For Your Entertainment

So I was sitting through my journalism block today and I kept thinking: what did kids do for entertainment during class before portable laptops?

I mean really. When you're not paying attention to your teacher (much), you can be "researching." And by "researching," I mean looking up stuff on Stumble Upon, reading up on BBC or EW or the Guardian or whatever to supplement that awesome internship you got. Or sending e-mails. Or playing Sporcle.

I don't always bring my laptop with me to classes, because it's not always worth the trouble of lugging the thing and the power chord with me everywhere. And last year, Sarah and I made do just fine during our News I class by playing an epic championship of the Box Dot Game. But seriously. Before laptops, how did kids sit through their boring college classes? I want to know. I would also like to thank Mac for creating my lovely little piece of tech heaven.

IC Is On Its Period

But really, this campus needs to down a Hershey's, pop a Midol, and chill out.

Not going to go into detail about my own life, except to say that this semester has been really tough and I just got dumped over Instant Message by a guy I was dating. And I'm not going into detail about what's gong on in Meg's life, because it's not really my business to share and because I don't know the whole situation.

But we can both agree that this town is totally PMSing. This semester, people have gone absolutely crazy and disregarded civility, and I'm not talking about just some people. It's everyone on this campus, self included. We're all being rude, talking behind backs, and generally needing to leave this campus for a break (thank GOD for Thanksgiving). And it needs to stop.

I Sort Of Love Al Gore

He went green. He's a democrat. He's (somewhat) eloquent. He's been on SNL and 30 Rock. And he knows what a "Chyron" is. And we didn't elect him. Discuss.

Newsroom Drama. Video at 11.

We need to talk about all the nonsense going on in my News class. Because at this point, the class drama is more interesting than the news we're covering.

We would cover it, but it's a conflict of interest.

It was all brewing at the beginning of the semester when our professor that we were supposed to have went to another college. We got reassigned to the professor we have now, who is a great person but teaches in a style that doesn't really work for me. And it's a class full of really ambitious people that are willing to step on others' toes to get what they want (unfortunately). So when we stepped into the studio, I knew stuff would get ugly after a while.

And it did. It started with some pretty catty e-mails that got sent to the entire class, which started one of the most middle school fights I've ever seen (since the Facebook fight between two other people last year). One of the parties involved didn't come to class today, so she missed Drama #2.

This one started when we walked into class. The teacher passed us a handout, which Meg and I immediately thought was the e-mail battle that had somehow gotten back to her (judging by one girl's face, I thought we were all in for it). Turned out it was the teacher telling us we weren't doing a newscast on Friday, that we were having a test on Monday, an essay due then, and that our work had been for nothing.

Which, really, Meg and I hadn't done work yet on the package, but still, everyone else had.

Turned into a few people basically saying what the whole class was thinking to the teacher (that we were wasting time and that we really needed that studio time, and that we were really offended that we weren't learning more and all that). C had to step out, I asked S to go check on her, and I took a bathroom break to walk around and not be in that room because...drama.

I mean, I'm not going to rag on Park as much as Meg did (although I do agree with a lot of what she says). I know that there are teachers that know what they're doing and teach really well. I just haven't had all of them. But really, can we just do a newscast and save the drama for your mama? I want this semester to end with me sort of knowing what I'm doing in a control room and with an A plus or minus average. Not much to ask! Why so much of this shit?