November - the 4-legged monster

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The slide presentation on the History of Travel Writing is my first exposure to a learning phenomenon I have not yet personally experienced. Four people work together to produce one assignment. It really is like a 4-legged monster with uneven legs and no sense of direction, but we are all a part of it and we all have to make those 4 legs arrive together on a specific date. If a leg drops off or wanders in a different direction, the other legs have to take up the slack.

I am so grateful that Joanne understands this factoid perfectly. The others say, "oh, it's not fair we shouldn't make decisions until everyone is here." Or, "everybody should have the same vote" meaning we should vote on decisions over and over again until everyone is there and understands and has had a chance to research what is being voted on. A nice idea, but if we only have two weeks to do this and members of the group don't attend 90% of the meetings, it doesn't work very well.

Prof Marilyn has thundered, "If anyone is not pulling their weight on this project I want to know. I will not have my D students pulling my A students down!"

So, on it went. Only Joanne and I were showed up at each meeting. Dayna and Ashley were either working part-time, partying, sleeping, weren't coming into class that day or somehow never showed up at a meeting even if they had been reminded to an hour earlier.

I had no idea if everyone would be there at the presentation. I had covered travel books, Joanne covered newspaper travel sections, Ashley covered National Geographic Magazine and Dayna the travel magazines post 1900 to the present time. Until Dayna and Ashley started showing up for meetings Joanne and I were prepared to go up and only show our parts of the presentation.

Marilyn had wanted us to spread reading and showing the slides equally timed between all 4 people, but we just never got together enough times to work that out seamlessly. So we agreed to just read our own. Joanne's and my section took 15 minutes of our 20 minute allotment, the other 2 took the other 5 minutes.

November - the pressure builds

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Joanne is my salvation. Yes, she is young, but she has already been through 4 years of university and 2 years of living and working on her own. She knows exactly what I am going through. She invites me into her group because she understands another person who wants to work, who wants to complete the assignments more than socialize, show off to their peers, and feel smart goofing off.

Joanne has studied environmentalism and is now studying journalism as a way of channeling her environmental interests. Two other 18-year-olds are in her group, Dayna and Jason. She tells me they have not contributed much in the way of ideas or enterprise so far, but if given tasks they will do them. Well, that's better than nothing.

Joanne is a world traveler and excellent photographer. In the next two hours we work out the foundation for a travel magazine, and a newspaper based on articles we have already written as assignments, which will save us having to write new articles. Thank you, merciful lord.

Joanne also joins my one-person group in the History of Journalism assignment on the history of travel writing. Prof Marilyn, in the History of Journalism class wrote out choices for our next PowerPoint assignments for class, except this time in 4 person groups, on the blackboard with instructions for us to come and sign out names under our topic of preference. I wrote my name under History of Travel Writing and no one else did. Marilyn then wrote Dayna's name under mine because she wasn't in class that day and lost her choice. Joanne wasn't in class either so but volunteered for the History of Travel writing too before Marilyn noticed.

So now, Joanne, Dayna and I were working on the magazine, the newspaper, the media kit for both and on the travel writing presentation. Later we would be joined in travel writing by my previously errant partner Ashley, who decided to come into a class after all and was placed with us.

Carol, who did attend the History of Journalism classes had signed up for History of War Journalism.

All of us bond by bitching about Prof Marilyn's marking habits which too often seem to be based on the mood she's in, or the expectation of us being able to second-guess how she wants her test questions answered even though they may be answered correctly but in other words. I put up with this in high school because arbitrary power plays by teachers were expected, I am no mood to put up with it now.

November - Group work

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This College relies a lot on group work. It's one way to process as many students as possible, and therefore collect more money, while dealing with the problem of how to teach them effectively. The College's theory is that if you make them do lessons and assignments in groups you only have to mark one assignment for every 4 people. The profs have left that fact slip out more than once.

As usual I was having a hard time in the most precise, least philosophical class: Design for Newsprint. And I once imagined being a layout artist. No way. Because I am late with an assignment I have not been able to finish in class, I am not paying attention when Prof Marshall tells the class to form groups of 4 for a major assignment leading to major marks. The groups form themselves and I am left with 2 other orphans. Not ones I would have chosen if I had first choice.

This is my group:

Ross is an enigma. He is 18 years old and says he has never read a newspaper before coming into this course. He wants to be a sports writer and he only reads stats. He doesn't even read other sports writers and obviously not, Mitch Albom. When I ask him what makes him want to write for newspapers, since he is revolted by the thought of reading them, he says, "I like sports."

Great. He likes sports but does not have what it takes to be an athlete, so what else can he do? Hey, he can be a sports writer. How else to get to see free games. He is one of the most passive, clued-out looking people in the class.

"Not the sharpest tool in the shed," Carol said about him once. Carol has dropped the graphics design classes in an effort to get control over her responsibilities, so I can't get into a group with her.

Ashley is also 18 years old. Sweet, angelic looking, wide-eyed waif. Our assignment is to put 4 pages of a newspaper together: the front page, a news page, and 2 other sections. We must write all the articles and take all the photos or create all art. It must have headlines, a targeted readership and be pleasing to read. It took me 2 hours to finish my unfinished assignment, time which Ross and Ashley had to confer about the subject matter of the newspaper. In that time they did not come up with one idea. I feel that familiar sense of panic again.

The assignment has to be in within 5 weeks (along with similar major assignments coming down, like a magazine and a media kit for both magazine and newspaper). In that time, Ashley is sick for 2 of the 5 weeks and does not return phone calls or emails.

Ross keeps saying, "yeah, yeah, I know" whenever I say we have to get started on this. He tells me Ashley doesn't like some of the classes and isn't coming to them anymore. I discover now is the time when students start dropping out, which is often displayed by just not showing up at class.

We did finally decide to do a newspaper on local music based around a local band who are friends of Ashley's, because neither of them had the slightest idea what I was talking about when I mentioned some of my interests, like the work of human rights' NGO's against the federal government's to cut off their necessary funding.

This band performs only at certain times. Our main article will be about their performance which only Ashley knows when will be happening. But she isn't communicating and not showing up for class way after she is not sick anymore, and Ross looks like a thought will come into his head only if he is connected to an electrical charge. I am in serious panic now because I cannot do this alone. I cannot do all the work and crack the whip over their heads too.

Ross tells me he has no idea when Ashley will come back to class or when she will talk to her band friends. Then he tells me he has been talking to her on the phone almost every evening. And he never thought to ask her these questions!!!

The teachers have told us that if someone in our group is not pulling their share of the load to let them know immediately. I ventilate my panic all over Prof Marshall and he tells me he will find me another group.

All the groups are full so I am placed in the a group of guys I mentioned before. The most guy group in the class. The ones who snark and whistle and snort and make paper airplanes through lectures. The ones interested only in zombies, gaming, hard metal and splatter films. I could deal with sticking only to these subjects. As a sociological writer basically, I can write about the sociology of anything. However, I discover that not only have they also not decided on a subject for the newspaper, they cannot decide.

They are too busy cracking jokes and outwitting each others ideas. They are too busy showing each other what smart guys they are to actually arrive at a final decision. They are too busy competing and showing off and not letting anyone else make a decision either - because every decision is an invitation to another competition and to another round of witty, put-down jokes.

The last thing these guys want is to have their grandma sitting in their tight little group. Two more hours of class are spent in having not one decision made, not even my arbitrary decisions allowed.

The next day, despondent, I pour my heart out to a friendly 25-year-old named Joanne. Luckily, she is my salvation.

November begins

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I am back after spending the last week of "rest" running through several university libraries and long distance calls to Winnipeg and special stores that might have books on the North End of Winnipeg, which is my "neighborhood" even though I haven't seen it in 20, or so, years.


The result is 8 pages of essay and Prof John likes it. John likes all my work. His job is to teach the students to think. He realizes I can think and he is grateful for that. He gives me an A+.

John and I have come to having chats after the History and Politics class. He is also a vagabond, a hobo through life. A square peg surrounded by round holes. He is a creative, philosophical person who has had a difficult time trying to turn those skills into a money-making enterprise. He has been an actor, a poet, an author, an editor, a publisher, film-making crew, construction worker and a bookstore owner. He has taught at the college for 32 years, most of it part-time. Sounds like my life, except I haven't reached the teacher stage yet. Anyway, he is not surprised by my career trajectory.

But he has lost his patience with the young and that slips out too often. He praises their quickness of mind but he decries their interests in loud music and video games. He tries to sound hip but only makes it obvious he is not hip because he is trying so hard. He comes across like an old fuddy-duddy who just wants to sleep in front of the TV and young people are making too much racket.

He meanders through his lessons, which sounds a lot like, "when I was your age...", an instant turn-off, even for me. He tells jokes nobody gets and anecdotes about his life that interest no one. He'll make reference to some movie, "there's that movie that's playing downtown - you know - the one all the kids are seeing. What's its name? You know the one." The young students indicate confusion, and that makes him even more dismissive of them.

I enjoy talking with him though. I too sense the distance between me and the young students, but I hope I am not like him.