In a shocking announcement, one University of Utah student has revealed a professor failed to inspire him.
An undecided sophomore, Chet Colbyson has been plugging away at his general education requirements since coming to the U. He’s taken an assortment of humanities and fine arts classes, but it was a psychology class fulfilling his social and behavioral science integration credit that pushed him over the edge.
“It just didn’t do anything for me,” Colbyson said. “Yeah, it was just really boring and [Professor Heinrich Helbig] was really boring too.”
The class, Psychology 2010, the psychology of college success, definitely did not help Colbyson open his mind to new ideas, expose him to more of the world around him or meet any of the ideals that a quality liberal education is designed to achieve, he said.
Helbig was strangely indifferent.
“Look, it’s this class of 200, 300 students. Most of them are freshman who aren’t going to be back next year or are going to wind up business management majors,” Helbig said, shrugging his shoulders. “So I figure, what’s the point?”
Not only doesn’t Helbig make an effort to learn the students names, he doesn’t even make them put out name cards so he knows how to address them when they participate in classroom discussion.
“Sheesh, like THAT’S an issue,” Helbig said, rolling his eyes. “These kids’ brains are so rotted on candy, video games and Maxim they hardly even know their own names.”
Colbyson said even if Helbig had made an effort to learn his name, it “probably wouldn’t have made the class any less lame.”
“I figure8212;like8212;what’s the point? When it’s so lame,” Colbyson said. “I mean, who really cares about this stuff?”
This reaction to Helbig is not uncommon, Psychology Chairwoman Tina Leanders said, nor is it concerning to the department. A crushing majority of apathy to lower level psychology classes is “well within acceptable norms,” Leanders continued.
“Sure Helbig [and others] could spend more time infusing creativity and enthusiasm into their classes, but that would detract from time more appropriately devoted to research and publication,” Leanders said. “I mean, this is HIGHER education. If you want all that inspiring young minds crap, you’ll have to go to public school teachers8212;lousy gloryhounds.”
Offering an alternative to Helbig’s variety of apathy is one of the advantages of fulfilling general education requirements through the Honors Program, according to Honors spokeswoman Emily Schnitzengruben.
“Plus, with these honors classes,” she whispered. “You really just need to show up and you get As. It’s just a way to make those annoying over achievers coming out of high school feel important and get kisses blown to their a**. Then their rich parents donate a ton of money and BAM I’m on a study abroad in Tahiti developing a global perspective or something like that.”
Colbyson doubts he will join the Honors Program as a way to stoke the extinguished fire in his mind, and he’s completely eliminated psychology as a choice for his major. Psychology is one of the U’s more popular options of study for unambitious political science drop-outs, sixth-year seniors and upper middle class students who’ll have their car taken away if they don’t get a degree.
“Dude, I thought about that design-your-own-major thing they talked about at orientation,” Colbyson said. “I thought it would be cool to study, you know, chicks [laughs], but this women’s studies class I took wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.
“I think I’ll go into business management next semester,” he said.
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