Told

In the last couple of weeks, I've been having trouble in one class.
Since I'm a quite guy by nature, I don't really sit well with a class that's 3 hrs long and fully devoted to class discussioin.
The professor promotes involvement in the class discussions, and at times will randomly select someone to give an answer.

Now that we've had our 4th session, it seems that "random" doesn't really fit her aiming of questions to be answered.
Every session, I've been called on.
First time around (which was actually the second class because the first was devoted to getting to know people/syllabus time), I gave an answer, although my thunder was stolen right before I had a chance to speak from the guy two seats up. The shitty part about this was that the guy's answer was to the professor-sparked question "What was Travis' paper all about?"
He excellently picked out my arguments, and that's when she turned to me.
What the hell am I supposed to say?! I gave a brief synopsis of what the guy just said.
Everyone stared at me wondering how an idiot like me got into a graduate program.
However, after class, the teacher did congratulate my work and said it was one of the better papers. I think it also got the distinction of being the most talked about in class. (We all write papers and then we all read each other's papers.)
The following week, the third class, we didn't have a paper due.
So it was merely a discussion. I read all the readings so I thought I'd be ok.
The discussion was on science and it's validity and how people's preconceived notions may falsely lead their work or narrow their view of nature.

Each week we have about 200 pages of material to read. Personally, because I'm cheap, lazy, and somewhat environmentally-aware, I refuse to waste this much ink on paper.
This turned out to be a big mistake.

Taking a step back, and giving some background information: outside the class, I kept telling my classmates about my apprehension of speaking in class. They told me to just get anything out that you know as soon as it pertains to the subject being discussed.

So during class, the professor asks about a vocab word.
I seemingly was the only one to look it up, so I blurt out its definition.
"Right on." I think to myself. Other people haven't said anything yet, so I'll be good for a while.
Not so.
Down the road, my professor pulls out an article we read and pointed out a hefty excerpt from it. She reads it aloud. My attention span holds for a while, but slowly fades as I ponder other things.
Then I hear it. "Travis?" "Would you like to explain this to us?"
FUCK! I had no idea. I stare blankly, and after a while the professor offers the classmate next to me to let me look at the quote from her printed out portfolio.
I know what page it's on, but I still can't find the quote.
Awkward silence.
After probably two minutes, she asks if anyone else knows. Time somewhat faded away from me at that time. I don't know if the question was answered, but I could sure feel the redness of my face.

Because I failed her miserably, the professor asked me another question about an hour later, just to see what I could come up with. I had another feeble answer like last week. It's not looking good.
On the other hand, its looking good for the people who keep there mouth's shut and aren't forced an opinion or answer....

The next week, today, again we had no paper due to the professor's blunder in copy-and-pasting. She reused the basic outline of last week's instructions that still told us we didn't have a paper due and forgot to change it. Everyone was stoked.

So we discuss.

First off, she asks for definitions.
Evolution.
She hands it off to the girl from Czech Republic who is surprisingly always on the ball.
Second. Adaption.
ME!
Ironically, I seem to remember this happening the first week of discussion. Same order.

Anyway. Evolution is my bag, so I pull out an explanation for adaption that may have not fit what the readings said to a 'T', but got the job done.

First time called on.
Next, we move on to evolution further in detail to discuss how today there are two common theories of how evolution occurs.
One is the slow, gradual change over time, and the other is a fast change with long bouts of stasis, no change.

This time, I interject unprovoked.
What if both are possible. I took a human population genetics class at UW that told me that population and the inbreeding coefficient (% of genetic material able to flow into a population) greatly affects mutation rate.
My conclusion was that the quick-changing evolution was just a subset of the gradual evolution, where in times of stress and environmental change leading to a bottleneck (a group of people are isolated from the greater population) you can the quick changing evolution. Otherwise, with a large population, you'll only see the gradual evolution.
The class thought this was a resonable conclusion and pondered over it like they had with my first paper.

Finally I'm in the positive.
Score 1 for me.

Next comes people who were influential in setting up the advent of the evolution theory, i.e. where Darwin drew from. She did ask some people at random, but I know there were two people who didn't really say much of a word on any topic of the day.
I thought I was safe.
NO.
She asks me.
I went for the easy one that one of the people had mentioned earlier, but we skipped over becuase we went back to discuss just how another mentioned name affected the inception of the theory of evolution.

So I threw that answer at her and effectively enough to where she asked for nothing more of me on the subject.
2 points for me.

Then we move to another topic dealing with different ways to analyse evolutionary adaptations.
Before class I had put a lot of thought into these and did some extensive wikipedia researching to come up with the actual differences between the two mechanisms named.
She seemed to be struggling with the definitions when people were asking specifics, so I jumped in and told her what "I got from the readings."
3 points for me.

Something that I forgot to mention was that during the time between influential people involving the concept of evolution, the professor mentioned a name, Agassiz.
She said it was in the readings, but no one could find it.
Although as immediately as she had mentioned the name, "Geologist" went off in my head.
However, I couldn't rememeber what he had done.

After class I came up to her and asked her about the name again.
I asked if he was a geologist. She piked an eyebrow and confirmed it.
I asked if he had anything to do with plate techtonics.
No. Shot down.
I then told her that I had read about him somewhere, maybe in Darwin's The Origin of Species...?

I can't recall precisely, but I think the jist of her answer was, "No, although they were contemporaries."

So tonight I went home and looked up the e-version of Darwin's master work.
Lo' and behold, under Chapter 9 - "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record", there are exactly THREE references to Agassiz and his contributions (or actually impediments) to science.
It's been a few years since I've read it, but I still know my evolutionary Bible.
Chalk another one up for me.
This win, however, I think I will keep to myself.
If I point it out to my professor, I have a feeling the already biased 'random selection' for questioning will become even moreso.

One may wonder why I spent the time lamenting about my class struggles.
Well, I guess its basically the clashing of egos.
My professor CAN'T be wrong.
I don't enjoy being unfairly put on the spot in numerous occasions for someone's amusement.
So when I can prove someone to be wrong who lives life in this fashion, maybe I do take joy in it.
Is that so wrong? If it were a different professor, I don't think I would even think twice of it, but considering the personality at hand, I take great offense to the ego-bashing that's being dealt out in my direction.

Although, it's nothing like a challenge to spark my interests.
Next week I'm going to own my professor even harder.
Especially if they will be in the my equal state of mind: dominance.

Creationism?
C'mon! I've already written two papers on the topic just for fun!
Why is it so hard for some people to accept that other people may know more about a given topic than they do.
Nobody can know everything . . . except maybe Jesus. ;)