College's Dumb Pageant

I was able to sneak into the last Summer session ("C Term") to try and get one class done before the Fall semester starts. Since Micro Economics is a prereq for just about everything the School of Management has to offer, I decided that was where I should devote my four weeks (Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings).

If you know me, you know I've been in college for about ten years now. Just about every class I've taken has someone who fills a required role (Returning-Adult Answerbot, Stupid Question Asker, Disinterested Napper, and Lady Lunchtime). School generally follows the same concept as The Real World: all personality-types must be represented, all serious students must be annoyed.

My Econ class has a much more ecclectic mix that I'm used to. First of all, it has the highest percentage of hot girls I've ever had in a class (goodbye Computer Science, hello School of Management).

The characters this go-round are much more animated though. I didn't expect TV's Cameron Manheim to play the over-compensating Returning Adult Student, complete with giant purse and equally giant beach bag full of snacks.



Also sitting in the front row is a girl I have knicknamed "Alpha Dumb Bitch". Have you ever seen that gaggle of dumb bitches sitting around and squawking out nonsense, and one is clearly the boss of them all? Yeah, she and her caucasian updo are in my class. I'm sure you're thinking, "Wow Alpha John, you and Alpha Dumb Bitch could make adorable Alpha Babies together", but I'm pretty sure she'd end up like Lacie Peterson and I'd be sharing a cell with Scott when all was said and done. Anyway, ADB (and Cameron Manheim for that matter) like to ask unrelated questions to prove their intelligence.

Before I share my anecdote about Saturday's class, let me tell you about our professor. He's Hispanic, probably late 20s early 30s, I'm guessing he's a PHD student, and English is not his first language. He clearly knows the material, and while he doesn't use the best examples to illustrate the model he's discussing at that very moment, if you've done the reading ahead of time (as dictated by the syllabus) you have no problem following the lecture. He tries to keep the lecture upbeat, definately not a snoozer, so maybe not the best professor I've had but probably in the top third.

In our lecture on Saturday, we discussed the idea of price ceilings (i.e. rent control) and price floors (i.e. government declaring the minimum price for things like crops) and he's taking us through the model for each. During the discussion on price ceilings, Cameron Manheim feels she needs to reinforce his teaching with a not-so-related example even though we were just exploring the model. It wasn't as though the room was lost, but she felt she needed to help everyone understand, and I fucking hate when people do that. I have only done that once or twice in a Comp Sci class when the professor couldn't make people understand his point and was finishing for an example, but I certainly didn't take over the room because I felt he didn't explain it well enough.

One of the key discussion points for price floors is that the government sets the price (this was typically done with agribusiness) and guarantees they will buy any surplus. About five minutes later, when we were going through the model, Alpha Dumb Bitch decides to drop some science about how the Government used to pay farmers during WWII not to grow anything on their land. While she glowed that she knew some Social Studies that he didn't, I was like "bitch...that's not a price floor". He took another minute or two to wrap up the model, and then Alpha Dumb Bitch asks, "Can you give an example of anytime when the government instituted economic policy and it like actually worked?" and Cameron Manheim actually cut him off mid-answer to give her example. The front row was a flurry of stupid, and in the mean time our Professor stood at the front of the room, frozen (like a sitcom "freeze frame" where the actors all hold still) for a good 15 seconds and then just kept on going. We all looked at each other and were like "what just happened?".

The highlight of Saturday's class, however, was sitting in front of a girl (a SAG actually) who smelled like she murdered a Bath & Body Works on the way to class. When she sat down, a Pig Pen cloud of artificial fruit scents knocked me out of my chair. What was really hot though was the Layne Bryant spaghetti strap tank top she wore on her oh-so-dumpy body, and the quartet of zits bursting forth from her backfat. Utter hotness.