks her what she means by tolerant of his choices, because he sees himself as more tolerant of his choices than the ones who stated his death was a tragedy. I commented on the guy’s behalf saying that the guy on the internet had a problem with people’s negative reaction to an adult’s informed decision on what the adult does with their life. He was the captain of his ship.

I kind of miss my old OD box that I used to post my current music. For some reason, now that it’s gone, I feel it was an important landmark for my posts. Maybe I’ll add something similar to these. I should also start actually shoring up my excerpts for the story. I notice I’m not using the site to the full capabilities it was built for and think I may be missing out on an opportunity.

2/6/14

Aurelia. Bam.

2/7/14

Jimmy Hat, high on life. These are the kinds of notes I leave myself so that I can remember to type about something that irks me later on. There’s a guy I’ve seen all over campus since I started coming here. He’s in my Statistics class and is high every Friday. This time, since it was particularly windy and cold, he wore a stocking hat. The way he wore it made his head look like the little…reservoir tip on condoms. Spent the entire class drumming on the table with his hands or talking to his friend who was also too high to concentrate. Teacher stopped class three times to tell him to stop and he kept going with a plastered smile.

2/11/14

I’m getting tired of teachers asking me what I know about vague things when I really don’t know. I don’t know whether the aforementioned theory is the one “I’d choose,” I don’t know know why people love or hate their famousness. I don’t know. I suspect, I guess, I estimate. I know none of it.

2/13/14

Communications teacher brought up the topic of social masks as hiding our “true selves.” She then tells everyone how frustrated she is that everyone behaves like wall flowers and won’t take off their masks for the class. Won’t show their true selves. I voiced the point that there is always the chance that we are wallflower tendencies could be our true selves, and that every attempt to push otherwise is her telling us to tighten our masks by acting against our “true” selves. And at no point does she point out that both our conscious and our subconscious tendencies could be our total selves. Forged in growing up, this is who we choose to be.
I don’t enjoy two of my teachers. They have this deep rooted surety of their knowledge and our lack of it. They don’t realize how little wisdom they actually have.

At one point she started talking about some youtube channel about the “people of Walmart” and assumed everyone in the class both knew what she was talking about and did the same thing as the people who made it (which means making fun of people who act differently than you). I said I’ve seen people doing stupid stuff at Walmart, is that the same thing?

Then Socio tried to relate it to “it’s like earlier last week at the Puck when it was all iced over. You see someone going along, not paying attention, and you know he’s going to eat it. And then he does and you can’t help but laugh.”

Laugh? Really? They could have literally just fucked up their entire month with that one fall. Broken phone, broken bones. I’d instantly feel bad for them and look to see if they’re alright for some sort of personal contentment at the event. But laugh AT them? …I don’t like people.

If that teacher actually tries to have the class physically make masks just so they can take them off in class, I’m not making one. Every day I live, I try and make an exercise in choosing the best path to make myself and others happy. I’m not going to pretend like I’m living my life behind a mask when I feel more free to be me than I really ever have in my past. Yeah, it’s just an exercise, but if I have learned anything at all in my life, it’s that you DO NOT lie to yourself through your actions, thoughts, or words unless you really don’t mind having a fucked up subconscious. To have this little background person acting opposite of your active self is how people justify doing really shitty things.