The Class

I spend the day excited about going to class. I look forward to it like someone who is thirsty anticipates a cool glass of water. Time moves so slowly I begin to think it will never arrive. When finally I leave, I let John talk me into leaving Yeager behind. This is my first mistake.

John encourages my excitement but reminds me this is an introductory class at a community college in Panama City. He tells me I shouldn’t over-expect. I lower my expectations – but not enough. This is my second mistake.

I plan my trip to class with extra time allotted to buy my book. Since the schedule says the class begins at 6:15 pm, I leave my house at 5:55pm. I get my book and head to the room where they say the class will be. The class is full of some other class and there is a sign saying my class has been moved. They do not say where. I find it anyway. The desks in this new room are crammed together tightly but there are only three people in there. I take the center row, front seat so I can see without having to worry about having a tall person sit in front of me. Still, I assume this will be a small class since we are five minutes from starting and there aren’t many people in the room. This is my third mistake.

I watch the "professor" while waiting for the class to begin. He is an awkward man who doesn’t seem to know he’s odd. Maybe he knows but just doesn’t care. When he speaks white foam forms on his lower lip. I find this very distracting for the whole night. He has an ink stain on his pants and his socks don’t match his clothing. He needs a haircut but not in a hippy, bohemian Berkeley professor way, more in a "I can’t tell I look bad" kind of a way. "I’m in Panama City," I remind myself, "I expect too much." People continue to file into the room. It’s filling up with bodies. Some of the students are older than me but most are young and thin. The men are dressed like gansta extras from a bad rap video. They sit on the back row. Yeager is not with me and I feel the anxiousness begin to percolate. The woman that takes the desk behind me is a nurse. She smells of old cigarettes and beer. She coughs without putting her hand over her mouth because I feel her hot fetid breath on the back of my neck when she hacks. The smell is intense and disgusting. Panic begins to wriggle his pointy tail deep in my gut. He’s awake. No good will come from this. "Maybe it will get better when class starts," I think, attempting to fool Panic back to sleep. This is my fourth mistake.

The class, it turns out, begins at 6:30 pm and not 6:15 pm as the schedule states. It’s cold in the room. I’m cold. My joints ache. I’m under the fan but can not move to a different desk because if I stand up everyone will see me. People will notice I’m there. The room is too full anyway. I have to endure the cold for the next three hours. Because I’m out of my pain medication and have been for over a week, I have no analgesics at all in my bloodstream. My pain has been worse this past week and this cold and stress are not helping. I’m aware of each space between bone. The pain shoots from muscle to bone and back. The dull roar of the twenty different conversations in the class room is being drowned out by the pounding of blood in my ears. Panic rouses more and his claws scratch my belly as he begins to come to life.

The professor watches the clock intently, waiting for the second hand to hit the 12 before starting the class exactly at 6:30pm. He is proud of this promptness. He announces it to one of the students. I think this is an odd thing for him to be proud of when he is so disheveled. I wonder if this is a sign of bad things to come. I’m right. He introduces himself and tells us about his family, his degrees, and his working life. He says that his primary degree is in theology, but he works as a Marriage and Family counselor. Now I am sure this class won’t be anywhere near what I wanted. He is a theologian first and foremost. Not a therapist. The sound of my bubble bursting is deafening. It is eventually drowned out by the chatter of the woman two seats over from me who has a huge beer gut and is wearing a t-shirt two sizes too small and talking too much. She is telling someone about herself and providing too many personal details to a stranger. I wonder what makes her do this...she seems needy.

He begins class with the video of the Virginia Tech Shooter. In the video the shooter compares himself to Christ, saying his death will provide a message for the world as well. The professor stiffens. His theology gets in the way of his ability to see what the young man is trying to say. After the rant is over, the professor asks an open question about what we think would make someone do something like that. Different people in class offer different ideas. Most think it’s a joke and are laughing. "He’s stupid." "He’s crazy." "He doesn’t like Americans." My blood begins to boil. The professor says "We all have our breaking points but we don’t all do this. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you don’t get mad and shoot 37 people. What was wrong with this guy?" I can’t stop myself. I blurt out, "What that boy went through for the whole of his life is no where close to being cut off in traffic. To make that correlation is to diminish his pain, his anguish and the complicity of those who allowed him to be victimized for over a decade." The professor backpedals at this point and says he knows nothing of the shooter’s early life and wasn’t trying to say that being cut off in traffic was the same thing. Others in the room say he had access to all the help he needed if he wanted it. All he had to do was get it. I counter with "You know so much about Korean society that you know if getting mental help was acceptable?" One girl argues with me. "He could have done it anyway. And teasing isn’t that bad of a problem. Some people can’t take a joke." She is thin and pretty. I assume she was probably one of the mean kids in school. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be different. Another student says "I’m tired of immigrants saying they get treated differently than the rest of us. They have more opportunities than I do." I notice the Black and Hispanic students fall silent now.

The professor moves the class on to a less contentious subject. He tells us he wants to create a fictitious student for our class. He begins by asking someone to name the child and give the child a cultural background. One student says the child’s name is Dominick and another says he is "an A-Rab"...the professor doesn’t correct this obvious attempt at cultural insensitivity. The professor says the child is two years of age, a boy, of Arab descent and is traveling with his parents who love have given him a solid foundation in love and trust, when they are in a car accident. His parents are killed. They leave no will and have no relatives. Dominick is now an orphan. He asks another student to tell what happens next. That student says "He goes into a group home." He then asks another student to say how long the child stays there. "2 months" is the answer. We are tossing a ball around the room, and the person who catches it adds layers of details to the child’s life. The next ball catcher says the child is then placed with a foster family. The next person says the foster family is a gay couple. The professor says the gay couple keep Dominick and decide to adopt him. He announces that Dominick is a stable and happy baby. The foundation of his life from birth to age two means that Dominick won’t have any significant issues to deal with. No RAD, no shutting down, he will be a normal child. Again, I can not stop myself.

"You have traumatized the child no less than three times in the space of 6 months. How can you say he wouldn’t shut down?"

The professor stops and looks at me. "One time. His parents died. That’s one trauma."

"That is at minimum three major traumas but then there are a host of other issues that he would have to deal with." I counter.

"Where do you get three?" he asks me.

I tick them off on my fingers, "The car accident and his parents die. Then he’s placed in a group home where just as he’s beginning to get settled and trust someone, he’s ripped away and given to another stranger. That’s three...maybe four. Then he has to deal with no longer having a mommy. New foods. New smells. New sounds. Maybe this couple have a dog and he doesn’t understand about dogs and is scared. Maybe he’s in daycare now but wasn’t before. Maybe this couple fights. Maybe they don’t...maybe it’s a dream placement but you can’t discount what the child went through in a short amount of time."

The professor takes a moment to think about this. "Before age two we don’t really have many memories and the parents have given him a good solid foundation of love and trust. He’d be fine."

Again I can not help myself. "If he loved and trusted his parents so much and was able to bond with them, then he would grieve the loss. He would grieve the placement in the busy group home and the loss of that. He would grieve. He may be angry or he might shut down. If the adopting couple isn’t aware this is a possibility they may think he has mental issues. Maybe they will say he has autism."

The professor presses his finger to his lips and stares at me. He doesn’t like to be challenged. I’m probably tanking my grade but I don’t care. He has stumbled onto a hot button for me and set it off. Panic is feeding off my increased blood pressure. Other students are making noises of exasperation from the back of the room. I’m in 6th grade all over again. This time, although I believe I am too fat and unattractive to be allowed to speak, I know I’m smart enough to express an opinion and I go after this issue with all the protectiveness of a mother bear. The class and the professor don’t know about Xian Yi but I don’t care about that. I’m angry about the assumptions being made by someone who should have been educated not to make these kinds of mistakes.

The professor attempts to bring the conversation back to some kind of happy place and the ball gets tossed to another student and he is asked what happens next. He chuckles and says, "The gay guys realize they aren’t gay, divorce and begin dating women." All the men in class laugh. The professor shoots a look in my direction and says "No, let’s not add more tragedy right now. Let’s say he has a good three years and he’s five now and ready to go to school. We’ll leave it here for tonight." So that is how that ended. This will be a problem for this professor for the whole semester. No one is taking it seriously but me. To all these 18 yr olds it’s a joke. And the professor doesn’t seem to care that people think childhood trauma is funny.

He hands out the syllabus. A quick read through reveals that students will be teaching the class each week as our group project. I hate this. I’m paying to be educated by someone who is supposed to have credentials. Not a bunch of idiot kids. He announces we have to break into groups. I’m hoping he assigns groups. But of course he does not. He wants us to break into our own groups. I am in 6th grade again. No one will want me in their group. I will be an outcast once more. Panic roars to life. My fingernails turn blue. I can not breathe. He is crushing my lungs. He clamps his jaws on my heart and squeezes hard. I drop my hand down looking for my dog for comfort. He is not there. Panic’s laugh rumbles in my chest. I feel lightheaded. I force myself to breathe from my diaphragm so I do not pass out. I’m cyanotic. I need oxygen. Behind me groups are forming. I have to do something. I offer to group with the guy next to me and the talkative girl. There is a surge of panic as I await their response. They agree. Though he still has a grip on my heart Panic moves a bit and air fills my lungs. Then we get our chapter assignments. Ours is Conditioning and Learning. We present in October. Panic has to let go of my heart when I realize that this is something I know a lot about. Panic reminds me I’ll have to stand in front of the class and give a presentation. Panic gnaws on my heart once more. It’s not that I have to speak in public that frightens me, it’s that people will be looking at me and thinking I shouldn’t be there. Or that they don’t like me. Or I’m too fat and ugly to be allowed to be in class with them. No matter how far I come, it always comes back to this for me. The damaged part of me...this is the part that Panic feeds on. This is what keeps him alive.

The professor moves on to actually discussing psychology after more than an hour of other stuff and one of the first topics he introduces is "Where do we see psychology?" Again the students are asked to toss out ideas and I say "marketing and advertising" to which he agrees. Then he brings up some add for a drug that says there is no cure for Bipolar Disorder and he starts a rant of his own saying that statement is untrue. Bipolar Disorder can be cured even though marketing says it can’t. He believes this to be irresponsible. Even I, who have no formal medical nor psychological training know that Bipolar Disorder can not be cured. It can be managed effectively with medications and therapy but at this time there is no cure for the disorder. This obvious error on his part has caused whatever faith I had in this man to completely disappear. I did not want to know more than my professor.

The remainder of the class was filled with little mistakes and differences of opinion save for the one joke he made by calling Barack Obama "Osama" and then calling it a Freudian slip. I found this little "joke" to be in extremely poor taste and I wonder what he meant by that. Is he remarking on Obama’s skin color? It couldn’t be his personal politics because Obama is certainly more liberal than Osama bin Laden. Perhaps it is because Obama isn’t an Evangelical Christian. Once again, the professor’s theology degree gets in the way of doing the job he is being paid to do.

I am left with an odd problem as I’m not really paying for the credits, I am not paying for the prerequisite, I am paying for the experience and this man seems to be incapable of providing the experience I wanted from this class. As a consumer I want to complain bitterly, but I probably don’t have any recourse. If there is a student evaluation form after the class is over, I will not be kind. I think this man is probably a bigot, is definitely "one of THOSE Christians", and does not have a good understanding of his area of expertise. I do not understand how a marriage and family therapist can have no understanding of the impact of chaos on children. And so I sit here wondering if I should print off the page on Bipolar Disorder from the National Institute of Mental Health portion of the National Institute of Health website where it states that there is no cure for Bipolar Disorder at this time or should I let it go? How important is it to be right?