Sometimes, being a history major/buff is very painful.

Ah, the first day of classes. Time to see the new people, meet the new professors, and pray for the best. I’m always on watch for my new hated class for the semester, because I always seem to end up with at least one prof that is either a senile bitch (she’s old, she’ll be dead soon) or just plain irritating (you’re the only thing keeping me out of the theatre department). I think I’ve found my class for this semester. First of all, let me say that this class is easy . World Regional Geography. It’s the slightly upped version of our World Geography class. Only social science majors have to take it. Now, while I’m sure I could take the final in this course today and be done with it, I’m certain not all of you have this foundation of world knowledge, so try not to kill me. Anyway, the reason this is going to be my hated class isn’t because it’s so easy it’s boring. It’s not the people. My professor is…well, I’m not going to use the word here. Usually I try to give someone multiple chances before I make my opinion of them, and it’s possible that everything that went horribly, horribly wrong today was just because of first day jitters on her part…but…I mean…well, let’s use some examples, shall we? First off, this woman, who has a masters in and is going to be teaching the subject of Geography, managed to pronounce it “GEO-graph-ie”…multiple times. She’s very American, so I don’t really think language barriers can be used as an excuse for this. She can’t pronounce the name of the subject she’s teaching. One that she’s obviously studied for quite some time. It gets worse. She was reading her introductory lecture off note cards, which meant she actually prepared for this, and at some point she reaches the varying ways you can define a region. For an example, she chose the South, of the United States. One of the ways she chose to define this was by those that were confederate states.

Brace yourself.

While her list, her prepared list, of confederate states included such things as Georgia and Alabama, there quite a few interesting things on there. Like Maryland. And West Virginia. And ARIZONA . This woman, who had just said a few minutes earlier than most of the class was History majors, proceeded to make me nearly burst out into laughter in the middle of a lecture. I have no problem with correcting professors normally, but I figured doing it on the first day would be a bit much, so I refrained. If this had been week three, I would have given her such a tongue lashing. The thing that disturbed me most is that no one else seemed to notice. Since some of you might not be dripping in historical knowledge like I am, let me explain. We all know when the American Civil War was, correct? Good. Now then, let’s go in order of absurdity shall we? Do you realize where the capital of the United States is located? While it’s true that Maryland had some Confederate radicals in it, it also held most of the northern army. It never left the Union, and the general population liked it this way. Next up: West Virginia. The only was reason that this area even became a state unto itself was because it split with Virginia when Virginia succeeded! The West Virginia area was extremely northern in sympathies, and became state because of this. They certainly couldn’t be considered Confederate. And finally, Arizona. Ah, Arizona. Arizona which became a state on February 14, 1912.

Hoy.