The Last Assignment

My last assignment for my last class is a conference call with the entire group. It ended 10 minutes ago. It's kind of funny, when you take an online class your only interaction is through threaded online discussions and e-mails. And you only e-mail when you have to do a group project. So during these online discussions you get a sense for those in the class, just like the impressions you get when you meet someone in person. Only instead of getting a visual based on gender, looks, and mannerisms all you have to go on is they way they respond in the threads. So your impressions are based on typing ability, grammatical correctness, and ability to comment intelligently (or not so intelligently).

Because of this one final step, the conference call, I've altered my view of some of my classmates. Not all of them, some of my "online" impressions were actually confirmed. For instance, the first week during introductions, we could post photos. One woman (who started her response with "howdy y'all" and called the class "you guys" throughout the entire eight week course) post her pic in short-shorts and cowboy boots. Yes, she lives in Texas in case you were wondering. The instant label I had for her was Redneck. Her comments through the eight weeks pretty much confirmed my suspicions. And when it was time for the conference call, the combination of her southern drawl, her raspy smoker's voice, and her inability to say anything constructive or beneficial to the completion of this project bore me out.

On the other hand, there were some people who I didn't judge with such harshness. There were two people who didn't always use the correct grammar or spelling in their responses but they had foreign names, so I tended to cut them some slack due to the language barrier. The conference call proved the intelligence of these classmates, with their wonderfully poetic foreign accents. The real surprise came when one person I thought to be a man turned out to be a woman. I would have never guessed that the name Arvinder was female and at the same time, I don't know what ever made me think it was male. I guess that's my own stereotyping capabilities at work.

Most of the rest of the class came pretty close to my first impressions which gave me validation of my own good intuition. Sometimes I'm surprised at the lessons learned throughout this college process. Not everything comes from a textbook. Sometime you learn about patience, diversity, getting along with others, taking initiative, and developing relationships when you least expect it. All things you won't find in the syllabus.