There is a class I’ll be attending this quarter that promises to be particularly challenging, if not frighteningly maddening. The topic is gender and rhetoric which is not my strong suit, partially my reason for taking the class. However, the true topic of the class is feminism and rhetoric, which also interests me and again-not my strong suit. The only frustrating part is every one else enrolled for the class. I think mid-way through the two hour seminar I had the intense urge to start banging my head against the table in front of me.

First off, there’s the young undergraduate (by the way, I’ve turned into a complete snob and I despise taking classes with undergraduates. I’d like to petition that the amount of time and money I’m spending on my Masters entitles me to classes with only my peers present) who has lots of high ideals and strong opinions but very little actual knowledge to back every thing up with. Then there’s the student sitting next to me who wanders off into the realm of her personal life for no apparent reason and feels the need to share with every one her emotions and current crises. Lastly, we have the highly intillectual and very opinionated bunch that won’t let the rest of us get a word in edgewise.  In the academic community we’ve moved further down the rungs of Dante’s hell to poststructuralism (for those of you struggling with postmodernism in contemporary culture I’m here to tell you that that’s “so yesterday” in academic circles) and nothing makes sense anymore.

A large part of my problem, I know, is the fact that I’m not huge into theory because for the most part it doesn’t translate practically into the real world. I get easily fed up with going round and round about how to define “man” and “woman” (one suggestion was lactating and non-lactating individuals and there’s always simply “chair persons”) or whether it’s more beneficial to seek equality for all the oppressed or focus on special interest groups, of which I’m apparently one since I qualify as a woman.

All this to say that gender and rhetoric is going to stretch me and while I dread some of the fist fights (figurative of course) that we’ll all be engaging in, I am very excited to hear what the professor has to say. She is a brilliant woman who knows a lot about a lot of things which means I respect her opinion far more than any one else in the class, even if I disagree with some of her views.