Cheesy Quintessence

Today was the first day of my United States History I class, which runs for three hours in one session each week, in the Fall 2005 semester. Upon my arrival, I entered the college, and I was shortly asked by the new old man’s face where the snacks, such as Coke and candy were located; the old man had scraggly grey/white facial hair and was dressed in an ugly work shirt. I told him where to go, and headed off to my classroom.

When I got to the classroom, I noticed a different old man, nicely dressed and standing in the doorway to the classroom, talking to one of the students. I thought, “He must be the instructor.” But this guy left and never returned. As I listened to my music, I waited with fellow students for a while, and then saw the return of the scraggly old man asking how to get on to the Internet with one of the lab computers. I explained that it was for students only, and that a password was needed, and I refused to give him access via my account; why should I break the rules by giving computer access to some crazy person off the street? Another student did as the guy requested, though. Time passed, and shortly after the assigned starting time of class, I was surprised to see what happened…

Two minutes past 18:00 marked the next return of the scraggly old man. He came to the front of the class and started ranting about how much drinks and candy cost in the college’s snack room; “Anybody who pays 75 cents for a candy bar or $1.25 for a bottle of water is mentally ill. You could go to H-E-B and get those things for 44 cents.” And he, the apparent instructor of the class, left once more. By this time, another student in the class remarked, “Is this guy insane?”

After a few minutes, he was back, and begin ranting again he did! This time, his gripe was about budget; the school had no decent maps in the classroom. “This is what you get for fitting the budget: nothing, but it fits the budget.” Then he discovered there were no whiteboard markers in the room, so he started griping about the new “fake blackboards” that require “something special” to be written upon, and started out to go get some markers. Before he got a few feet from the board, he turned around and complained, “Oh, and they can’t be erased unless you have one of these things” as he held up a whiteboard eraser. Whiteboards are easily erased by hand or by just about anything else. Try doing that with a chalkboard.

After he returned with markers, he wrote his info up on the board. His name was Rudy Bauss, from Washington DC. He has a Ph. D. in Latin American History, acquired from Tulane University in New Orleans, and resolved to undo “damage” caused by high school coaches teaching history. Ironically, he’s obsessed with sports; he said that if he’d read anything in the Austin American Statesman, it’d be the sports section. He made many sports references thereafter.

To begin the class, he started ranting about the history of the university or something, and how he was here to make us skeptical. If there’s anything he teaches us, it is to ask, “Why? Why? WHY?” He’s also obsessed with money and managing finances, and would be teaching about it in this class since it wouldn’t be taught anywhere else. He doesn’t believe in memorizing history, and just wants us to get an overview. Despite this, we’re expected to memorize all the states and world countries to put them on maps in two weeks. He also says history is all up to interpretation; everybody in the class will read it and interpret it differently.

Most of the class session was about him…

• He’s a socialist, and said to the class, “Your parents warned you about it; corruption is here. Bring your guns next time.”
• He doesn’t own a television.
• He likes hip hop.
• He’s seemingly obsessed with all kinds of sports.
• He hates the United States military.
• He hated technical institutes back in his day, and everybody therein was the dumbest group of people he’d ever met.
• He’d like to shoot the last several presidents because they make grammar errors when they speak.
• He’s also lived all over the world, and wants everybody in the class to get that ambition and wish to see almost every place in the world.
• It also seems he may have arrived in Texas due to online dating.
• None of the women in Texas seem to like him for some reason. “Oh well, that’s what eHarmony is for.”

In addition to all that nonsense, he got everybody’s names and had everybody answer a personal survey on a notecard, with questions about each person’s name, major, occupation, contact info, hobbies, favored music, movies, books, and stuff.

Finally, after all that crap, and more crap I’ve forgotten because it was happening so fast, he got to something of relative substance: the syllabus. After the syllabus, which included plenty of ranting about what to do in the case of emergencies and whatnot, he went over to the United States map he brought and began rattling off all sorts of statistics about trends in demographics and stuff. People appeared to be noting what he was saying, but he was going so fast I wouldn’t be able to make note of half of what he said in a shorthand format I’d be able to understand five minutes thereafter. This stuff went on until past the end of the class, which was 20:50.

All in all, this class period was a load of crap. Just two days earlier, a friend said I should try to get E. Peters for my history teacher, and that if I didn’t get him, drop the class and get him. Unfortunately, E. Peters’ class is very inconvenient for my schedule, and I’ve already missed two classes of it. I’m not sure what to do… should I continue and risk killing my GPA due to this whacko, drop the class and only get seven hours/credits this semester, or try to move to E. Peters’ class and be two classes behind?