COMM 2010

I took a writing workshop at UVA. The last day of class half of us were practically in tears. Our professor had not only taught us how to bleed our hearts out onto the page, but also created an environment in which we felt comfortable doing so. I’ve never been closer with classmates or a professor at UVA before. All of us were pursuing different majors, but our professor had revealed a passion in many of us we didn’t know we had.

I recently learned that English professors at UVA are often given only yearly contracts in order to prevent them from unionizing and asking for higher wages or benefits. Due to odd application timelines at many universities and only year or semester long contracts, many English professors face job insecurity.

And then there’s Roger Martin: instructor of the FOUNDATIONAL courses of one of the top business programs in the country- well, “best” according to US News and World Report. Here’s what Rogers’ class entails: a $100 online textbook which you will teach yourself each chapter from, a practice/homework set of problems, and then an online test every 2-3 weeks. Oh and then some pre-recorded videos that are reused every semester. So here Roger Martin gets to sit on his fat tenured bippy doing practically nothing. Oh, I take that back. Not nothing. He does take the time to construct carefully framed emails tied up nicely with a cute little accounting pun to compensate for his passive aggressive tone. He also holds weekly review sessions in which he doesn’t even bother to come up with new problems, just pulls from previous examples from the problem sets. But, you can bet your bottom dollar *duh dunce* he’ll rip you a new one on the tests.

To those taking Roger’s class: really rework problems until you genuinely understand the concepts behind them; take your success in the class, or lack thereof, with a grain of salt; and consider how this introductory course may be reflective of your possible future experience at McIntire. Although, if you do get into McIntire you’re guaranteed to be raking it in after graduation. If you’re lucky enough, you might be able to join the ranks of Roger and make as he does. If you don’t make it in, however, there’s plenty of other opportunities- just don’t become an English teacher at UVA as you likely won’t earn what you deserve and may not have a job after a year.