Columbine pointed out that Maus was acclaimed for bringing the intimate realities of the Holocaust to "people who don't read history." I suppose she has a point.

I guess my problem is that I've already read any number of Holocaust narratives, some quite graphic, so Maus' treatment of the events seemed... well, cartoonish... by comparison, and certainly didn't come close to packing the same punch. But for those without that background, who wouldn't otherwise be reading this sort of thing, perhaps it does serve a valuable purpose.

Skipping a bit, I ended up writing the thing in under an hour, and e-mailing it right out.

And here it is. I ended up writing about my philosophy class, which means that a lot of this is stuff you've seen already. But, then, this is just filler material so I can catch up, right?

It's been awhile and things have been happening. In particular, things have been happening in a place called Kosovo, which I am not going to write about, because I am a student from New York. This means that my conception of geography consists of four locations: New York City, The Rest of the State, The Rest of the Country, and The Rest of the World. I'm pretty sure Kosovo is somewhere in the last of those, but that's about all I can say about it with any degree of confidence. It's a sad thing to admit, but there we are. The only other thing I'm prepared to say is that, according to the logic of all the pundits from the past couple of years, it should be clear that this military action is intended to distract the public's attention from the ongoing impeachment hearings, or at least put a damper on the sales of Monica's Story.

So... now that we've gotten genocide off the table, we can talk about my petty little concerns instead.

Is that, in itself, sufficient reason to drop a course? I'm not sure. It's certainly sufficient reason not to sign up for a course. I think it would also be sufficient reason to drop a course at the start of the semester, which I've done once before. But once you've already sunk half a semester into it, tenaciously hanging on, hoping to see a light at the end of the tunnel, even willing to use a horrifically mangled metaphor along the way... perhaps it's better to stay the course, and stay in the course, at that point?

Perhaps so. I'm not entirely convinced, but I do have to admit that it's hard to let the three credits go.

But still. I'm here for an education, and I find it tremendously frustrating to have my time wasted, which is what the course I dropped had been accomplishing. Worse, in a way, it was a philosophy course. Philosophy 101, to be exact.

Somehow, I'd had higher standards for a philosophy course. I expected to be intellectually engaged, and stimulated. I expected to either find new ways of thinking about things, or at least get a better background on the roots of classical Western philosophy. You know, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest of those dudes. Maybe I expected too much.

On the other hand, I did not expect to see the professor's point of view in a philosophical argument be presented as proven, simply because the professor said so. I did not expect the professor to grab one phrase from my own point of view, wrench it out of context, and use it to set up and defeat a straw man argument, while ignoring what I actually had to say. And then dismiss my attempts to explain what I'd meant as being irrelevant, because they weren't what he was saying. I did not expect him to rewrite history, claiming that he'd disproven something I'd said the week before, when he hadn't done anything of the sort. And I did not expect it to become clear that he wasn't actually listening to a word I was saying.

In short, defining a philosophy professor as "a rational animal, capable of following a simple argument, who educates a class in the discipline or study of philosophy," I came to the conclusion that my philosophy professor didn't really exist. In which case it was just plain silly to stay in the class until the college administration caught on. Not to mention tremendously frustrating.

I'm taking two lessons out of this. First, from now on, I'm going to trust my instincts more. If I'd done so at the start of this semester, I would have dropped the course on the first day of class. Second, I'm going to do more research on potential professors in the future. I'm not sure the latter would have helped in this case, as nobody I've spoken to has heard of the guy I had, but, on the other hand, I've heard about at least one good alternative now, from people whose opinions I trust. So, with luck, I'll be able to avoid having to go through this again in the future.

Oh, well. It hits the stands on Monday, April 12th. We'll see what happens...