In the Trenches

Well, after riding high for the past few days due to my awesome teaching experience, I am now back in the trenches after my fairy tales class last night.

I have tried to like this professor. Really, I have. Despite the fact that she began each class for probably the first half of the quarter by reading to us from some paper she wrote, I still hung in there, even though I had no idea what she was talking about or why she felt the need to read to us. Despite the fact that she assigned a 76-page story for us to read two days in advance (in addition to other reading), I still managed to complete the story (and the other reading). I even managed to read an entire novel while finishing a paper due on the same day, even while knowing that she had given us entirely too much work to do. Even though she's taken entirely too long getting most of our assignments back to us, I gave her a decent review on her evaluation form. After all, she's knowledgeable, nice, and even funny sometimes.

I'd like to redo my evaluation form now and tell everyone how much she sucks.

Last week I submitted an abstract for my term paper, a paper in which we are to focus on what really interests us (regarding fairy tales, naturally). I came up with the idea of exploring Sex and the City as a modern fairy tale and how the characters in the series do or do not fit the typical female fairy tale stereotype. It's the perfect paper topic for me, as I love exploring the unexplored.

But this paper obviously wasn't meant to be. Last night the professor handed back our abstracts, and I got a C and a veto of my paper topic. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Okay, first of all, I don't get Cs. Secondly, I have never had a professor veto a paper topic.

I spoke with her after class, and apparently, since Sex and the City is not a literary text, I can't use it. Also, she said that we haven't made the jump from texts to film yet. (Really?! So the whole quarter when we were talking about Walt Disney's bastardizations of the fairy tale, we weren't talking about film?!) And lastly, she's concerned that there's very little scholarly analysis on this topic.

I just don't understand. As controlling as she's being with this topic now, she placed very few parameters on the paper topics when she handed out the assignment. Also, one thing we've been taught in our program is that everything is a text, and everything has its own language and set of meanings that can be analyzed (including film/TV). And isn't it a good thing that I didn't pick an old, tired topic? Yes, my Sex and the City topic is a stretch, but all my best papers have been based on stretches! I like stretching!

I am really irritated about this (obviously). Yes, I will pick another topic, but I will do it resentfully - especially because it will require me to do even more hours of research. The research I did for my first topic is obviously worthless.

Here's hoping for a happily ever after to this situation.