History.

My French professor sent out a mass email urging the class to watch a video of the liberation of a concentration camp during World War II to provide context for a text by Duras that we’re currently reading. She spent the rest of the email more or less explaining conditions of concentration camps and death camps in a didactic tone of voice. (Granted, she is the professor so I suppose her job is to teach, but it was dripping with condescension.) 

I sat there after I’d finished reading the email and I couldn’t help but feel a stab of annoyance. At some point in every student’s life, he or she will learn about or be exposed to the Holocaust. I know blanket statements are dangerous but, with my generation at least, I believe this is, for the most part, true. The extent of this education will vary with each person and with each educational institution but I’m pretty sure we all can imagine what life was like in those camps. 

I have a vague memory of listening to a Holocaust survivor tell her tale when I was in 6th grade. That might have been the start of my Holocaust education. I transferred to a private school for the rest of junior high and I know for certain that my teachers devoted months to this part of history. We read Night by Elie Wiesel and The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal in 7th or 8th grade. We might’ve had Holocaust survivors speak at school also. (It’s been 10+ years; I can’t really remember that far back.) This continued in to high school where we had a Courage and Spirit Series, which devoted two weeks of the school year to educating the students about the horrors of the Holocaust. The school invited survivors to speak and recount their personal stories to the students and it was mandatory for all students to attend. During those two weeks, our teachers could opt to take the class to one of the mini-assemblies during class time instead of holding lecture. Four years worth of these assemblies and the personal stories that came out of them really leave their mark on you. Onward to college where, along with the facts, we’ve examined the events with an academic eye, learning to ask “how?” along with “why?”

When I look back on it, I am incredibly grateful for my education—formal and informal. That almost goes without saying. However, I have a rather unfortunate pet peeve, which is that I really don’t like when people tell me things that I already know. It sounds horribly pretentious but I really can’t help it. And this isn’t specific to the academic realm; this goes for mundane day-to-day things also. (My sister is the same way, too, so maybe we picked it up from one of our parents, who knows?) I become irrationally annoyed when someone tells me something that I already know. I know the other person can’t help it; how are they to know that I already know what they are about to tell me? Again, irrational and slightly unfair. To tie it back to what I was initially saying in this post,  when I read this email, I had to suppress a massive eye-roll. Why? Because I know this professor isn’t just merely giving us facts to help establish context for our reading. She has an incredibly annoying habit of trying to show us that she empathizes with the victims, of making it a point to really convey that she feels their pain. Certain words that she used in the email and during lectures really make this apparent. Combined with her drawling voice and over-the-top exaggerated expressions and gestures and that patronizing tone of voice…like, “Oh, you didn’t know about x, y, z? Quelle horreur!” It’s not “Les pauvres victimes de la guerre…” it’s “Les paauuuuvres victimes de la guerrreee!” 

And to top it all off, she sounds like Miriam Pataki, Helga’s mom on Hey Arnold!. 

Gah. 

Pointless rant. Disregard. It’s shark week so everything irritates me infinitely more.