I really can't abide this sleep and biorhythms class any longer. I don't know how I'll make it through the semester. The subject matter is fine, but the people in the class are just beyond clueless, the teacher included.
First of all, the teacher is in the department of brain sciences, but he hadn't even heard of lucid dreaming until someone mentioned it last semester. Isn't that, like, common knowledge even for people outside of the field? On top of that, he just sits there all the time with this blank, expressionless look on his face so that when you're trying to make a point, you just keep rambling and rambling, hoping beyond all hope that he'll actually lavish you with some sort of facial recognition. He doesn't even contribute to the discussion. I realize that it's a seminar, but geez.
The students aren't any better either. The most recent reading that we had likened some disaster to Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Exxon Valdez, and some girl with ugly cut-off jean shorts came in the next day and said, "I know that Chernobyl was that one nuclear thing, but what were Three Mile Island and Exxon Valdez?" I of course assumed that she was just ridiculously out of touch with the real world, but no one else in the class could answer the question either. It makes me feel rude to sort of cut in and provide answers all the time, but I just can't stand it. Again, am I wrong to assume that these things should be common knowledge?
But the straw that broke the camel's back was when we discussed daylight savings time. We had just finished talking about how the sun is the primary mechanism that restarts the body's internal clock because it signals the release of various substances within the body. Consequently, someone pointed out, "So that must be why daylight savings time is like a mini-jetlag. The sun comes up at a different time!" I then raised my hand and pointed out that the sun doesn't really rise at a different time. It's just that the numbers that we assign to time change. The sun is still coming up at essentially the same point as it did the day before. Then, everyone sort of ganged up on me and said that people wake up earlier, though, and I responded that yes, people do, but the night is still just as long as the night from the day before, and the day is still just as long as the day from the day before. There's a distinct difference between venturing across timezones and simply resetting a clock so that the numerical representation of time reads differently. But no, no one could understand what I was trying to say, even the teacher. They were somehow all convinced that we entered a temporal vortex during the night of springing forward or falling back and that the sun would rise at a radically different time the next day to throw our circadian rhythms out of whack. Nevertheless, I just sort of gave up on the argument after a short while since I soon realized that all attempts to introduce logic into the situation were utterly futile.
At any rate, that was sort of a nasty rant, but it bothers me that people in the class must think that I'm incredibly stupid even though I feel like I'm the only one who actually understands the material ...
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