Over the past few months, ever since I enrolled in my dreaded French class, I have been nervous/stressed/anxious about going. I had been told by everyone who had taken a class with this professor that she was heartless. She refuses to be happy until she has made each of her students cry. Or until she has called you out in front of the class and attacked you for either your personal beliefs or your wrong answer to a question. I was determined to not let her effect me. I was planning on being strong and keeping a good attitude and just letting her hurtful words slide off my back. Well. That all changed Tuesday.
It started like any other class. We reviewed the readings we read, her correcting our mistakes and then we all settled in for her lecture. Her lectures skip around like crazy and so it's very hard to follow and keep up with her fast French and crazy teaching style. But I was doing okay. It was 20ish minutes into class and I had taken a page and a half of notes already. I felt good about what I was learning and felt like I was keeping up very well. And then. It happened. She said, "Quel est la raison pour laquel le guerre civile americain commence, Katrina?" Which means, "Why did the American civil war start, Katrina?" Like everyone else in the room I looked around for Katrina. There are only 8 people in our class and I didn't remember anyone being named Katrina. After a few awkward seconds of silence my eyes settled on my professor. My heart sank when I realized she was talking to me. "Moi?" I asked. "Oui, tu es Katrina." I hesitated in responding that my name was Kristina. And that was when she tore into me. I'm going to loosely translate what she then said.
"Katrina it is very important for you to pay attention during class. It says in the syllabus that class participation is a huge part of your grade and if you don't pay attention you will fail."
She went on for literally 5 more minutes about how I need to pay attention or fail and blah blah blah. Now. Let me say, when I get mad, I cry. That's how I am. So as she goes on and on, I'm getting more and more angry because she is making me look awful, and she is talking to me with zero respect, in front of my whole class. I could feel the tears pushing at the back of my eyes but I wasn't going to let her win. She didn't deserve that. Finally she stopped griping and looked at me for an answer. I replied, in French, that the civil war started because men were fighting for equality.
After making a spectacle about my poor French, she informs me that the civil war was an economical war, surprising me and probably everyone else in the class. She said that people in the North were paying their employees and people in the south weren't. Therefore, the civil war was more about economics than it was about equality. I can't begin to describe how much more angry this made me. Essentially, I felt like no matter how you look at it, the civil was about equality. Even if you look at it economically it was about equality in economics. So, after being attacked and laughed at by her, I quietly went back to taking notes.
About ten minutes later, she asks another question. Which she also directs towards Katrina. Now, if someone is going to give me a new name, they can't expect me to learn it in 10 minutes. So again, I look around. This time I get another 5 minute speech about how I shouldn't look to other people for answers. I kindly tell her that my name is Kristina. She doesn't care. She just wanted an answer. I answered her question...which of course was wrong. And now I can't hold back the tears anymore. As I sat and stewed I got more and more mad and more and more frustrated. I couldn't believe that I was sitting in class crying because of her. I was ashamed and frustrated with myself. Class ended eventually, with her asking me if I was going to pay more attention next week. I told her yes and then rushed out of there.
I honestly don't know how I'm going to show my face in that class again. Please pray for me over the rest of the semester. I still have to go 25 more times or so.
Moral of the story: No matter how much I pay attention, I won't answer a question directed to Katrina.
-Kristina
1 comment:
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