A case of the Fridays

Wow. This Friday takes the cake for being pretty much the worst.

Made a ton of errors while teaching today, didn't get through half of my lesson plan, forgot an assignment that was due yesterday, forgot an assignment that is due Monday that requires 100 pgs of reading.

Had a huge breakdown in my health class today. Last week we had 3 guest speakers who spoke about AIDS, one of whom shared a very graphic personal testimony that affected me no small amount. I spoke up at the beginning of class stating that I was offended we weren't given any warning as to the nature of the man's testimony. I started crying which was unexpected, but the professor got defensive and basically said we're all adults and should all be able to handle the truth. That made me really mad and then I couldn't stop crying and had to leave the class. When I came back the professor asked me to step outside and told me I could go home since I was clearly so anguished. I told him I was angry, not anguished and we proceeded to hash it out for 10 minutes.

I told him it was a ridiculous thing to say that "we're all adults" and that claiming tolerance to say that my opinion is wrong wasn't tolerance. I said that it was disrespectful to anyone not to give them a choice about things, especially since the professor knew in advance how potentially distressing the guy's testimony he was. He said that I could have left at any time, he actually asked if anyone was restraining me to stay in the class. I looked at him, agog. Really? I told him that no, no one was actually restraining me, but that in my culture (and his, btw) it is impolite, disrespectful and intolerant to get up and leave while someone is baring their soul. We went back and forth but finally he said that in the future he would tell people that it was a graphic story and would explicitly give them the option to leave if they needed.

Ugh.

On the bright side, I had a few people come and tell me they thought I was brave to speak up, good for me, etc. And now that I've had a big cry, I actually feel less stressed. Although I still have a lot of work to do this weekend.