Slightly Remarkable

October 26th, 2006. Today is the second time I have been to this Excel class. It is boring, and so I have decided to take some notes on how boring it is.

I look across the room and see unexcited faces with shallow tones. I’m searching for some kind of life, but there is none to be found. The students sluggishly follow the teacher’s instructions. I sit at the desk, unimpressed. As the teacher essentially quotes the textbook verbatim, I move on ahead in the book. I’m about four pages ahead right now and have stopped working since I began writing on this piece of paper. [Editor’s note: I write slowly, so time passes very quickly as I write.]

She continues teaching and cites what she considers an “ironic” story. A colleague of hers called her on the phone today asking how to insert a row in Excel. She said her friend admitted that it was a “silly question.” Silly, indeed!

This woman may have the experience to teach (in our first session, she mentioned she had at or near 10 years of experience teaching public school), but in no way has she indicated that she has the knowledge to do so. She constantly references the textbook because she doesn’t know what to do next.

I feel that I’m being somewhat unfair. Thus far, I’ve mainly bashed the instructor, who has yet to catch up to where I left off in the book.

The computers suddenly shut down while we are working. They appear to be restarting. Everyone comes alive when their faces aren’t glued to the screens that stare back at them in disgust. They seem relieved and begin to smile and laugh as the instructor takes this opportunity to prove a point — that one should save documents often to avoid loss of data.

An IT representative of the college visited the classroom, apologizing for the minor interruption. To my surprise, a student with a sense of humor suggested that the representative should purchase everyone a soda in reconciliation. My jaw drops in astonishment; there is movement in the room and the strong tension over everyone’s lips is temporarily alleviated.

The teacher has finally caught up to where I left off in the book, and I am now following steps as I write this report. It seems that I will have wasted another four hours by the time this class concludes.

As we slowly trot along, I find things to write about in short supply, but my left hand is thankful for that! [Editor’s note: I am left handed.] I will continue to write, however, as I feel it is more entertaining than listening to my iPod instead of my teacher. In fact, I think I have spent more time documenting this long and boring lecture than I have in following the steps the instructor reads from the book.

I spent some time before the instructor arrived (about ten minutes late, I might add) and did some Visual BASIC programming. I had to rely on the visual IDE and help/reference manuals to get anything accomplished because I only know a little VB code, but I managed to create a form with two radio options and a button, and perform an alert message box depending on which radio option was selected. It is very simple, but it works and has a lot more potential use than learning something I already know, such as how to copy and paste data cells in Excel.

The knuckle on my pinky finger is almost completely secreted in black ink, and I know I should stop writing now. I tell myself this is worth it, and since I’ve no place to go, I might as well continue writing regardless of my hand’s awkward discoloration.

Tired as I am, if you could see the paper I am writing on, you’d know by the various doodles that writing alone doesn’t seem to consume all of my free time — the time when I’m not completing a step that the instructor articulates.

Since I’m out of things to write about, I have decided to begin describing the class, starting with the teacher. The instructor looks nearly 60, though I could be mistaken, and is wearing the same outfit she wore Tuesday. It’s a sea-green colored shirt with large buttons and a V-shaped collar and black slacks.

There are two rows in front of me, but the foremost one is empty. On my side of the room, in the row ahead of me, is a blonde-haired woman in a white sweater and gray slacks. She seems to get confused often and does things incorrectly. She usually catches up eventually without asking questions, though. So far today, she’s only asked one question because she couldn’t find the file that the instructor said to open — and let’s not forget that the instructor performed the requested action on a projector in front of this student’s face.

In the second row on the right-hand side of the room are two women. One wears a plain blue T-shirt and black sweatpants. I would refer to them as “running pants,” but it has become painfully obvious to me that this woman participates in no such activity. The woman to her right, barely visible behind the large woman that I just described, looks very much like the actor who plays the role of President on the Battlestar Galactica TV series. She is wearing a sleeveless sky blue shirt and blue jeans. Her hair is red, she is more slender than anyone else in the class, and she wears small glasses. By my estimate, she is around 45 to 50 years of age.

It’s now almost 8pm, which gives me an hour and 45 minutes to describe the remaining 6 students, excluding myself and my brother, who sits to my left on the third row.

Just across the room on my right are two more students who sit on the third row. The first, a blonde woman wearing a jean jacket, glasses, and black slacks, appears to be the most intelligent student. On several occasions she has pointed out solutions to problems that had the instructor puzzled. She looks to be no older than 40, perhaps 45, but she is well kept. To her right is a man who appears to be of hispanic descent. I cannot guess his age simply by looking at him, but he wears a pastel green short-sleeve collared shirt with palm trees on it and jeans which barely reach the ankles of his tennis shoes.

Behind me on the fourth and final row are a man and a woman. The man is a large blond with a very short goatee. He wears a baseball cap and probably consumes an unhealthy amount of beer on the weekends. Hopefully he can’t read this and doesn’t suspect I am making jest at his expense. He wears a dark blue T-shirt and I think jeans. I glanced behind me to gather this information while concealing my true intentions under actions like scratching my back or looking out the window behind us. However, the desk before this man obscures my view, and looking beneath the desk to see what pants he is wearing would probably arise suspicion in him, and that is something that I am not comfortable with. The woman two seats to his right is blonde and wears a maroon sweater. Her hair is short and it does not look good on her. She is in the near-retirement age, much like the rest of the class appears to be.

In the back right-hand side of the room are two women. The one on the left is the youngest in the class. I can tell because she brought her 5-year-old daughter to class with her. (After class concluded, it also occurred to me that her daughter brought crayons and M&M’s, which I observed on the floor as I exited.) This woman has glasses and wears a dark blue shirt with long sleeves and jeans. The woman to her right wears glasses and may possibly be the mother of the woman with a child. She wears a black sweater and I think jeans.

I am quickly concluding my class description because the teacher dismissed a few students who need to leave early due to the weather. It has been raining since the afternoon, and by now I’m sure many of the students will have complications reaching their homes. Naturally, the entire class has decided that it’s time to go as well, and so it appears we’ll be leaving soon. It is not yet 8:30pm, though the class is scheduled to conclude at 9:45pm.

I briefly ventured to the closest restroom where I relieved my urinary bladder and deliberately used the same screeching faucet that I had used on Tuesday. On my way back to the classroom, I peeked through a nearby window to observe the pouring rain. We will be soaked. We were smart to bring an umbrella, but at this point I feel it is practically useless.

The teacher has gone now as well as the rest of the students, and I am wrapping this paper up. My brother has developed a growing curiosity in the contents of my constant writing during this class period, and so I feel obliged to share it with him following my conclusion on this document. With that said, it is time to go now and I am heading off into the rain. Good night, may the weather be better in your town than in Texas.