"My body feels lighter; I think my soul ripped itself out of my body in response to your stupidity."
Time for some more bitching, placed behind a cut.
A few weeks ago, I complained of having only five days to get together a presentation for my Shakespearian Literature class. Well, my group’s presentation went quite well, and we receive a high grade on it. Today, a presentation was made about Richard III (entitled something to the effect of “Fact vs. Fiction: the Real Richard III”) which was supposed to have examined how much of Shakespeare’s portrayal was accurate. That was the topic that I truly longed to work on, but I got assigned to another topic, but I’ve still been looking forward to seeing this one, and was hoping that it would be good.
It was terrible. One of the speakers couldn’t even pronounce “Gloucester” and stumbled over it every time she said it. The group primarily used the entirely unbiased (yeah right) Richard III Society as their main resource (that and wikipedia). The entire presentation was sloppy and unorganized. They even used the wrong portrait at one point; they were talking about Henry VI’s son, and used a picture of Edward VI. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to point out that the person in their picture didn’t even live in the same century as the person they were talking about. I would think that they would have been able to tell from the difference in the painting’s style that it was clearly not done in the same century as the others they used. They built their case entirely on uncertain, unsubstantiated claims and seemed to doubt that what they were presenting was even true, which certainly didn’t score them any points in my book. They entirely neglected to mention that many of Shakespeare’s plays were blatant propaganda pieces (I brought this up in our presentation, and we’ve discussed it in class before, so it certainly is something the presenters have heard). When trying to explain why Shakespeare might have reviled Richard III and attributed crimes to him that he didn’t commit, they basically shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t know why Shakespeare would do such a thing.
Now, why would I be upset over someone else’s failed presentation? Because that topic was the one that I wanted to present more than the others, damn it. I didn’t even have an interest in any of the other topics. Call me arrogant, elitist, or both, but I could have done a presentation on the subject by myself which would have blown theirs out of the water. They made over a month to get their shit together, whereas my group had five days, and theirs was unorganized, sloppy, boring, incomplete, and inaccurate. And that’s what gets me the most- it was inaccurate. They provided absolutely no background information on the houses of York and Lancaster, the Wars of the Roses, etc, and the scant information they did include was inaccurate, even down to one of their pictures. It makes me grind my teeth to see such a great topic being squandered so blatantly.
A few weeks ago, I complained of having only five days to get together a presentation for my Shakespearian Literature class. Well, my group’s presentation went quite well, and we receive a high grade on it. Today, a presentation was made about Richard III (entitled something to the effect of “Fact vs. Fiction: the Real Richard III”) which was supposed to have examined how much of Shakespeare’s portrayal was accurate. That was the topic that I truly longed to work on, but I got assigned to another topic, but I’ve still been looking forward to seeing this one, and was hoping that it would be good.
It was terrible. One of the speakers couldn’t even pronounce “Gloucester” and stumbled over it every time she said it. The group primarily used the entirely unbiased (yeah right) Richard III Society as their main resource (that and wikipedia). The entire presentation was sloppy and unorganized. They even used the wrong portrait at one point; they were talking about Henry VI’s son, and used a picture of Edward VI. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to point out that the person in their picture didn’t even live in the same century as the person they were talking about. I would think that they would have been able to tell from the difference in the painting’s style that it was clearly not done in the same century as the others they used. They built their case entirely on uncertain, unsubstantiated claims and seemed to doubt that what they were presenting was even true, which certainly didn’t score them any points in my book. They entirely neglected to mention that many of Shakespeare’s plays were blatant propaganda pieces (I brought this up in our presentation, and we’ve discussed it in class before, so it certainly is something the presenters have heard). When trying to explain why Shakespeare might have reviled Richard III and attributed crimes to him that he didn’t commit, they basically shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t know why Shakespeare would do such a thing.
Now, why would I be upset over someone else’s failed presentation? Because that topic was the one that I wanted to present more than the others, damn it. I didn’t even have an interest in any of the other topics. Call me arrogant, elitist, or both, but I could have done a presentation on the subject by myself which would have blown theirs out of the water. They made over a month to get their shit together, whereas my group had five days, and theirs was unorganized, sloppy, boring, incomplete, and inaccurate. And that’s what gets me the most- it was inaccurate. They provided absolutely no background information on the houses of York and Lancaster, the Wars of the Roses, etc, and the scant information they did include was inaccurate, even down to one of their pictures. It makes me grind my teeth to see such a great topic being squandered so blatantly.