Tuesday afternoon found me sitting in what was slowly shaping up to be the most awful journalism class ever. I wanted a really good last class to send me out on my journalistic way and I entered the Broadcast Journalism class with high hopes. But it was just one bad thing after another.
As the professor went around the room asking for our names and life stories, he said to me, "So you're from Chicago, huh? Blackhawks fan? Do you follow sports?" I responded with blithe naivete, "I don't really follow sports... or pay attention to them at all." His eyes narrowed and he went on to ask every student in the room about their sports preferences. Turns out the whole back row was full of football players. The professor and the athletes talked sports for a while before he finally buckled down to class business. Needless to say he and I had nothing to chat about. Red flag # 1.
The professor asked the students about their journalistic experience and it turned out the guy behind me has his own political talk show. The professor asked a few choice questions about his political stance and before long the two of them were happily sharing their affiliation for a political party I do not belong to and for issues I do not agree with. I'll leave it to your imagination. Red Flag # 2.
"Alright well... time to start class," the professor admitted with some reluctance half way through the time period. He pulled up a powerpoint and as I opened my notebook, he said, "You don't need to take notes because the powerpoints for the entire semester are available on Concourse (the class website)." What. If that's the case, why should we even bother going to class? I took a look after class and sure enough, the whole semester was parsed out in 219 tidy slides. I took a gander through them and they contained such choice lessons as "How to write in Active Voice, not Passive." Hello, 8th grade English class. Red Flag #s 3-4 million.
So I dropped that class like it was hot, which brings me to my huge existential dilemma: which journalism class should I pick up instead? It's down to Advanced Reporting or Multimedia Journalism. The former sounds more useful plus it has my friend Laura in it, while the latter sounds more fun. I just can't decide. Any advice?
Go with the one that sounds more challenging/ interesting. Also, have you heard anything about the professors teaching those courses, because they obviously make a huge difference, as you,unfortunately, observed first hand.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Vanes