It's late, I'm tired, but I promised a post, and by God, here it is. Brief, but here.

I hate statistics. I'm not a big fan of numbers, equations, square roots, and the like. Having said that, statistics is no different. Especially in the graduate level class I am taking it at right now. This is mainly due to my professor. I have nothing against the man personally, and I can even manage to decipher his thick Chinese accent with reasonable success.

But the man cannot teach for shit.

Universities and institutes of higher education hire professorial types to teach students, not recite notes off of a projector. That's not teaching, it's barely lecturing, and it's certainly not effective. First off, if this is supposed to be Statistics for Managers, why have I not been taught any practical managerial applications yet, huh? Moreover, if all of our homework, projects, and other assignments are done strictly on Microsoft Excel, how come we have an in-class exam outside the computer lab? Don't you think some kind of take-home exam would be more appropriate? I certainly do, because shoving Excel output in my face and asking me to make heads or tails of it won't do a helluva lotta good when all you've been asking me to do all term is to plug some numbers into my computer and print them out. Do you realize that, just to understand a project that was due this past Tuesday night, I drove 45 minutes south to West Haven just to confer with this guy, lock myself in the lab until the assignment moderately resembled a finished product, and then endure a three hour class? I was in West Haven from 10:00 AM on Tuesday 'til 8:10 PM when class let out.

And I still don't get this shit, nor am I driven to make any great attempts to understand it.

Needless to say, I didn't scrawl out the most glowing review for this guy on the evaluation sheet.

I guess what I'm getting at is, there are truly great professors, professors who enlighten, inspire, and truly make differences in the lives of some people. And then there's the other side of the coin, the miserable half-teacher. The one who doesn't do his/her job for the love of his/her craft, or to try and affect students of any age in a positive manner. The one who does it because it puts food on the table, end of story.

Folks, teaching is a tough job. You put up with a heap of shit being flung at you from all angles and get very little in return for it, either in a monetary context, or in proper acknowledgement. To do this, you really have to love the educational process, and you have to be immensely tolerant. If you're just trying to pay the bills, you're slowly snuffing your will to live, along with the aspirations of your students, because the bottom line is you don't want to be there, you don't make them want to be there, you earn a rep for yourself, and get painted into the corner of your own glass house armed only with a brick and a prayer.

Look, I truly admire the teachers that have gotten me along in my academic life. Mrs. Riley in the third grade, Mr. M. and Ms. Ring in high school, and Doug Glover, Kathryn Davis, Steven Milhauser, and Christine Page in college. Those people truly adore their craft and are willing to put up with the burdens attached. For that, I respect them. Having said that, I've also put up with my fair share of jerky teachers/professors who've become so jaded by their careers that they look at class each day like they have to punch in before taking attendance. When they reach that point, their personal attitudes can't help but spill over into their professional endeavors. And we all know what happens then.

Student interest/attention drops, papers and exams get marred, tempers flare, fingers point, GPAs suffer, and evaluations sheets are filled out with ruthless enthusiasm.

And I know that the reason a lot of these people end up in the teaching world is because there's not much else they can do with their scope of knowledge. I mean, come on, how many jobs can a geologist actually perform? So fine, I can understand that they're short on options, but I don't think that's any reason to potentially injure the education of any group of individuals, be they elementary, high school, college, or graduate students.

And I can say that because I have a final exam in Statistics for Managers on Tuesday, and it's been designed by a man who knows everything about the topic, but doesn't really care about it.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

P.S., following finals, I'll be ranting on the most overrated sitcom in TV history, Friends. Stick around, it'll be fun... unless you enjoy that rubbish. Then you're likely to be offended. I can smell the hate mail already...