My eighth grade English teacher had a huge fascination with WWII. So much of the actual material we were taught was based on that time, with a huge chunk of it dedicated to the Diary of Anne Frank. Not that any of this is bad, its that she also had this seemingly unhealthy obsession with how effective Hitler was. I mean, sure the Nazi regime was impressive in its efficiency in the war, but having a teacher rather lovingly blurt out how brilliant she thought Hitler was gave us all unease. Aside from that, she had a painfully lackadaisical view on how careful she should be when she graded out papers. Her excuse to me was "Because I'm not going to try that hard, and neither will your high school teachers." How wrong she was.
However, IMO the worst I've had is also the one I've had the shortest, because I was able to drop his class last year in college. I go to an 2D/3D arts and design college, and this guy, this jerkass, taught Drawing Animation 1. Usually, the class teaches a combination of how to frame and set up a 2D animated sequence. Under his direction, the class was more like a combination of gesture study and character design. Again, I really didn't have a problem with that, per se, but it was all about how he behaves.
This guy:
- Acted like a stereotypical jock jerk who was an art student. Seriously, think of a jock's personality, but in the body of a 2D artist.
- Along with the jock attitude, he has the abhorrent attitude of if you don't agree with him on media he loves or hates, than you should be made fun of for it. Non stop. Seriously, I bet my family's savings that he has a big pile of dead horses in his back yard, because beating them was obviously his favorite thing to do. Did I mention he never let up?
- Always tried to be funny. So much that he would waste a lot of time with roundabout "comical" similes for how body positions should be represented in drawn form. Thing is, he was rarely funny to me, and his constant attempts at being funny made him appear insecure.
- Strongly discouraged anything anime related. I understand he's seen a lot of poor anime-style wannabe artists, but if any of our designs even remotely contained something that resembled an anime influence, he would tell them to erase it and change it, never once looking to see it it could have potential. And I'm not one of the students who had anime influence, I'm talking about anyone who shaded characters like anime or had a half-way anime face in the class.
- Made so many condescending remarks and actions.that he just thought made him funny or smart when it just made him out to be a pretentious, elitist cynic who cared little for the opinions of his students. Among his "jokes" were a quick remark that I have no friends because I paused before answering his friend related question. He was the kind of person who, when he looked over your sketchbook homework, saw something that deviated from what he had wanted, would rip it right out with a swift gesture like he's too good to go over whats right or wrong with it.
Seriously, I don't think I ever met a man who pushed every one of my buttons quite like him. I hate his cynicism, his elitism, his pretentious teaching style, his sense of humor, and his condescending regard for others opinions and tastes. Even nearly after half a year, when we met again during a 24 hour make-a-comic session, the first thing he did when he walked into the room was give me shit for using a little wooden mannequin to pose and conceptualize gesture, because he hated those things and told our class not to use them. He then left the room in a bit and swiped my mannequin and feigned ignorance when he came back in the room without it. He eventually returned it all out of whack from the pose that I was working on and proceeded to beat the dead horse about how those mannequins are retarded. I stay away from him as much as possible.
