I know this story is a bit long, but it’s about one of the most epic things that ever happened to me in college, so hopefully it’s worth the read.
I went to a commuter university in California in the late 90’s and majored in music. I played guitar. I didn’t really want to go there, but at the time I didn’t have much choice due to personal circumstances. The music department was so small that most of the other departments didn’t even know it existed, but it had some really great professors that I learned a lot from. Except for one. We’ll call him Mr. B. He was a terrible teacher and almost all the students hated him, but we were all afraid of him because, at the time, he ran everything.
Firstly, he was the Performance class instructor for all of the instrumentalists – meaning everyone who played an instrument had to take at least this class with him every quarter. Performance class was mandatory for all students and were divided up into Voice, taught by the Voice professor (who was very very nice,) and Instrumental, taught by Mr. B., who would spend his time berating students whenever they demonstrated what they’d been working on with their 1:1 private instructors, which we’ll get to in a second.
Secondly, and more importantly, Mr B. was the Department Chair for the first 2 years of my time there, which means he oversaw the whole department. If you had a problem, you had to go to him. The Chair position was on a rotation-based system, meaning that each professor was asked to Chair for 2 years, then another would take over, etc. But to us students, it felt like a permanent position and because 2 years is a long time and he had so much power. We felt like we were stuck with his incompetence forever.
Mr. B was awful! We tried as hard as we could to take as few of his classes as possible, but we were always stuck with at least that one Performance class where he was always comparing himself to us, berating us for not working hard enough no matter how hard we worked, etc. Grades were based on favoritism, not performance. He’d name-drop famous people he used to go to school with, but it was obvious he was extremely jealous of their success. During Performance class, students had to demonstrate what songs or instruments they were learning in their 1:1 lessons. Mr. B went out of his way to insult and demean students on a regular basis and compare their supposed inadequacy to his “greatness”. He would always go on and on about how he practiced 10 hours a day in college (right, sure he did) and what pieces of shit we were for not working as hard as he did. These stories inevitably included the aforementioned name-dropping. If a student had to take up a new type of instrument for their major – say, a Bass student had to switch to upright bass as part of his curriculum – Mr. B would tell them how terrible they were at it and how much better he could do if it were him. Of course he could.
Just so everyone understands, playing upright bass is HARD. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to pick it up quickly, not even a seasoned electric bass player. Mr. B played trumpet. I had a hard time believing he was a bass prodigy as well. He was a dick to everyone.
Mr. B was also a racist. He loved Jazz --and only Jazz -- and berated every other type of music. EXCEPT Rap. Did he like Rap? No, he hated it. But he was afraid of Black people, so he’d always point out this exception to his Jazz-only rule by nervously mentioning Rap’s African roots as the reason it was the only other legitimate form of music on Earth. Because, Africa, for some reason. It was always uncomfortable to watch him do this because we all knew he was full of shit. He was also so arrogant, he would tell us shit like “Copacetic isn’t a real word because I don’t know what it means.” As if he were a goddamned walking, talking Merriam-Webster dictionary incarnate. Right. We slogged through this class as best we could and avoided him whenever possible.
Fast-forward to my 3rd year in the department (4th year at the school but not even close to graduating yet because….commuter school.) I was a Commercial Music major, which was so new at the time, they had mandatory classes scheduled in the curriculum that no one had ever taught before, some of which might never be offered. We didn’t know for sure. Most of these classes were only offered every other year at best, some every 4 years, so if you didn’t register for them when they were available, your 6-8 year graduation plan would get delayed, and no one wanted that. It was bad enough as it was. Even with a full load of 12+ credits each quarter, this was not a 4-year school.
Fall Quarter they offered all of the Pop Music classes. Pop Music History, World Pop Music, Pop Music Lit, etc. We were excited, until we found out…they were all being taught by Mr. B. All of them. Every. Single. Fucking. One. And they were going to take up a majority of our course load every week. Gone were the days we could avoid his classes. We had to register for them. And so we did. It went worse than we expected.
Mr. B knew NOTHING about pop music. We already knew this. After all, he devoted his entire existence to trashing it every moment he got. Now he was stuck teaching it to us. He had to learn it and pretend to take it seriously, which, in and of itself, was satisfying revenge. He was very much out of his element. While it may have been funny at first to watch him squirm under the pressure of having to take popular music with even a modicum of seriousness, that soon faded as his gross incompetence became evident and we were bogged down under the weight of having to waste so much time with it. We clearly knew far more than he did and any one of us could have stood up there and done a better job.
At the best of times, he was just wasting our time for what we hoped was an easy A. We were required to buy a book for World Pop Music that we only used once. And by ‘we’, I don’t mean him. We were assigned to read a chapter on a song by a Western artist that incorporated African influences that not only discussed the structure of the music, but also the cultural impact of whether or not cross-culture collaboration was positive or simply cultural appropriation. Now, this was in the days before online streaming of any kind, so if you wanted to hear the song, you had to go to the record store and buy the whole CD and hope they had it in stock. The book didn’t come with the song, so I figured hey, great teaching moment! We read the chapter, we come in to class the next day, he plays the song, and then we have a vigorous class discussion! I actually had this whole lesson plan mapped out in my head, stupidly expecting him to do it. NOPE! There was no follow up. He never mentioned the book again as if there’d been no assignment. It was the only reading assignment we got that quarter. More money wasted.
At the worst of times, he not only encouraged incompetence, but recommended plagiarism, which we could have been expelled for. In Pop Music History, he assigned us an oral report on a famous artist and decided he’d do the first one himself as an example. He did a report on Elton John, and it was clear from the start he’d never heard a single goddamned thing John had ever released before his meager research began. And I mean meager. To make it worse, his racist Freudian slip about John’s hit “The Bitch is Black [sic]” had us stifling laughter to the point he stopped the presentation to yell at us about how we didn’t show him any respect, totally oblivious as to why we were laughing. No one told him. At the end he suggested we just copy and paste information from the internet into the accompanying written report we were required to turn in. We quietly decided not to. And when they were graded? Hoo boy. One girl was in riotous fits of laughter in the lounge one day after class and we asked what was up. She showed us the paper she’d written in a state of delirium while pulling an all-nighter and it made NO SENSE at all. It was a jumble of hysterical nonsense and we were all rolling as she read it out loud to us. He’d given it an “A”.
Now, you’d think we’d all be happy to have such easy classes to get us through our requirements, but we were not. We were losing over a thousand dollars this quarter on classes and books for abhorrent wastes of our time. We were paying to learn and were getting nothing but frustration in return. It had to stop. And I was the one who was going to stop it.
Winter Quarter, I had a plan. Our new Chair was a very kind Hare Krishna Hippie from the 60’s. I hadn’t really known him before that year, but I was extremely glad he was there. This guy was amazing. At the end of Fall Quarter, I made an appointment with him to complain. He was quiet, kind, and listened carefully to everything I told him. No one had ANY idea what had been going on. No one sees what goes on in classes except the professor and students, and none of the other students had been brave enough to speak up. We were all still afraid of Mr. B from his tenure as Chair. But I was very much done with his bullshit.
The new Chair immediately stepped into action. He suggested I switch to the voice performance class since I’d already started taking lessons with the voice teacher as a second instrument. She was in on the plan and happily welcomed me into her class. That took me out of ALL of Mr. B's classes. Then I was to write a letter to the Dean of the College of Arts detailing every infraction I had witnessed Mr. B do over the past 2 years. Dammit, we could have written to the Dean this whole time! I felt stupid for not realizing that. I left out the rumors about him sleeping with students for grades. Yeah, I had witnessed some suspicious things, but nothing concrete. I kept it just to verifiable facts. When it was done, I had to sign it and put my student ID on it, but that was redacted when a copy was given to Mr. B to protect my identity so he couldn’t retaliate.
I had several meetings with the Chair and I told friends in the department about them. They wanted to go. And then their friends wanted to go. Very soon, the meetings were so big, they were spilling out into the hall! EVERYONE in the department was going to these meetings. Everyone (save for 1 or 2) had a gripe against Mr. B. Everyone was out for blood. Everyone was writing letters.
It wasn’t long before I didn’t even have to go to these meetings anymore. They’d taken on a life of their own. The revolt had started. I was told Mr. B had to hire a lawyer because he was so afraid of losing his job. I felt so good watching this all go down from a distance. I had no fear of retaliation. I was far enough away, he couldn’t touch me. A fellow guitar student caught up with me one day as I was walking to class to gripe about how unfair someone had been to Mr. B, thinking I hadn’t heard about it yet. I already knew Mr. B had read the letter ‘an anonymous student’ had written OUT LOUD to the ENTIRE performance class, trying to get them on his side. Inappropriate much? Mr. B had been demanding to know who wrote the letter. Everyone knew. No one said a word. After verifying its contents, I just turned to the guy, smiled, and said “I wrote it.” Then I walked away. He was stunned. I’m not sure how long it took him to pick his jaw up off the floor. It was extremely satisfying.
Now, I should mention, my revenge this quarter was actually 2-fold. At the same time shit’s going down with ol’ Mr. B, a new student joins the department. I knew him from the dorms. He was a smug, self-important guitarist in some Christian band who had always acted like God’s gift to the world. We’ll call him Mr. Rock & Roll. He looked exactly like the guy in the sunglasses on Fastball’s “All the Pain Money Can Buy” album cover. He was a total douche. I had some interactions with him years back where he ‘graciously’ let me open for his band at a local coffee house, invited me out back to jam, took my guitar from me to impress me with his musical prowess, and never let me play a goddamned thing. I didn’t think I was going to get my guitar back from him. The guy thought he was 6-String Jesus. He was also dating a girl that I knew in the school choir, and he had been an abusive asshole to her. I was glad for her when they finally broke up. The guy was an A#1 asshole.
Until he joined the music department.
First of all, you need to understand that there was no audition process to enter the department. They were so short on students, they’d take anyone that was interested. That will help the next part make some sense.
Long story short, when you started as a guitar major – no matter what your emphasis, classical or commercial – you HAD to start on classical guitar until you passed into your upper levels. That meant reading actual musical notes – not charts – and fingerpicking. For at least 2 years. This guy did NOT know how to read music and did NOT know how to fingerpick. At all. He had no coordination in his right hand. If it wasn’t electric power chords with a pick, he was as lost as a puppy dog in row boat in the middle of the ocean. He was in way over his head. Suddenly Mr. R&R was reduced to a sniveling, whiny, disheveled husk of a boy as he struggled to keep up with what was expected of him, and that alone would have been enough revenge for me after all he’d done, but I got a little extra for my troubles.
He was always complaining. “It’s so HARD! How do you do it??” I would just casually smile, shrug, and say “I dunno, it’s easy.” That made him feel even worse, especially since it was coming from a girl, and I had zero remorse for it. He so deserved it. I’d worked hard for years to be able to do what this guy thought he was perfect enough to just nail without trying. This guy was finally getting his comeuppance. He was desperate. Real music was putting Mr. R&R in his fucking place and I savored every delicious moment.
By the end of the quarter, I was on top of my game. It. Was. Awesome. Mr. B was running scared and Mr. R&R was a wreck. Meanwhile, I was looking like a fucking rock star. I’d upped my game. I was the ‘hero’ who stepped in to take over stage-managing the opera last-minute from another student everyone hated. I was acing my classes and on independent study with theory. I finally made it into the ‘elite’ choir and we were going on tour in Europe. I totally nailed my Jury for the first time, and passed with flying colors. They loved everything I did. (The Jury is the performance final where you perform different songs and demonstrate techniques you’ve learned in front of a panel of professors, as well as turn in a written Theory analysis of a chosen piece, and you have to perform a duet as well. The panel can be very harsh and students sweat bullets over it.)
Now, mind you, I hated to practice, so some of it was furious improvisation, but I pulled it off. It was not easy by any means, but they seemed super impressed. More than anything, I felt like I had finally learned how to game the system, but I can’t say I hadn’t also prepared for it in my own way. I just knew what they wanted and I gave it to them in spades. When I exited the room, Mr. R&R was in the hallway, visibly worried and sweating.
“How did you do??” he asked.I smiled confidently. “Nailed it. Piece of cake!”“How??” he asked, terrified.I shrugged and just said “Hard work and practice,” and walked away. I heard he barely passed his.
Sadly, a couple weeks into Spring Quarter, I had to drop out of school due to health reasons. I was sad about it because we had a new guest lecturer, a VP of ASCAP, who’d come to teach the Copyright Law class, and it was awesome. Everything I’d hoped a college class on the subject would be. So it was sad to leave. This is where I expected the story to end, but I got one last little morsel of delightful revenge soon after I left.
This guest lecturer invited everyone to submit a recording of a song they’d written for professional critique. A friend of mine in the class submitted a song I’d written for a recording project we’d done together the previous quarter and told me all about it afterwards. It wasn’t the greatest song by any means, but the professor really liked it and only critiqued a few technical aspects which couldn’t really be helped since our studio was so low budget. But he understood that. Overall it got a glowing review. Mr. R&R’s song from his band, however? ….oh man. It got ripped to shreds for being so poorly written and performed, and for the lyrics being completely unrelatable to an audience. He was humiliated in front of everyone. Even after I was gone, I got the last laugh. Talk about going out on a high note. :`>
And what happened to Mr. B? He was demoted to teaching intro music courses. From the online reviews I’ve read about him, I can see he hasn’t changed. (“I have never had a more hateable teacher.” Rotfl. Truth.) He was already tenured by the time I got there, so while I may not have gotten him fired, I can’t say it’s a happy day for a professor when they’re demoted to teaching intro courses. He has yet to retire. Best of luck to anyone who has to endure him. Stay strong.
Submitted March 05, 2019 at 01:11AM by boatswainblind https://ift.tt/2tYDUnb
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