last night's class was weird . . . it is a beginning class where our first assignment is to give informative speeches for about 5-7 minutes. I did mine on cochlear implants. One girl stood up to do hers on a "personal" topic, which was also common among the class. She apologized for not being well prepared becaue it was difficult for her to talk about such a personal topic in front of people. She then proceeded to generalise about what would happen to people who were in her position. She said it happened to all people of this same characteristic. I don't know whether she understood what she was saying, but she asserted quite clearly a judgement on the class that we would all turn out to "vent" inapproriately on our family members on account of the job we had, that those of us with a more extreme version of the aforementioned characteristic would come home to our families unrecognizeable because of the change that became in us.

Then it began to come around as more generalisations about how she "went through" and suffered so much. She blamed her point of view on other people and mentioned things that sounded like something Lewis would have heard from an Inner Ring but that didn't exist since we all shared in common what she spoke of so it sounded a little embarrassing. I've had the same feeling when approached by a Christian of a certain denomination who talks about "those Baptists" or "those Catholics" as if they were a separate race of people.

As I see it, she stood up there in front of the class and told us how awful we all were and how what we are and what we do is harmful to her. Mind, she is old enough to make her own decisions and old enough to have broken away from all this she abhors. But it was humiliating to have this temper tantrum of catharsis stand up and apologise because it was a personal subject that was hard to speak of for her. No harder for her than for the rest of us.

I am on an equal status with her as far as how much she is affected by this characteristic, and I totally disagree with her on the subject. I have grown up learning ho to be responsible for myself (not that I'm perfect at owning all my faults, but I do try to discern what is my fault and what I can do about conflicts) and knowing about this "internal locus of control" concept.

I don't typically get very angry at things like that--give me a build-up of wrongs against somebody and I'll slowly burn to a boil--but I could hear my heart beating and hear my voice quiver and go down about an octave when I raised my hand after she asked for "questions". I said something to the effect of "I appreciate you presenting your point of view, but I am offended by some of the things you are saying about us." And then I mentioned two of her points that galled me most. I tried to be kind and graceful as much as I could, but I wanted people to know that it was offensive, not that I disagree with her. It was supposed to have been an informative speech. The logic she used as horrendous. She generalised her experiences to the rest of us as fact, and the blamed so much on other people that was of her own choice. That may sound like opinion from me right there, but (e.g.) if you blamed me for your dislike of the color red then I would give you a curious look too.

It is my opinion that she has some things to work out with her family system and that she needs a class in Fallacy. I freely admit that I still feel angry and ashamed of her as a part of the group that we represent. But, I know that people can be in bad spaces and need to be heard, also make bad choices.

Several people came up to me at the end of the class. "You got *spirit*, girl," said one of my fellow hecklers in the front row. "Can't you leave her alone? It is hard enough for her to get up and talk about it without you trying to beat her down about it," said the guy behind me. The teacher addressed my comment by not making eye contact with me but telling the rest of the class how important it was that we not use strong words like "offensive" when we didn't mean them so harshly but that it may have been a better persuasive speech than informative one. I thanked him for handling the situation gracefully but I needed to let the class know rather than just the girl that what she said was not true about a lot of us. If it *had* been a matter that would have affected just a couple of us then I would have spoken to her after class.

I had an hour before my ride home so I got a hot chocolate *thanks, hamish!: D* and sat outside on a park bench and tried to calm down.

film at eleven.