February 24

The only thing that happened in class today was my teacher bothered me.  It was little things and mentioning them won't help anyone, so I removed this post.

February 23

The reading for this class was another chapter in the same book by Eboo Patel. The book is called Acts of faith: the story of an American Muslim, the struggle for the soul of a generation and it's basically amazing. I suppose one good thing about this class is that it shows us some pretty awesome stuff. Granted, we don't tend to actually discuss these things in class, particularly. Then again, if we discussed these amazing things, I probably wouldn't be writing this blog.

Anyway, here's a screen-shot of another part of our homework:

On Moodle, or it didn't happen

Maybe it's just me, but if we're being leaders, shouldn't we be figuring these things out on our own? I'm not saying that leaders don't need help sometimes, but shouldn't that be at our discretion? I don't think it's helpful for students to toss ideas around in a space where the teacher can tell them, at any time, “You're doing it wrong.” Also, everyone in the class can see what you're planning. This isn't a problem like the teacher's constant threat of advice, but it's weird. People in the class could look at what other groups are doing, just to get an idea, and judge you. It's a little intimidating. I would rather that they trusted us enough to plan our presentations alone, using e-mail or whatever else worked best for us. Then again, what do I know? I'm just a student, after all. I had hoped college wouldn't repeat this high school mentality, but this class sure seems to.

February 17

Sorry about the string of late posts. This whole idea of leadership must be just a little too large for my tiny brain.

Then, for the first time, we actually had a chance to do some leadership in this class. She told us to make our groups for the project we had. We had to pick topics that didn't overlap, break ourselves into groups, and decide who would present on which day. I'm proud to say that we rose to this mighty challenge. Someone offered to write things down on the board and it was fairly smooth sailing from there. After she came back in the room, she double checked everything we had done, then let us out early. All of that student leadership is tiring for all of us, you know.

February 14

I had time today so I figured I may as well get the homework done for this class so I didn't have to think about it until class. So, I read the assigned reading.

It was chapter 3, Identity Politics, of some book whose title I don't know by Eboo Patel. This reading was absorbing and actually good. However, I don't know what finding your niche based on your race, or not, has to do with leadership. I wonder if it will be a pattern that anything good in this class has nothing to do with it. I do have a few things about this reading that bothered me, but they don't have much to do with the reading itself. I hate where the reading ended. Maybe it's because I read so much, but it bothers me that the story wasn't finished. The chapter ended in the middle of relationship problems between the main character and his girl and, when our reading ended, he hadn't figured out what he would do about social justice and such. I realize the first part isn't necessary for this class, but I still want to know what happened to them, dammit. I'll probably read the book on my own later. Really, though, they should have finished the thread about what he would do about social justice since that's kind of what we're talking about in class...a little. Anyway, the other problem: the last two pages were sideways. This is yet another indicator to me of how little the people running this class care about it.

After our reading, we had to complete a survey. It was short, thank goodness, but there were some things about it that bothered me. Of course there were questions on rating things 1 through 5 and then there were questions where we could type our responses. The first question where we really responded asked what had help us learn material for this class. I'm wondering what they thought we might write. I don't think we've learned anything, so nothing has helped us learn. Also, the survey was titled “How is this class going so far?”, but that's not a question in the survey. The title isn't even close to one of the questions they asked. I realize that would be a vague question, but it would be helpful to them to know how we were liking their class and what they could change about it. Then again, that assumes that they want to know what we think of the class in the midst of it. I know we'll get to tell them our opinions at the end. Maybe next year's class will be lucky and this class won't be required.

On another note, to be in this class, you have to be in a certain honors program. One of my friends was so fed up with this class that she dropped being in the honors program so she wouldn't have to take the class anymore. I think that shows more than this blog ever could how terrible this class is.

However, just to show I'm not bitter, I think I'll give this class a valentine. It's the day for it after all.

February 10

Sorry this post is late. Clearly, I was considering how to be a great leader.

One of the first things we learned again in class today is that both the Humane Society and something like picking up trash in a park are “not humane enough”. Apparently, different volunteering projects have a set level of humane-ness. Well, that's one thing I learned from this class, anyway.

Then our teacher handed around something called the Social Identity Wheel. Basically, she wanted us to to mark the traits we used most often and least often to identify people, which ways of classifying ourselves we thought about most, and which labels have the strongest effect on how we perceive ourselves. I have the wheel for you here:

The line for between Age and National Origin looks like it was put in at the last minute. Age isn't a real identity.

Personally, I don't label myself by any of these too often. I tend to think of myself as a person, you know, a mix of things and not easily classifiable by one word. That's just me. I'm sure there's plenty of people who only have one side to them and are nothing else except that. No, wait. That other thing...

February 7

We had to watch a TED talk for this assignment. I was annoyed about this when I first hear about it but when I watched Chimamanda Adichie talk about the danger of a single story, I realized it was actually good and worth my time. Really, you should go watch it, if you've got about 19 minutes. So, because it was good and this is a blog about how terrible this class is, I won't talk about it anymore.

By the way, I have no idea why we watched this video. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with this class. That's probably why it was good. The prompt for the reflective essay that's due this week has nothing to do with the video, either. I guess they just felt like having us watch it. The essay prompt read as follows:

“Reflection Paper 1.

The purpose of this reflection paper is to explore your initial perspectives on leadership and service. Provide a carefully considered definition of leadership. Then, to explain what you feel are the most important connections between leadership and service, locate examples of leadership (in your own experience or that of another person you know or admire). Describe these examples in some detail, paying special attention to how they can be considered purposeful, inclusive, empowering and ethical. Using these examples, explain how you see leadership as related to doing service for the good of society.

Your paper should consist of a response to the prompt above that is carefully crafted and edited. The minimum length is 2 pages, double spaced, in an 11 or 12 point font with standard 1 inch margins.”

I know my initial perspectives on leadership (it's something I don't like doing), and service (helping people in need is very important). There, I just summed them up in two parenthetical statements. They want us to write a paper on this? To be fair, it's only really one page long. The first task, defining leadership, seemed incredibly easy to me.

Now what's the definition for "smart-ass"?

I decided not to use this definition and instead write some BS. Not writing this paper with heart? I've got it covered from the first paragraph. Moving right along: connecting service and leadership. Yes, when someone leads, they provide service to the people they are leading. Granted, it may not be a good service (Hitler was a leader who provided his subjects with the terrible service of genocide), but it will be some sort of service. Really, it's not hard to connect those two, especially if you decide to write about a volunteer leader.

Also, describe how leadership is purposeful? In order to lead, you need a purpose. You can't lead and have nothing to lead towards. Why even bother telling us to write about that? Oh wait. I forgot. It's this class, of course they're going to do things that are annoying and don't make sense. Silly me.

Also, for the good of society? Is that something like the greater good? If you've seen Hot Fuzz, or are fairly well-read, you'll know the danger inherent in that phrase. Just trust me, serving the greater good is not always the ethical or good thing to do.

As I was writing this paper, I realized I needed two examples. I didn't write this, but I was very tempted to: “Another wonderful leader was your mom.” Heck, for all I know, it's true. Then again, I don't know my teacher's mom, so I couldn't write anything about one time when she led something awesome. Hey, I can dream. Maybe my teacher's mom will lead a revolution that liberates me and my people from having to take this class. ¡Viva la Revolucion!

February 3

I walked into class a couple of minutes early today. I thought this was fairly impressive because I left my dorm a little later than I'd intended and the sidewalks are skating rinks. However, when I walked into class, the teacher had already started talking and it sounded like the things we talk about for class. I was, and I'm sure the others who walked in before the bell were also, confused at her early start time. I suppose the important thing is that she wasn't saying anything crucial so I didn't have to worry about missing it. Come to think of it, that kind of sounds like the entire class.

As I'm sure you know, emotions lead to thoughts which lead to actions which lead to performance. The performance is supposed to refer to job performance, by the way. When I first heard that, I began thinking of how often I hadn't acted on my emotions. After typing that sentence, though, I think of how teenagers have “dirty thoughts” that cause them to commit actions that will surely send them directly to Hell. I'm reminded of Frollo from Disney's adaptation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Sometimes they aren't teenagers...

 
Anyway, soon after that we started talking about the volunteering we had to do for this class. (At one point, the teacher used the word “volunteerism”. I don't think that's a real word, whatever a dictionary will tell you.) The abbreviation this class is using for that is ISP. Don't ask me what that stands for because I don't care enough to remember. I just need to be sure not to confuse that with the ISSP from Cowboy BeBop. The police force of a futuristic society has very little to do with getting 5 volunteer hours for some humanitarian cause, so I think I'll be okay. By the way, the Humane Society is not humanitarian enough for this class. Never mind that adorable animals can be beneficial to people, too.

Pictured: Not Helpful to People. At All

Then she told us about the reflection papers we have to write. In this paper, we have to talk about our “initial perspectives on leadership and service.” I suspect that if I wrote my true feelings, I wouldn't score very well on the paper. However, she warned us that only papers written with heart would get a coveted “9”. That's the highest score, by the way. Why would it be ten? That's silly. You're silly. Her declaration that she can tell when a paper has been written with heart *really* tempts me to write a paper with little to no heart and see what grade I get.

Also, I'm pretty sure I spend more time on this blog than I do on the class itself.