Mr. Beatnik

I am not looking forward to class tonight. This could be attributed to the fact that I’ve been taking courses without much of a break since last January, but that’s not the cause of my lethargy. The course is learning Illustrator, a program I’ve never worked in before until the class started a few weeks ago. Do I find it too hard? Is the teacher going too fast? Hardly. If the teacher went any slower, we’d be learning on typewriters.

When I first saw the teacher, I knew the experience was not going to be a rewarding one. He stumbled in late the first night, with his baggy shorts that were falling off of his ass, his grungy ball cap and his honkin’ nose ring. He didn’t teach that night, he just went over the course outline and gave us a few minutes to introduce ourselves. The entire time, he never took his hat off and he often stumbled around jumping from one topic to another. I felt like I was watching a cast-off from the Pineapple Express movie. “Dude, where’s your car?” I wanted to ask.

I held my judgment for the second class; the one he said he’d be teaching. He spent the entire three hours going over the basic tools of the program. You wouldn’t think three hours could be spent talking about the selection tools, but surprise!, it can. After about forty minutes, I tuned out and started surfing the internets. From what I can tell, Illustrator does not have the steep learning curve of other programs, Flash for example, so I’m not sure why he’s crawling along.

“Hey guys,” Mr. Beatnik called out during the lesson, “I just wanted to let you know that I have to leave about twenty minutes early next week.” Um, okay. I kept waiting for him to follow up with “But don’t worry, we can start early or take a shorter break to make up for it.” Nope, no such amendment came.

Last week (the night he said he would be leaving early), I arrived at the campus a few minutes early thinking that perhaps Mr. Beatnik would redeem himself by showing up on time. The classroom door was locked so myself and the other students in the class sat out in the hall waiting for his arrival. “Didn’t he say he would be coming late today?” someone asked.

“Nope, he said he’d be leaving early tonight,” I replied. People went back to their cell phones, books and newspapers as the minutes ticked by.

About ten minutes after the class was supposed to start, Mr. Beatnik came strolling in. “Sorry guys, I’ve had a crazy day,” he mumbled as he unlocked the door.

He started the class by asking us to open the same file we had worked on the last time. He spent the entire class using the same four shapes to show us a few more tools. Throughout the classes, he’s emphasized that we’ll be tested on our knowledge of program short-cuts. All I keep thinking is, what’s the point of memorizing short-cuts if we’re not learning the functions behind them? It’s like learning to measure out the ingredients for a recipe but never actually baking anything. I figured after three classes we’d be drawing and working with layers. Instead, we keep dragging around the same circle, square, star and triangle shapes.

It was during last week’s class that I lost any and all respect for Mr. Beatnik. He kept trailing off with his sentences as if it was too hard to finish them completely. “Sorry guys, I’m so tired today. My family’s out of town this week so I’m taking full advantage. Been going to bed real late,” he mumbled. Was he trying to sound cool by telling us about his partying ways? It was bad enough when he tried to impress us by talking about being in a band.

The best part came when he returned from the break. Even though he was late and was going to be leaving early, he still insisted we take a full break. Upon getting back to his desk, he logged onto Facebook and checked his messages – his computer was still hooked up to the projector. I felt like yelling, “Hey shit stain; piss around on your own time!”

He wrapped up the class by reminding us not to miss tonight’s lesson; he’s going to be teaching the Pen tool. The Pen tool! OMG! Sooo exciting. And here I didn’t think to bring a change of underwear.

Its one thing to be stuck in a room with students who have trouble keeping up, but when the instructor’s an idiot, that just makes it unbearable. Just because you’re an “artist” type doesn’t mean you’re suitable to teach. I’m sure Mr. Beatnik is a fun guy outside of class, jamming around with his buddies late at night working on their tunes. I just have no use for him as my instructor.