I know the old saying is that if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. I however have chosen to ignore the adage and rain my negativity down upon the land, in most cases. I do, however, occasionally hold my tongue and today was one of those days. Today I attended my first seminar for one of my courses, and I was actually very curious to see what the point of such a thing was, since the concept is completely foreign to me. I can't speak for all seminars, but this particular one was pointless (unless it existed to irritate me). The professor began by telling us that she had only had 2 hours of sleep and was feeling "incoherent" this is never a good sign and she continued to ramble on about all of the other commitments she was trying to keep and how they had left her with very little time. Making you students feel devalued, check.
She then started to tell us the proper way to answer an essay exam question, because we are apparently too stupid to figure out how to answer a question on our own and we are all expected to follow a similar formula. First, we are to read the excerpt given to us (no duh) then analyse the section for language, style, and imagery (why these are the only three considerations, I do no know), connect our analysis to the idea of realism (even though 4 other ideological options were listed we were informed that since we are reading Dickens we should focus solely on realism) and then link our analyse back to another area in the text. I was foolhardy enough to ask if it would be beneficial to link our analyse to another work. This was greeted by a frown that was followed by a brief explanation of how university tests work. Apparently they only want to know what we learned in the course.
All of this was terrible enough for an English major who is used to quite a bit more creative license, but then the drowsy professor began to explain to us the difference in 1st and 2nd person narrative in literature. That was just crazy to me, I was looking around at the rest of the room expecting students to be rolling their eyes at this regression into high school English lessons, but they were all dutifully taking notes. Then she asked us if we had ever heard of the word "brazen". I thought I might spontaneously combust at any moment. How could she talk down to us like that? And how come nobody else was upset!!!
This is a riddle I have yet to solve. The lengthy anecdote above is just one example of what my classes are like here. Maybe I didn't choose classes that are challenging enough, but I constantly feel as if I am being treated like a child. My professors will drone on and on about the dangers of passive reading, but they have passive students. No one speaks or engages anyone during class, the professors ask questions, but only in the rhetorical sense and when a student does ask a question (basically just me) the answer is usually some nonsense about "how university testing works" closely followed by the inevitable "you're an American, aren't you?" What does that have to do with anything?
I'm pretty sure Americans aren't the only ones capable of asking questions in class.

I'm tired of being treated like the pupil that must shrink in my the light of my instructor's brilliance.

My professors at home often behave as if they know more than I do on a particular subject, which is true hence the fact that I'm learning from them, but they do at least acknowledge the fact that I have thoughts, opinions, and even knowledge from other sources that may surprise them and be useful to them.

Maybe there is some hidden asset to the system here that I have yet to experience. I keep hoping for that eureka moment when this will all make sense, but thus far I just feel the need to have my blood pressure checked.