Friday, February 18, 2005
. . .Insert Foot Here
I am officially the class meanie. Yes, I'm a hardass, and I don't tend to be quiet about it.
Yesterday, during our 7 a.m. neurology exam, we were having technical difficulties with typos, et cetera, so the professor proctoring the exam had to keep interrupting the class to announce corrections. In addition, the professor who actually wrote most of the exam was not present to answer questions.
Since anticipation of this exam had been causing stress for the class for almost a month, these little typos caused a great deal of frustration amongst the already tightly-wound class.
As for me, I was tightly wound not about the exam, but about my classmates, who, in the preceding weeks, had made me believe I wasn't worrying
enough about the exam.
I've also had very low tolerance lately for a very small number of people in our class who've
consistently demostrated disrespectful,
whiny, and flat-out rude behavior towards our professors reagarding tests and quizzes (I guess I just expect better from veterinary students, or, as we call ourselves, professionals).
So what did I do with all this tension? I took it out on the wrong people. As people were coming to the front of the room to ask the professor questions about the exam, most were whispering their questions quietly, but others were being a little loud about it. So I had trouble concentrating on what was, I'll concur, a quite challenging (albeit
fair) exam.
So, when cuddly Mike M., a very nice guy, came up to the front with a question, I could hear every word, and at that point all I wanted was quiet. When he continued with his questions, I looked at him and said, loudly: "Mike--go sit down!"
When I realized he had already taken a seat next to the professor, I pointed my finger to the seat he came from and said, "No, over THERE!"
Mike is definitely NOT one of the rude-ies in our class, but I took my frustrations out on him anyway.
To top it off, when 2 more people came up to the front with questions, I could hear everything they said and thought their questions were ones that had already been answered to the whole class. . .so I muttered to myself--but out loud: "Just TAKE the TEST, PEOPLE! It's not that *effing* HARD!"
Yes, I cursed. And, once again, much louder than I thought. I was sitting in the front, and people in the back were chuckling. The classmate next to me drew more attention to my faux pas by yelling, "You need to CALM DOWN!" to which, of course, I responded with an annoyed roll of the eyes (sorry, Jason!).
So I apologize to Mike, to Jason, and all my classmates, and especially to my professor.
So. . . what am I going to do about my little tension problem? Yoga? A shrink? Massage? Aromatherapy?
I think I'm going to accept that fact that there are rude people even in populations of professional students who are supposed to be intelligent and mature, and if I don't accept that as par for the course,
I can become one of them. . .and express my frustrations at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and at the wrong people.
And I
am going to schedule that massage. . .
