The new semester has arrived.

I'm excited because the two courses I have scheduled should be more sanely manageable than those hideous condensed summer courses I took, even though I expect these will both be challenging courses.

About the beastly professor I had in the summer session:  I do take great umbrage at her ass-ery, but   I know not to deal with her again, and I've left a true and damning comment for her on ratemyprofessors.com. 

Here's a brief rundown of [the worst of] what happened:  the class was reading-heavy, report-heavy and generally incredibly dense and demanding.  Wanting to do well as ever, I attempted an additional credit report for the course which might have yielded 2% increase in final score-- well worth the effort.  The syllabus stated the professor "prefers" papers submitted in Word format.  When I submitted a paper which took me 4 hours to research and  compose, she did not grade it.  I contacted her to ask I why I was given no assessment on my work, and she replied she didn't think it was long enough based on the file size in that non-Word format.  I responded that my paper was a mere 20 words less than the sample paper she'd put forth as an example and mine actually contained about 50 more characters-- I used bigger words.  She responded that if I resubmitted the paper in Word she would look at it. In other words-- she lied in her syllabus: this would best be characterized as professor "REQUIRES" papers submitted in Word, rather than "PREFERS." 

I did not respond.  I can deal with very specific information that tells me of the professor's expectation, but I actively detest passive-aggressive scenarios in which someone wheedles that they prefer things this one way but can't commit to saying it must be done that particular way or will not be considered for grading. What I think was at play here was that the professor could not require students to buy a particular Word processing program, so she had to use the mealy-mouthed term "prefers" when in fact, she had absolutely no intention of considering a paper submitted in any other format. 

Bitch.

Via email, I reached out to a classmate who was very vocal in participating in the class' online discussions.  We volleyed a few emails and I gathered she was working full-time and had several small children and was struggling to better her lot in life and was afraid of not even passing the course, and that her extra credit offerings had been given a 0 as well. :(  I felt worse for her than I do for myself-- I knew I'd get a B at the minimum. 

This professor must feel great about herself, that she could be so condescending to honest, decent people who are trying to better themselves in life.  She really should tug on her ears until she sees daylight, because she's not inspiring a quality educational experience, and she is NOT improving the world. If dispensing condescension from the lofty confines of her ivory tower is her idea of making the world a better place, then she truly is a stark-raving solipsistic jerk.

Considering about halfway down her syllabus contained dates from the Spring semester, I knew she had a much more exacting set of standards by which she judged student submissions than that to which she holds herself.   I then deemed my previous extra credit efforts to have been a fool's errand, and I wasted no more time on attempting extra credit papers. 

There was other bullshittery afoot on her part, but, again, it was too late to opt for another class or another professor, so I had only to make the best of it.  In the end, I earned an A all under my own steam and I got a lesson in sociology, alright: I learned firsthand that malevolent dictatrixes suck big green donkey whongers. 

Good riddance.