Klastrup's Cataclysms

Nightmare of a Teacher
I was standing on a streetcorner when I suddenly realised (or someone told me) that I actually had to start teaching a class on "Time" at the University of Copenhagen and that this class started the same day. I hadn't seen the course description so I didn't know what exactly the class was about, apart from the fact that it was mainly about time in relation to cinema, and since I had forgotten about it or not been informed about it before now I had not prepared anything, but I hastily jotted down some notes on time (dichotomy subjective/objective time), before going to the university, quite worried about what to say to the students because I hadn't made a course plan or anything.

Then I was in class and the first thing that happened was that some arrogant guy put up his hand and said that if I wasn't going to discuss time from the perspective of this particular German Philosophical thinking/concept (I can't remember the name of the concept, but it was something with en-) then he wasnt interested in this class, and since I couldnt recognise his concept, he then got up and left with a few others. I started to say something, but then another, obviously half-mad student, got up and stood next to me, facing the other students with me and everytime I tried to say something, he just commented on it in a very rude and far-out way until I finally had to shout at him, that either he sat down or left the room. Then he left the room too....

I was getting more and more afraid of not keeping the remaining students in class, and was getting ready to write up my clever dichotomies on the blackboard and whip out the names of Bergson and Deleuze to at least impress them a little, when suddenly one of the local administrators burst through the door and moved across the classroom to open a door in the other end of the room which lead to a terrace. She went through it and retrieved a pram which she then dragged back through the classroom and out of the entry door, apologising for the interruption but they really had to bring the pram back to its owner now...

At this point I woke up, so I will never know if I made it through class. Luckily, in real life, I always do. And course planning for next term is soon over and this time (contrary to the class I'm teaching now) I get to write the course-description myself...

If you want to read about some real clever nightmares, check out Bertrand Russell's brilliant Nightmares of Eminent Persons & Other Stories.

# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:05