Online classes

Online classes can be so wonderful. At work all day and have karate-stripping at night? No problem. Study at 2am on a wednesday for 3 hours if you want. No being late for class, no boring lectures you can't fast-forward through (not that I've ever done that), and no irritating classmates.

Unless you have a classmate who needs self-validation. Let's call her Miss Insecure. The online classes I've taken have discussion boards where you need to interact with your classmates. It's required. Demanded. Graded. Miss Insecure flooded the message forum from day one with all kinds of, "That answer is on page 345!", "I know that problem is tricky, but 2+2 always equals 4! Keep trying!" and the ever helpful, "The teacher said homework is due tomorrow in case you didn't read the syllabus or forgot you're taking a class!"

As to be expected, there are glitches in online classes. Homework doesn't get submitted even though it was sent, problems are marked wrong even though they were right, the conspiracy theorist neighbor hacked your wireless and now the FBI is involved, etc. One time a test was acting up for a few people (I assume it was more than a few, even though only two made a comment about it on the message boards). The teacher decided to extend the deadline by 24 hours. That's all well and great, but what about everyone else who had no issues and already finished it? Hey Teach, I'd like 24 more hours to study too! But apparently I was the only one who thought this, as no one else chimed in, and the teacher gave some lame excuse that people who waited to complete the test would lose time from getting the next assignment finished. Which made no sense, since the next assignment was the midterm over the same material.

Except Miss Insecure. She sent me a full email complaining about how she was personally affected by the outage and was running around like a chicken with her head cut-off trying to get from her house to the library so she could finish the test at another computer, while simultaneously talking to tech support about the life-ending crisis, apparently so distraught that she forgot to stop at the local psychiatrist's office and fill her obviously-needed prescription for Valium. She was offended I thought she was taking the extra 24 hours to study, because, little did I know, some people have calendars that are jam-packed full of obligations, like juggling online classes, working, studying, raising a family, and all that other important stuff that I obviously wasn't involved with. While I was flattered that she felt I was easy-going and had lots of free time, I felt like telling her that I too was doing all that, yet if my grade was on the line, I would find an extra hour or two to study for the test, which is why I asked for extra time too. But instead I continued to eat my Ben & Jerry's with my feet up, watching reruns of Scrubs and laughing at her misfortune.

No wait, I didn't do that because I am a sensible human being and I too have obligations. Instead I wrote her a brief email telling her that no, this song isn't about you and that even Pollyanna understands that people do use that extra time to study.* I'm pretty sure she was looking for validation that she worked through a very difficult time for all of us, persevering in the process. Ok, I get it, you're not only Miss Insecure, you're Miss High-Maintence-Drama too.

She responded by feigning sympathy to my predicament of me needing more time to study. Touche Miss Insecure. Well-played.

*If you don't know who Pollyanna is, and why she's relevant here, go ask your grandma.