This morning I went to Kraft with Holly to work out.
Kraft is a work-out facility for students at the University. At the beginning
of October I purchased a one month membership since I basically had no more
motivation to run outside because of the cold and increasing period of darkness,
not to mention the crazy hills J. Thus far I have enjoyed working out at Kraft.
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| The Kraft work-out facility on campus |
After working out I had my history class. The class
starts at 12:15 pm, however, today the professor was late. An informal rule in
college is if the professor doesn’t show up within 15 minutes of when class
should have started, students can leave. By the time our professor had shown up
most of the students had left since it was 12:45 pm.
The professor we had today was Henry Minde and this was
his first and only lecture with us. In my history course, we have different
professors almost every class period to teach the day’s topic upon which they
are experts in. Today’s topic was ethnic minorities and the Norwegianization
policy. Minde has written many articles on this topic and we have read a few of
them in my culture class.
When Minde arrived he was very flustered since the
History department had given him the wrong room and he had trouble unlocking
the room. In Norway all the classrooms are locked and you have to enter a code
to gain access. After we were inside the room, the professor then had troubles
with the computer and projector. While waiting we sat quietly chatting since
there was nothing we could do. He was having a rough start in teaching today.
Once everything was running and the power point was up we
began lecture. Minde seemed really nervous and he read from his power point
slides that were almost entirely writing. I will have to admit his lecture was
quite boring, but I wanted to be respectful so I gave him my attention the
whole class period. A couple of students, however, did not pay attention in
class today and were very disrespectful. There were only 8 students today and
so the actions of the two students did not go unnoticed. During lecture, the
two students interrupted the professor a couple of times to sternly correct his
pronunciation of words. They also laughed at him when he had trouble working
the old light projector. I did not approve of their actions in class today.
Throughout class I kept thinking about how the professor
felt. Here is a professor who was already frazzled from being late to class
that had to teach a class in not his primary language and was now being
disrespected by students. I give this professor as well as others respect for
coming into a class where they don’t know the students and teaching a course in
English. Although most Norwegians have a good understanding of English, it’s still
a challenge for many to teach in only English. Our professor had a more difficult
time teaching in English than most professors I’ve had. If I were in his position
I would of course be nervous and it would be difficult to teach in another language.
Even though the two students were from different countries where English was not
their primary language, they had no right to be as disrespectful as they were.
Even though lecture did not go the greatest, I did learn that
Henry Minde has Saami heritage. Now whether he considers himself Saami or not is
his choice, but he did mention in lecture that his parents did not teach him Saami
due to the negative image associated with the Saami culture during the Norwegianization
period. After hearing and reading about the Norwegianization policy and its effects
in my culture class, it was neat to hear firsthand about some of the experiences.
It brings new meaning to the information I have learned and will learn.
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