Last year I went back to school and got a few of my art classes out of the way. I applied to the Interior Design program at my school, and started classes for the program this year. The Interior Design department only offers classes during the day, that is, during the usual business office hours of 8 - 5, but my boss (who is awesome) likes the idea of me going back to school and lets me go. So, two days a week, I leave work around 3:00 and come back at 5:00 to make up my work day. It actually works out nicely because my boss can get so busy that we don’t end up catching each other until the end of the day. The 5:00 hour can be the most peaceful and most productive, since most everyone else has retreated from the building.

In my class, we have a crazy person. The neat thing about her is that you don’t know she’s crazy until she starts talking. At that point, crazy is all out in the open and pretty hard to hide. She’s older than most of the students - not that she is old, she’s just older than a lot of the kids who are fresh out of high school. I would guess she is in her 40’s. We knew she was a little nuts because of some of the odd things she decides to interject during lectures, in an attempt to raise her “participation” part of the grade, which is worth 25% of the grade (basically, the participation grade is showing up to class, not being rude, asking questions, that sort of thing).

Allegedly, a lot of the IDE 101 students are failing the class. The course grade is mainly decided by three tests, each worth 25% of the grade, and then the 25% participation grade. Halfway through the semester we had only been given one assignment, so in all essence, the grades were riding on the tests. A lot of students bombed the first test, so our teacher decided to assign some homework to help prop up our grades. So we put together what is called a color board, where we were given measurements that we had to have for fabric swatches and the board that the fabric is mounted on, and the idea was for people to get colors and fabrics together on a presentation board, called a color board, which is then presented to a client. Our teacher was trying to get us to learn how to lay out our items in a way that makes sense to a client, and then receive feedback from peers.

Crazy came out for the project in a whole new way. She was the second or third to present, and her board was a bit like her - crazy. Nothing on the board fit the measurements that were on the handout; first of all, her board was about 1/3 of the size it was supposed to be (11×17). So no one could really see it. When that, with a couple of other things, were politely brought to her attention after her presentation, she was like a woman scorned! To everyone else who presented after that, she would raise her hand to give feedback and she would say, “I don’t like that at all. I think it’s ugly.” Thanks for the constructive criticism, Crazy!

During today’s class, it was a new and interesting day for Crazy to botch up the lecture. And did she ever.

About a third of the way through the lecture, someone’s phone starts ringing. Loudly. And not in one of those regular tones - some extremely loud and annoying little pop song. The teacher stops speaking and we are all looking around for the culprit. Meanwhile, Crazy is gazing stupidly up at the presentation screen, as if nothing is going on. Finally, my teacher says, “Whose phone is that?”

Blinking, Crazy looks over at her and says, “Oh, that’s mine.”

A brief pause ensues while my teacher stares at Crazy, waiting for her to get up and stop the offending phone. She doesn’t.

“You need to turn it off. Now, please.”

But Crazy was just too crazy to understand this request. “Oh, I can’t - it’s up front, behind you. It ran out of battery so I plugged it in up at the front of the room…”

Another pause from my teacher. “You need to get it right now.”

Crazy gets up from her seat, squeezes herself between the lecture tables until she can make it into the aisle, bumbles, stumbles, and shuffles down to the front of the lecture hall, and retrieves her phone. Then she has to repeat the process to get back to her seat. Meanwhile, we’re all waiting for her to sit down so we can continue.

A few minutes later…

RING! Her phone is ringing again. We all stop and look over at Crazy. My teacher, now pretty angry, says, “You need to shut that off right now. Please do not ever have a phone on in class.”

Crazy mumbles her response (she’s always mumbling and no one can understand her) so we try to pick up the lecture where we left off.

But wait, there’s more! A little while later…

A strange noise! Our heads pop up like marmots as we’re trying to figure out where it’s coming from. It’s Crazy, snoring at the front of the lecture hall! Yes, that’s right, now Crazy has fallen asleep and is taking a few minutes out of her hectic schedule to have a little nappy-poo. My teacher, now thoroughly annoyed, walks over and begins to tap on Crazy’s shoulder until she wakes up. “You need to leave,” she said. “Right now. You really just need to go. Please go.”

“Okay,” is what I think Crazy mumbled - who knows. She gathers up her things and proceeds to shuffle/stumble out of the room in a dopey and sleepy stupor.

It took a few minutes to recuperate from all of that, but we finally managed, and it’s a good thing, too. We’re on the final stretch to the end of the semester, and things are getting intense. Apparently a lot of students are not doing well, and the people in my particular class have been dropping like flies. The final grade is based on the 25% participation grade, and three tests, each worth 25%. Originally, each test was to cover 3 chapters out of our book. However, when so many people did poorly on the first test (History of Interior Design/Architecture - I admit, that test was fairly intense) she decided to really dig in and cover the next two chapters. In fact, she went back and presented the same lecture twice on chapter 4, just to make sure people got it. Because we spent so much time recovering information, she gave the next test based on two chapters, as there was no time to squeeze in a third chapter.

Again, a lot of people did not do well. I didn’t do as well as I had expected either, but I was still doing well in the class overall so I wasn’t too worried. The day that we got the grades from test #2 back was the day we did our presentations on the color boards. After that day, people started missing from the class, and continued to disappear. Registration for next semester started, but not many people are signing up to take the continuation class (Interior Design 102) - my guess is it’s a reflection of people doing so poorly in this current class. Before every class, my teacher has been asking people to sign up for the next class, because the school is going to consolidate the two classes into one if people don’t sign up.

In an attempt to bring grades up, we are now receiving “Extra Credit” assignments to turn in, that have a real “project” feel to them - they’re quite time consuming. She says they should only take 15 minutes to do, which I am sure is the case if you have a Masters Degree in Architecture like she does. For the rest of us, it took hours. At any rate, I was quite pleased when she mentioned in class yesterday that at the end of the semester she will add up our grades, and then whatever she decides to award us for the Extra Credit assignments, she will just add across the top. Her example was that if she decided to give us 10 points for the project we just turned in, and we were getting an 80 as an overall class grade, we would now get a 90. That’s a pretty big boost, so I’m wondering just how poorly people are doing in the class - or just how desperate she is to get people to sign up for next semester.

The funny thing about it is that the semester ends next week, and she now has to cram 4 chapters into this next test. Our class is on Tuesday and Thursday. She wants to have the test on Tuesday, which leaves us with one more day to cover the rest of the information — nearly two chapters worth. She’s desperate to get our grades up, but on top of the four chapters we are racing through, we also have these big projects piled on top of us to do for extra credit work.

This is not making sense to me, and even though her new and nifty extra credit points are going to solidify a good grade, I’m really nervous about this upcoming test. I’ll probably take a day off before the test to study.