Class is over

The worst course in the history of graduate school is now over. I'm pretty sure I pulled off an "A," even though my heart wasn't in it and my efforts were not optimal because the material was so dull.

Our final project was to make part of our curriculum multicultural. This is obviously something I strive to do in the first place, so this is what I literally did: found a unit plan, removed the multicultural stuff, wrote up a narrative of why it was bad, and then put it back in and explained why. Purely ridiculous.

What's best, I think, is to consider how it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

It would have been worse if...

a) The instructor had been mean (she was actually very nice).
b) The class had been at Towson University, instead of the Heat Center in Aberdeen (parking sucks at Towson)
c) I had been required to buy the textbook, instead of just copying the five pages we needed from a classmate (a screup at the bookstore or something or another, but it saved me $22 and a little bit of sanity).
d) Ummm....

Seriously, though, I couldn't believe that I paid $200/day for that fucking bullshit, pardon my french. I learned not one new piece of information, and absolutely nothing useful for my teaching. It was a rehash of, say, RA training from years ago, or undergrad studies in education. I could have taught the class and given my classmates much more from it.

Disappointing. I'm now officially disappointed that I decided to get my Master's through Towson. Even though they took my Michigan State credits, I feel like I could have gotten much more out of getting a Masters in Secondary English or a Masters in Teaching Gifted and Talented from, say, Hopkins or Goucher. As it is, my Masters is a vague "Masters in Secondary Education." This is completely ridiculous to me, because the vast majority of all my classmates are elementary education, which of course makes the classes much less useful for me. Out of 22 people in this class, only two were high school teachers. And this is a required course in the secondary education Masters program?? What a load of crap. I even e-mailed my advisor at the start of the summer and asked her if I could sub out for a class that might be more useful for my career and my students. No go. This is a requirement that I couldn't get around. Absolutely ridiculous.

Plus, the fact that Towson only offered one of the remaining four courses I need to finish my stupid Masters in the summer, meaning I'll have to pile on two courses this fall and one in the spring, just sucks.

Boo, Towson. I loved your couple of classes, but the last two have been such clunkers that I shudder to think what you'll throw at me this fall.

At least it's over. Three more classes and I get an $8,000 raise.