Humiliation

Lord help me in my last month of my college career.

Yikes.

Today in one of my classes at this fine institution, we were doing group work and handed in a contract. The instructions at the top said to go over the questions and "sign this document." We did just that. Apparently (nothing was said verbally or in writing) we were to write our own document and "this" pertained to "that." She said to our group member, "What is this? This is worthless to me."

The moment he handed her the paper she responded with an attitude and by the end the class was looking at us with the "Ooooo what'd you do now" glance. She had absolutely no beef with us. This was the first assignment we were to hand in so it is not as though we were slackers for the 3rd time in a row.

No student deserved the attitude and public humiliation she gave us. Besides, we misunderstood HER POOR DIRECTIONS! I know, I'm allowing her to affect my behavior now, but that is just it.

People misunderstand directions. In our case, it was nothing HUGE, just a simple mistake we are now fixing. Why did she instantly pull a 180? One of my favorite lines in a movie entitled Friends with Money is when the husband (very kind, optimistic man) finally confronts his wife (a pessimistic woman experiencing a mid-life crisis on her own self-worth) by saying something like, "What injustice has the world done to you that you feel the need to treat others the way you do?"

Her bad attitude sent me on a rant after class (Thanks sister for listening!) and the other 3 group members were disappointed with how she treated us as well. Something set off our professor who then humiliated 4 people, causing these 4 to be upset, I then vented to my roommate and sister (for validation purposes which we all need once in a while :)), who knows what the other group members did with the situation, but do you see how this expands? One domino knocks down all the rest.

In this situation I had a nice long conversation in my head of me walking into my professors office saying, "Professor______, I do not care for the way you approached the situation in class. It was humiliating and I do not believe you should have ridiculed us for misunderstanding the directions you gave us. We thought "this document" was THIS one, and it was not necessary for you to be demeaning to us. It was very unprofessional." What would this have proven? Nothing aside from how she probably would have failed us for my poor decision to confront her. She is always emphasizing her great success in her masters and the length of time she has been teaching and the great conferences she has spoken at, but I firmly believe we all have a duty to be a good citizen and no diploma makes one person better than the next.

There, now my rant is in cyber world and I pray whatever was troubling her is now handled and that we all learn to not allow another's bad day affect us!