Please Don't Take this Away From Me, But Help Me See It From A New Perspective

I miss my meteorology class. I miss my classmates, I miss my professors, I miss my TA, I miss the subject matter. I miss having people to talk to, people I looked forward to seeing, people who cared what I had to say. I miss hearing about, and caring about their lives. I miss the way I learned in that class. I miss the way I could learn something inside and out, I miss how concrete it was. I miss knowing facts. I miss the lack of opinion. I miss the way everything I learned was directly relevant to my life, no matter where in the word I was or will be. I miss talking about the weather. I miss the way I knew for sure what I was talking about, I miss feeling smart. and not smart like "I'm smarter than you are", but like "hey look, my brain must work because I didn't understand this before and now I do."

This class I'm in now is the exact opposite of my meteorology class. Where I thought I would love this class because its about something I find interesting (poetry and hip hop), I am hating it. Where I thought I would hate my meteorology class because it was about something I thought I wasn't interested in (hard science), I loved it. Where I forged unexpected connections with my classmates and professors in my meteorology class, I am left stranded and alone in this poetry class.

I thought this class would be an opportunity to learn more about myself and language and poetry and society and culture. But what I'm finding is that I'm not learning much of anything. It is confirming some of what I already thought, but not telling me why I was right or wrong. All in all its making me resentful. I resent the teacher for not having anything more interesting to show me, for not digging deeper, for not having a deeper overarching theme to the class. I don't think he's lazy, but somehow the topic seems played out already, and there are no signs of us digging any deeper into it. I resent my fellow classmates for not holding up their part of the discussion. I resent them for not looking deeper, for not being open to new ways to look at the same old thing. I resent them for not speaking up, not telling me what they think about it. I resent both their ignorance, and their arrogance, as both are holding me back from exploring the matter at hand.

I'm not trying to say I am a model student and that everyone should do as I do. But the way it stands now, I feel like I could be teaching myself everything I have learned so far. Somehow rather than having discussions in class, I feel like everyone is just trying to get their opinion heard, they just want to convince everyone else that the way they see it is the best way to see it. And my god that is boring, because at that point, its becomes less about what they are actually saying and the fact that THEY are the ones saying it. It becomes more about them than about the ideas they are trying to share, which means if you try to engage them in debate about it, they argue, rather than discuss. Rather than trying to explain, they try to tell. Everyone makes things so personal, but instead of bringing us closer together, it is driving us all apart, like magnetic fields, like everyone has to defend their individuality, like shifting your opinion would somehow make you weak.

The worst part about this class, is the way it makes me feel about myself when I'm there: "If these people aren't able to accept themselves, they probably won't be able to accept me, so I had better keep my mouth shut and my head down." Thats no way to learn.

So I guess the only thing to do is shift what I am trying to learn. Instead of trying to learn something new about the connection of hip hop and poetry I am going to try to learn how to navigate this minefield of egos and stay true to myself. I am going to learn how to sit in class for 4 hours every day for a few weeks. I am going to learn how to listen to and talk to people who are not that interested in what I have to say. I'm going to learn how to be in a very draining social situation and not get completely worn out by it. I'm going to learn to leave what I don't need behind, and take only what I do need.