If you’re my friend on the book of face, or in real life too, you probably know that I went back to school this semester to start my MBA. This is exciting because, well, who wants to be working entry level jobs for forever? Not this girl. Anyway, it’s a huge time commitment (obviously) and it also keeps me where I am geographically for at least another five years. And I love it here so that wasn’t really an issue. Just a little intimidating to say five years. At least I finally changed the address on my license to say Buffalo.
I took two classes this semester. Perfectly manageable while working full time. One class was excellent. One class was agonizingly painful. And that is what I’d like to discuss here. I will do my best to explain to you how this professor turned a core marketing class into the worst class in the history of the world. I’m not sure there are even enough words to articulate the ridiculousness that was this class. And no, I do not think I’m being a bit over dramatic.
Firstly, he introduced himself as “Prof Snyder.” And he looks like James Cromwell. Who, you may recall from prior entries about my lack of movie viewing, I only recognize from Babe.
"That'll do pig. That'll do."
And no that is not the reason I think he's the worst professor ever. I just want you to picture him holding a pig while 'teaching' our class like I did.
I should reiterate. This was a CORE Marketing class. Like marketing for dummies. You know, Price, Product, Placement, etc. I don’t like marketing to begin with. I think it’s a silly science to teach people. Seems mostly like common sense to me. (No offense to you marketing majors out there.)
But this guy only talked about Vietnam. Seriously. Oh, and his personal life. Three hour class. Two hours rambling incoherently about himself, fifteen minute break, forty-five minutes reading the power point slides. Give or take a home video clip. Really - he showed us a clip of his son Wesley, age 28, when he was 16 bungee jumping of a bridge in Tanzania. Don’t worry, the rope looked frayed so he spent the extra $50 bucks and bought the insurance before sending his son headfirst off a bridge toward a raging river.
My ability to provide you with his son’s name, age and travel itinerary from over a decade ago would probably lead you to believe that I’ve met his kids and we’re good buddies. We’re not. I never want to meet his kids. And I retained very little new marketing information but I do know too much about his two sons. (Ages 26 and 28.)
I also know that Prof Snyder is dyslexic, has undiagnosed A.D.D., is a diabetic that he controls with diet and exercise, used to run marathons, now weighs 220ish lbs (up 20 from a year ago), is a baby boomer, owns an original VW Beetle that his wife inherited from her Aunt who died in 2000 and only drove the car thirty thousand miles while she owned it and they now get it tuned up in Wheatfield, NY – even though they currently reside in Brockport, NY (run on sentence was, indeed, intentional), and that he has an Vietnamese fetish.
The Asian thing – has lead me to the conclusion the man is more compulsive and less A.D.D., as he insists. He references one of his ELEVEN trips to Vietnam somewhere between seventy-five and a billion times per class period. He talks about his students that he taught there, is obsessed with the food, the culture to the point that we threw the Vietnamese into our group project as a target market. Only to be upstaged by the Chinese girls who brought in sea weed.
Needless to say, I am thrilled that I gave Canisius College – “where leaders are made” – thousands of dollars to sit through this class that he admittedly paralleled with his undergraduate course, only to discuss Vietnam and Burger King’s subservient-chicken. Compound the nonsensical deviations from Marketing with his compulsive need to remain politically correct and the only redeeming part of Tuesdays this semester is that I am now AWESOME at Solitaire and FreeCell on the BlackBerry.
Thankfully this class is officially over and the only thing left for me to do is hit up www.ratemyprofessor.com to submit a "tweets" worth of a review.
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