I had hoped this would never happen again...

Not unlike the scene in one of my classes

Let's play a game.

Imagine it is Sunday (if it is Sunday for you, then you're off to a good start). Now imagine yourself picking a DVD off the shelf. You pop it into the player, and up comes the full season of last year's Springwatch: yes, that's right, you've just set yourself up for hours of fun BBC nature webcam action, and I'm not talking about the kind of tits you see on the internet. Now imagine, for added viewing pleasure, sticking on the commentary, and whaddayaknow! It's being done by your Uncle Henry, who always tells the same "amusing" stories at every family function.

You've just had a fraction of the experience I have suffered in the last few weeks of my Spanish Literature and Cinema class.

I thought I'd learnt my lesson (no pun intended). Last semester, I had one teacher who bored me to tears, putting me off going to her classes. Not only were the texts she chose shit, but her manner was totally indifferent to us students, and I doubt she would have noticed if no-one were sitting in the classrom. I became so disilusioned with her, I ended up writing a note telling the teacher she was dull and uninspiring, and giving it as the reason for my failing the very exam I was supposed to be taking. I swore I'd never take another class like that ever again.

But there's always one, isn't there?

So this semester I'm doing this course, in which we study five adaptations of Spanish novels. Sounds promising - I'd avoided reading Spanish novels, after being put off last semester, but I told myself I would give it a go this time round. In any case, we'd be watching the films, which might make the experience a little easier; and there would be plenty of scope for dicussing adaptation and the theoretical differences between the two media as story-telling techniques.

We're now on the final novel and its film adaptation, and I can honestly say I couldn't give a rat's fart about the subject anymore. Not because the novels are bad: I've finished reading two of the five, and I really enjoyed one. Not because the films are particularly bad, either: though none are they of Almodóvar's thought-provoking standard (see below). Not even because the workload dumped on us is particulary heavy. It is because of the teacher. He's a total bore. He's also a dick.

I'm not fond of slandering unsuspecting Spanish academics through the medium of internet logs, but Juan Ignacio Diez Fernández (try saying that with your mouth full) is a dull, arrogant, inconsiderate bastard of a teacher. Why do I say this? Well, primarily because he appears to have made life unneccesarily difficult for his students for no apparent reason other than to increase our stress levels and blood pressure.

He calmly explained to us in the first class that there would be no exam for the course, but we would all have to hand in a piece of written coursework. Score, we all thought. He then proceeded to continue with the classes, waiting until about a month before hand-in day to decide on and tell us what the coursework would have to be about. Not only did he choose an irritatingly vague topic - "identity" - but has also asked us to include a "specific and relevant" bibliography: sorry, Juan, what? A specific and relevant bibliography: is there any other kind? What did he think we were going to include? The Merits of Salt in Modern Cooking, by Jerry Arsewipe? To make this worse, the class is particularly popoular, and there are around fifty students taking it. This means that there will be fifty-odd students scrambling about in the library for books - of which there are usually only one or two copies - and the DVD prints of the films. Oh, did I forget to mention there is only one copy of each of the films in any of the several libraries on campus?

For all the guff about there being no exam, we still had to take a "basic questionnaire" covering what we had done in class up until that point, on Thursday. Hmm - answering a set of questions individually in complete silence and under strict conditions for an hour? Sounds like an exam to me! The difference, according to Sr Diez, is that there is no "pass point" for this questionnaire: meaning that you either pass it or you fail it, you can't get 50% right and still pass, for instance. Added to this, in order to pass the entire course, you have to pass the questionnaire and get a good mark for the coursework. If you fail the questionnaire, you fail the course, since they go together. The final insult is that he has deemed it "impossible" to reveal whether we have passed the questionnaire or not, before handing in the coursework, meaning that I could have already failed, but I will still have to work my arse off to hand in what may be an excellent essay but is ultimately worth nothing, and a waste of my resources.

Back to my original point. He's a terribly dull teacher. He repeats himself constantly, takes fifteen minutes to respond to a point made by a student - leading me to conclude he loves the sound of his own voice; and he is so quietly arrongant, I sometimes want to get up and bludgeon him to death with the hot water piping. Last week, my patience was lost, when he invited a guest speaker to the class. Considering the last time I had a guest speaker lead a class of mine I left inspired, I was somewhat hopeful. All hope was squashed within two minues of hearing him speak. It was like listening to a younger clone of Juan Ignacio. Apparently, this man has written six books - boy, was I keen to read those...

You might think I'm having one of my typical moans about something which was ultimately my decision - I even had the chance to drop it. You're right. I'm angry with myself for making the same mistake yet again, albeit to a lesser extent, and nowhere near as depressing, as last semester. The only upside to all of this is that I have one-and-a-half-weeks of classes left, and all I have to do is get on with the bloody coursework, and attend these brain-drainingly inane classes twice more before having no more to do with Juan Ignacio Diez Fernández or his stupid assignments.

God, could you imagine how much worse I'd be if I were living in a truly depressing situation...?