They Get Paid For This?

A while ago, I learned to roll with the punches that the French education system gives to me. Today though, was a real sideswipe. I decided, mostly on a whim and out of some potential, repressed feelings of guilt, to go to my Geography workshop, despite having a cold and having stayed up late the night before to finish a paper. I had not been to it before - granted it only started two weeks ago and it was never clarified where or when it met. Typical French. So, I arrive today, thinking perhaps I will be scolded by the professor or that I will simply be swamped by being so far behind.

Nope. That didn't happen. I arrive, the professor is not there. I wait five minutes, he arrives. He has an aura about him that is best described as "I don't know why you're here, I don't know why I'm here". The feeling was mutual among the other... 7 people in the class. He hands out a packet of maps and an article on economic activity in Africa. It's a class on the geography of developed countries. Even the most left-wing optimists would be hard-pressed to name a country in Africa that is, by comparison, developed. So, we get the packet, he reads three questions that we should focus on, and then leaves us in silence for the next 45 minutes. During this time, he is doing God knows what on his computer and looking as though he could have better spent this time being hungover, or possibly just passing Go, collecting the $200 and being outright dead. At the end of the 45 minutes, he asks us what we came up with for answers, and then essentially summarizes all the information given in the packet. He asks us if we have any questions. No one does. He thanks us, and we all leave.

I cannot get those 45 minutes back, no matter how much I try. Like so many car keys, earings, and pennies, I have lost those minutes irretrievably into a spiteful, pitiless vacuum. I muse thus on one of the great American credos, that all men are created equal. Well, men maybe - university courses, not hardly. I don't think I will be going back next week.