So what you’re saying is…

Discussion based coursework is always a bit touchy-feely, i.e. English majors often relate stories to their personal experiences. However, professional degrees (like, say, librarianship) should not have the same outcome. One can expect people in psychology programs to have anecdotal evidence to add to discussions about their families, their hometown, the fights they have with their grandma– sometimes, but I feel like those sorts of personal bits of information just don’t seem to apply to my class on University Library Services, or Management of Library Services unless, of course, your grandmother fights with you about collection development or funding.

 

There is one particularly egregious offender in my class this semester. Now, I am one of the youngest people in my program but this girl makes me look downright worldly. She thinks the discussion is one between her and the professor, and the rest of us are just a willing audience. At one point she got up and actually took the chalk and started to try to illustrate the teacher’s point on the board for us. She has a real penchant for reiterating peoples points, “So what you’re saying is this…” and often doing it incorrectly. The other day, she called on someone.

Since the beginning of the semester she has taught us:

 

-The school where she got her undergraduate degree does not have a disability clause. (this is simply not true)

- She went there and also one other local school so she knows. She took five years to finish. For more information on why she is wrong please go here: http://www.ric.edu/disabilityservices/about.php

-Everyone in her small town in Virginia is afraid of black people. Mostly just the big manly ones, though. She doesn’t apologize for this. (In fact she actually said “I will not apologize for being afraid of black people)

-Her favorite book is He’s Just Not That Into You, it really helped get her through that “dark time.” And now she’s engaged! She brought this particular book up during a discussion of business texts, specifically, Who Moved My Cheese?

-Her mother’s side of the family has conversations by interrupting each other. We also now know her mother’s maiden name and a bit about where she is from.

-The word “bitch” actually means female dog. None of us actually knew that because unlike her, the rest of us didn’t go to elementary school.

-Everyone from New York (besides NYC) is a rural white person.

-She really likes Disney movies

-She works at a video game store

-She based her “Philosophy of Management” paper on World of Warcraft

 

Now I seem like I am ranting, and you know, I guess I am ranting, but the older I get the more I learn the value of both the dollar and my education, and as this young (and racist) girl goes on and on about her mom’s side of the family I think about the things I could buy with the 40 or 50 bucks this class is costing me. Like a nice pair of shoes. Or 300 pairs of earplugs.

 

What I really do not understand is, is she really so bad at reading peoples facial expressions that she doesn’t see that there are 35 restless frustrated and bored people hoping to possibly move the discussion back to some sort of learning? Is she so starved for attention and an outlet that she simply doesn’t care? I had really hoped that by grad school, this genre of student would have been weeded out, that they would be too busy making babies to relay their life stories to, or pan-handling on the street, talking about those good old day back in Virginia to an imaginary audience, but the more time I spend in this program the more I realize that admissions criteria must just not be that stringent, and that this strange strain of storytelling-know-it-alls ALL want to be librarians. Aren’t librarians supposed to be quiet!? If they are the future shhhshers, who will be shhhhshing them!?

I expected a few quirks to be common among library students: we all like to read, we all like our cats, I even predicted the really quiet girl who doesn’t like people to sit near her. But chatty, racist, video-game loving ignoramus?, that stereotype has just thrown me completely off guard. Where did you come from, and why librarianship? This will be a cold unfriendly world for you!

Of course, she’ll probably never notice.