Photography class and My snowflake Teacher

What this article is, is just a small blog article that I don't want to post in my other platforms at Substack and Medium.com It goes towards my efforts to enhance this blog and try to drum up some attention here, since it's a relatively safe space not subject to censorship or shadow banning, which is another form of censorship.

So, to business. Last time I posted something here, I said I would talk about my photography class at Brightpoint Community College here in central Virginia on my next post. Here it is.

First, let me tell everyone about why I decided to attend this class in the first place. I've been taking pictures around the world for over fifty years now and since I'm kind of retired, I thought to myself, why not use some of my little bit of free time to increase my knowledge of how to take really good pictures.

Part of that came from my friend up in Massachusetts, who is an avid photographer. He told me a while back that he went to a local community college up where he lives fifteen years ago and he has used that education to work as a local photo journalist at his local newspaper, or just doing freelance work when it became available. Now, he travels all over New England taking pictures of landscapes and tourist attractions. Sometimes he posts his pictures in an article in Medium.com and they intrigued me. I wanted to be able to take such good pictures for myself. He's the one who suggested I consider taking a class.

I have taken brilliant pictures through the years, most of them with a 35 millimetre camera with various different film types. When I say different type, I mean different ISO's. By 2010, mostly because I was living in a remote area of the country, I started having a hard time getting film developed that didn't look like something out of a box. Such as at Walmart and Walgreens. You know what I mean.

I finally broke down and bought a digital camera back in 2011, a Nikon, and I've been struggling some to learn how to use it ever since. That's what this class I'm taking is all about. It's a basic class to teach students how to use the various settings to improve digital photo taking. I will admit that I have learned quite a bit in the last five weeks and I expect to learn even more by the time the class finishes on December 4th. But that's where everything falls apart.

I have never attended this school for anything before so I was a little behind the learning curve as I tried to get set up to do the lessons. The school didn't offer much in the way of onboarding before classes started either. I didn't even know when the first day of school was starting until the day I registered for the class. Which also happened to be the first day of classes. If I hadn't stopped by a help desk table to ask an unrelated question, I would never have known.

Things have continued to get slowly worse as the weeks go by. My first indication that things weren't going to go as planned, beyond the lack of communication by the school admin, was when the teacher on the first day of class started telling the students about herself and giving us way too much personal information that had nothing to do with the class.

You have to understand. I was a military instructor for nearly four years back in the 1980's and I also briefly taught a vocational HVAC class as a night instructor for Austin, Texas Community College. My teaching methods are a little more disciplined because of my military background but, even when I taught that votech course for ACC in Texas, I never told students I was hard of hearing, or I had a spouse at home with dementia, and some of the other very personal things she told us. Her credibility went down the tubes with me on day one. I don't care that she's been working there for fourteen years and is a somewhat renowned photographic artist that regularly has showings in galleries across Richmond, VA and other places around the region.

And her snowflake artist attitude has gotten worse every week. She forgets things, she gets distracted and loses her place in the days lesson plan and so on.

Last Thursday, I went up after class to ask a question and she answered me with an attitude of, "I know you're auditing this class so I don't really want to help you anymore", remarks. For those who don't know what it means to audit a class, let me help you out.

Auditing means that I applied to attend the class without paying for it but I won't get a certificate or a diploma for my efforts. I was offered that option when I inquired last summer because I am a disabled veteran and I'm over 65 years old.

When I heard that tone of voice, I knew it was over. I'm just going to do my best to do the homework assignments and weekly quizzes to get a passing grade and let it go. If I have to put up with her distracted style of teaching and condescending attitude to learn what I need in order to get a passing grade, so be it. I'll suffer through it.

One bright spot in all of this, is that I found out the other class I want to take, the landscape photography class, is taught by a man so maybe I'll have a better experience in that class next spring. I think I might just pay for the class this time as it's only a one credit course. I'm so glad I didn't pay for this class as I would be really pissed by now. This class is a three credit class and would have set me back over $700. This senior citizen, full of herself, flaky instructor, is definitely nowhere worth that much money for a one semester, twice a week, two hour a day course.

My one primary requirement for any class I ever take, and I have taken a lot of classes through the years, is that the teacher knows the subject matter. And when the teacher blows by something, or in her case, openly admits she didn't know something, I lose all respect for that person as a teacher. When I taught classes, I always boned up on the subject matter I was supposed to be teaching. If I encountered something, such as a student question that wasn't in the class material but was related to the class, I always told the student I would research the answer and get back to them. I never told my students that I just didn't know the answer or, in her case, didn't know what the image in her power point presentation was and she wasn't going to teach us what it was.

My class is made up of students of all age groups. There is man in the class, who sits across from me when he's there, who's a year older than me. He's a retired real estate photographer, so he says. There are several ladies in this class who are in their forties and fifties, or maybe in the case of one, in her sixties. Then there are the young twenty somethings there to take the class as part of their pipeline to whatever artistic degree they're pursuing. The young lady who sits next to me told us that she was taking this class as a stand alone class just for the fun of it. Which sounded weird but to each their own. I didn't ask.

This is the first time in my life I've taken a class like this at a local community college and I have to say, if this is the calibre of instructors I can expect from this college, then the exorbitant tuition costs are not worth it. The campus is fairly new and the admin staff are very nice and helpful, so far. Maybe that's what the tuition is for, all the shiny new buildings, classrooms and teaching equipment, rather than professional teachers.

Or maybe I'm just used to a better calibre of teacher. I attended a IT vocational school back in 2020 during the pandemic for ten months and the instructors there were a lot more professional than what I've encountered here so far. Sure, they had their issues but nothing like this lady. She even looks older than I am. I know she needs the money, as she has told us she does, in order to take care of her husband. But maybe she needs to start thinking about her next phase in life outside of the classroom. But hey, I'm just one disgruntled student who's vote doesn't count for much because I'm 'auditing' the class. What do I know. Maybe this is the standard of teaching for these types of community colleges. I guess I'll find out when I sign up for that other class at the end of this semester.

If anyone reading this wants to share their experiences attending a local community college with me, hit me up here in the contact page (which drops me an email) or with one of my social media links found on the same contact page using the menu bar above. Thanks for tuning in.