Public Sleeping?

As promised, Tales of CCC.

I'm taking a public speaking course this summer. Now, let me say this before anything else: I've gone into it with a perfectly open mind. I acknowledged that, yes, seeing how I've spent the past five years of my life esconced in the soothingly geeky bubbles of IB at West, and St. John's, a summer-session public speaking course at community college may - perhaps - be slightly different from what I'm used to.

Yep. It's different all right.

For one, there's no discussion, at all. People ask questions and the professor responds; the professor asks questions and students respond. Then, the exchange ends. There's no ongoing discussion, no one ever really builds off of what someone else just said. It's a very concrete explanation of ideas, little more.

Also, the professor is nuttier than a Snickers bar. Yesterday, she spent ten minutes with a charade-like metaphor for organizing your ideas. This metaphor consister of her miming as if she were throwing various hats across the room into a big pile. Then she retrieved her invisible hatrack from the hallway, and organized all her hats according to how frequently she used them, put her scarf with her ski cap, and so forth. The whole thing took, as I said, about ten minutes, most of which found us (the class) sitting there slack-jawed in bewilderment, unsure if we should be laughing, and murmuring, "What the hell is this?"

In other news: big thunderstorm tonight at the very end of my 7-hour shift at the theater. Just in time for me to walk to my car in the rain. Thanks.