Well, I guess I HAVE to mention this. Today was probably one of the worst days ever. Why? One word and three letters... Nick and CMC. See, at the beginning of the year each and every Chapman Student had to choose this extra-curricular project/class for which they HAD to pass to stay in Chapman... There really weren't that many to choose from, one involved girl scouts out in Weston (not for me!), another was using blogs as some kind of discussion group (in to blogs, not discussions). One even for tutoring elementary kids... But the ONLY one that seemed interesting to me was CMC. When it was introduced you had no idea what it was. All that was told about it was that it involved computers... PERFECT! I love computers! And, at least John and I, thought that it would be cool to learn some new skills on said computers... Well the first meeting was a bust, Nick (the teacher in charge) never even showed... SO what did we do? We thought about what we could possibly do in a class about computers... The idea we came up with was that we could somehow learn to make and produce our own flash based show... It sounded like a wonderful idea, the teacher and possibly other students would teach and help us to make a show... (just wait for the bad part...)

We tinkered around ideas for a plot, considering we had NO instructions what so ever we were pretty much limited by our imaginations which served us well as we came up with 5 or 6 great story ideas... Okay, I missed something, the first meeting where Nick actually showed up all he did was asked us why we joined CMC... And we also told him a few story ideas. He said they were good but they might have to be "tweaked" to fit in with the overview of the class... Which was... ... You know Nick's really good at dodging around questions and being very vague and non-specific... After the second meeting he gave a little more info on the "project" he was planning... All he said was that we were making a webpage... About what we didn't really know, just that we'd be putting things we make in class on it for all to see... And he told us to research the definition of CMC and write it in our own words... (If you know anything about me, you KNOW I DO NOT DO RESEARCH) Lets say that I... Neglected to do it... Next meeting I had a class conflict and couldn't make it. I don't know why, but John and I had been branded together so he and I were assigned to make a video with the definitions of CMC and show it to everyone the next meeting...

On Friday night we got started... Since neither of us had really done the work, we just started making a music video... It was done completely with clips from an anime I had on my computer, FLCL. We put those clips to Ian's "Blurring Reel" and five hours later we had a complete, and beautiful anime music video. We got it done so fast that we actually made another one to the "Punk-A-Matic" song from my band. This one was wicked bad as well, even though we really had to stretch to fit it in with the concept of CMC. (If you don't know by now what CMC means, don't worry... I don't and I'm in the class!)

Well the big came... We burned them to a DVD and pressed play in front of other students... You know there's nothing worse than putting your heart into something and have that heart crushed by a sledge hammer... No one liked it, was a room of expressionless faces and cold stares... If the poor reaction to our hard work wasn't enough, Nick singled us out and asked us a million questions about how they related to CMC. How do the clips relate to CMC? How does the Music relate to CMC? And you've got to give it to us, we BSed our asses off on this one... We were working so hard to find some link to Computer Mediated Communication... But a las it wasn't enough... He actually thought he was doing us a favor when he said, and I quote "getting to far into the meaning" and recommended that we redo the video so that EVERYONE can understand it... Think that's bad? NO! He twisted the knife! "Peer critique!" He fucking asked the class what they thought! Can you believe him? He knew we BSed the answers, he could be THAT stupid not to realize we were pulling stuff out our asses... I fucking hate our CMC group, you know what they said? Only one person spoke, and she said she "didn't get it". And that only prolonged the torture! Nick dug even more into it, and some how didn't make it sound like "we did a bad job." You know, it's times like that when I realize how great an actor I am, I kept a straight face and acted like I what he was telling us wasn't bullshit while this guy crushed my dreams in front of me. He's trying to kill my individuality, and he's doing it through confusion and misdirection. At first he's like, "yes, that could work. Just try to make it fit." when what he doesn't mention is that it will never work unless you cut out EVERYTHING you have now and put in stuff that I want.... And he doesn't even tell us what he wants! He expects us to know, or to find out... In the like four weeks we've been meeting he hasn't taught us a damn thing (at least I haven't learned a damned thing) and this course is supposed to be about community? What community is run like that? One where you isolate a select group and force them to do what you want... What happened to individualism? What happened to community where everyone is equal? I know this, in CMC, I'm one of the lowest on the scale... I feel like I'm as low as a garage man, you don't want to see him, even though you need him. I'm a radical, a rebel against CMC. I can't stand all this! I haven't learned anything! There are people in the class who know exactly how to do what we want to do, but they won't help us! We have to figure out on our own with an impossible deadline and absolutely no direction at all! We have no idea what were going to do, the only idea we have is far to complicated for the four week time limit.

Here's some other stuff that REALLY pisses me off. Right after the class is done with presentations (which half didn't even do because they did a website and they're special) he finally reveals the total aspect of the final project. We're going to make a website. On this website will be information on guess what.... CMC! And were divided into three teams, one has to make a video about CMC, one has to do all the graphic design for the website, and one writes the HTML for the website. Guess what I'm doing! The video! And guess how many are on my team? Three! John, Flatbed, and Me... Were soo screwed.... You don't even know HOW screwed... Imagine this (it's a bit of a stretch) You like the human body, so you play operation and lose.... Then your flung into actually surgery! No training, no education, no instructions at all... How would you react? Now think of veterinarians watching you, laughing at you because or your feeble attempt to perform major surgery... That's what it was like today...

Nick is a horrible teacher! You know what pissed me off even more. Before we left the meeting we asked him if he would perhaps play the villain in the show we were hoping to make in flash. He said had to read the script before deciding so he didn't get in trouble... And we assured him that he wouldn't get in trouble, to which he responses (quote) "Yours words won't convince me, only something written down will convince me." Confused as to why this pisses me off? Well, see in the time that we've been meeting with Nick he has yet to given out a sheet of paper, he's barely written anything down. He doesn't teach! He just expects you to teach yourself and learn it correctly! That's not the way I learn! Discussions don't teach, TEACHERS teach. And you Nick, are not a teacher! You just come in with half a plan and an idea you never tell anyone about. I just feel like I'm being singled out. I feel like I'm being treated as A... As a computer! You put in some info, and the computer does exactly what you want, no questions asked! I"M NOT A COMPUTER! I'm an individual with feelings and ideas and inspiration and dreams... But all these things don't mean shit in CMC if your not on the same wave-length as Nick. I think John put it best, "He fucked us up the ass" He did! He did as little work as possible, and then bounced on JUST us for our project. No one else's project was ripped to shreds like ours, not even the guy who drew some picture and BSed how the tiny dots of color related to CMC. And for the rest of the class he kept relating various projects to ours... Saying the same things over and over about how we just got too deep into the meaning, or how we went through the negative side of CMC (negative side was just another BS by us).

For about three hours after CMC got out me and John just kept getting angrier and angrier. We decided that tomorrow morning were going to take to the person in charge and maybe see about changing courses to film group or something. We tried to get Flatbed to switch too, because without a team to do the video, CMC would be pretty much fucked... Pay back... We put SO much time and effort into everything we've done for that class, just to be stepped on and looked down upon. I'm sick of it! Please comment, Your thoughts are VERY welcome.. I need an outside perspective...