Dear SWEET Doge...
So, I've been having One of Those WeeksTM and, frankly, I just need to let off some steam.
I'm in the Master's of Education for Secondary English Education Program at my school, and lately I have been just so tired with the way Education is approached in America. I'm a grad student. My undergrad was a BA in English. I've been in school for the better part of the last 20 years. I know how to write a 3-5 page essay by now. I get that professors need something to show they've gauged my learning in the class. I get that not everyone in all of my classes is an English Education Major, and that maybe they still need some help with such things. But I swear by all the gods of every faith that I am going to explode if I have to keep this up. Writing essays doesn't challenge me. It doesn't really mean I'll take any of the information with me, especially when I'm just expected to regurgitate whatever I already said in class. Multiple choice questions on exams do the same thing.
But more important than this is that the Lit classes I'm forced to take are all pointless to me outside of being literature. So I've read Rip Van Winkle now, and so I understand its historical context. So I've experienced the horrors of All's Quiet on the Western Front. I've read the words, and I understand all of them, and I get the stories now, but what I don't get is why in Doge's name I'm not learning about these books in a way that isn't exactly like I learned them in third grade. It's mechanical to me, and mechanical learning is the worst kind because it doesn't engage a student. It doesn't help me to grow, and that's what Education (with a capital E) should be about.
And the fun doesn't stop there!
No, if it weren't enough that I'm flushing money and time away to get a piece of paper which says I'm qualified to do something that dozens of people have already said I'm good at (I was a Math Tutor and an English Tutor throughout High School and my Undergrad. I even got to teach a few classes while I was in High School because I was smart, personable, and the subs didn't know the material at all), if THAT weren't enough then this week has been trying my patience and my physical limits at every turn. Every day this week I've woken up feeling exhausted because of the previous day's efforts.
On Sunday it was because I ran a game for 4 hours and finalized the first draft of my custom social combat system for Anima (more on that later). On Monday it was because people were arguing with me about said custom system the whole day, and when then I had to stay up late to finish some homework. On Tuesday it was because I got to bed late (again), and I was freezing, so I was moving sluggishly. It was also raining on Tuesday, so I didn't get to bike to school, which meant I was feeling pretty slow all day. I also gave blood on Tuesday (yay Blood donations!), which was fine except that I had to reschedule my appointment three hours beforehand because I'd forgotten my own schedule, and then needles and I aren't friends. So I wake up Wednesday morning feeling even more drained from what was then three days of people arguing with me, the blood donation, and the massive amounts of thick reading I've been doing (research reports and Benito Cereno are not a good combination). I pour juice instead of milk into my cereal, ruining most of it. I bike to school, and afterwards I bike a couple more miles to an appointment, but miss the place by a few blocks on what Google Maps says is a "mostly flat" stretch of road, but which really means "It's a slight uphill battle the whole way, loser," and with textbooks and my laptop in my backpack the extra effort was not kind to me. Today hasn't been better. Suffice it to say that argument is still going on and I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to write off these otherwise intelligent people as braindead when it comes to this one subject.
What is the nature of the argument, one might ask? Well it revolved around three points, which I'll give a brief summary on:
1. Social rolls in tabletop games are mind control. My opponents think they are, I think they aren't.
2. Social rolls in tabletop games can't possibly reflect the nuance and situational conditions of real social interactions. I disagree.
3. I'm an [expletive deleted]. I disagree on this point too, but only in this particular conversation (I'm a bit of an [expletive deleted], I'm just not being on in this specific conversation).
Now, most of the contention on these three points seems to be that everyone this week in intent on misinterpreting everything I say, construing it in a way that's insulting to them, or simply taking out all the substance of my argument and saying "Aha, so you DO admit it's Mind Control." Now, yes, I'm overexaggerating just a bit. There are some people I've had completely decent human communication with, and it's been fine. But I'll be a monkey's uncle if it hasn't been the majority interpreting me wrong. It's gotten to the point where I'm apologizing for just about everything I say now just to avoid seeming like some glaring [expletive deleted]. Thus it takes me twice as long to say whatever I'm saying, and it makes me seem whiny, or too sincere, or something else negative.
Why haven't I given up on the argument, you ask? Oh ho. That's because I'm stubborn and think that people are generally good. I think that people are rational and will, if presented with enough evidence, at least consider the possibility that they're not absolutely correct and I'm not absolutely wrong. I believe in people, despite all the evidence piled up on the other side of the scale, because without that belief I don't think I would be able to make it through another day. I know that not all people are good, decent, reasonable, or any combination of the three. I just like to start from that point and exhaust all options before giving it up, you know? It's self-destructive, I know, but I'm Tyr The Martyr (patent pending), so it's kind of what I do...
In short: I'm tired. I'm getting depressed thinking about how some people are (yes, when people are unreasonable or mean it makes me physically sad). And, well, I just can't win this week... but I haven't let it keep me from trying.
Thanks for reading, assuming anyone has.
Also, please, please, please, I'm begging everyone who reads this: don't get into the conversation about whether social rolls are mind control with me. I'm happy to link the conversation (which leads to an outside site), and (if I can find it) even the old argument I had about it on this very site, but I couldn't handle it if this became another battle in the little war I've gotten myself into... yeah.