Ape teacher, you shall be smoten. Smited?

Let me introduce us all to a man that I'm going to call Ape Teacher. Why? Well, he really does look like an ape. And also, it's a psychology class about biosociology and evolution, etc... Thirdly, I have doubts that he is fully human.

I hate his class with a passion. He never leads the class, but has students lead the class. The students in the class are opinionated assholes, and they don't listen to anybody until someone agrees with them. And after meeting with him, I feel like I understand what's going on even less than I did before.

When I revealed my frustrations about my classmates, Ape Teacher told me that he had noticed that I was frustrated and that he hoped I wouldn't be discouraged from participating in future class discussions. I felt triumphant; Ape Teacher may have started to understand that I am correct and everyone else in the class is an idiot of immense proportions.

Then the other day, Apey emailed me saying:

"I continued to think last week that you were a little bit less dispassionate than you could be when you spoke. I feel a little bad saying this because in general I think passion is a good thing, but I do know that various students in our class have felt pressure not to speak their minds because of ways that various other students have reacted, so I'm trying to tone down everyone's reactions, so as to allow everyone (you included) to feel comfortable expressing themselves verbally. So tomorrow (and from here on out), just try, if you would, to be aware of your nonverbal reactions (for example, various things that I've seen from various students include exasperated sighs, eye-rolling, frowns, etc)."

Apey is asking me to stop having opinions, stop being frustrated when people interrupt me, and stop trying to defend myself when people put down my opinions. The only time that I have nonverbal reactions of sighing, eye-rolling, or frowning is when people don't listen to me.

Before leading today's class discussion, my partner and I spent about two hours detailing what a shame it is that people like those in our class exist. As the only sane people in the class, we are both shocked and apalled that Apey is actually being paid to complain to students and be such a poor moderator of the classroom.