Certifiable

I believe that probably now officially describes me. I think I'm actually going to really enjoy my PhD classes this term. (I do know that that is probably against the law somewhere, but I'm not going to look it up. If you find out what statute I'm violating, can you keep it to yourself?) This is made more unbelievable by the fact that I'm (purposefully) taking the two classes that I thought I was going to dread/hate the most to "get them out of the way." However, I think they're both going to be not only fun but really, really interesting. I'll keep you posted, of course, but for now, I'm seriously jazzed.

That said, it is clear to me why both of my professors are very suited to online teaching (and probably less suited to in-person teaching than just about any professor I've ever had, up to and including my physics professor who had a horrible stutter): they both are incapabable (and I'm not exaggerating with that word) of uttering one sentence without the use of the "word" 'uh'. However, they do both use it in a different and fascinating way.

My first teacher (the female, though that has nothing to do with anything other than to distinguish her from my other teacher who is male) inserts a long "uh" -- more like "uhhhhhhhhhhhhh" -- which covers probably 15 seconds (seriously) toward the front of each of her sentences. Almost as if she starts speaking before she consciously realizes that she is speaking and that she probably should come up with a topic for the sentence before she gets much further along. She also scribbles random words that we're discussing on the white board - but not necessarily words that have anything actually to do with the class. For example, if she were to say the sentence, "To get to the bathroom, go left, then right, then left." she would not write the word 'bathroom' or either of the 'left' or 'right' directions on the board. She would write "get to" and "go". Then she would most likely circle them in another color. Just in case you were confused. I have one page of notes where I tried to write down what she did (cause that's a typical thing, you know, what they write down is probably more important than what they don't) before I clued in and stopped wasting my energy. I think she also is having a much more detailed conversation with us in her head than she is actually managing to get out into actual verbalization. My theory on this is supported by the fact that at the end of class she "summarized" what we had covered today, specifically 3 different types of computer networks. In reality, she mentioned the 3 different types but didn't actually manage to even tell us what the acronyms stood for. I'm going to read the appropriate chapters tonight and hope that fills me in more completely.

My other professor has a quick, double-tap type of 'uh-uh'. If you've seen Chicago (the movie and/or the musical), you know in the death row song ("He had it coming", I think it's called -- if you watched Dancing with the Stars they used it for one of the tangos early on as well). Anyway, the Russian ballerina who was actually innocent, but doesn't speak English, only says "uh-uh" in the song (when they're doing the "pop, something, something, Cicero" bit). Regardless, that's how he inserts the 'uh's into his sentences and they're typically where, if you were reading what he said instead of listening to it, a comma would be. So it would be something like "To get to the bathroom uh-uh go left uh-uh then right uh-uh then left."

You get used to both after a bit, but at first it was rather disconcerting. It reminded me of my 8th grade science teacher who spoke so quickly that I swear it took half of the next period for your ears to slow back down to where you weren't racing ahead of the teacher.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to getting more indepth with the material and hope that stays the case. That said, I think I'm going to do some reading tonight since more than likely there's nothing good on tv (we don't get sci-fi at the hotel).