[C] My Petition Against Time Dilation

As an autodidact, I hate time dilation and relativity. Why does everything have to feel slow because I move fast?

WLU, my favourite corporate indoctrination hellhole ripe with aimless underage drinkers, pays professors enough to have ≤ 0 enthusiasm when teaching bibliography formats. So, I don’t go to their lectures.

My Astronomy 101 professor, Dr. Gandhi, presents justification for his shitty teaching methods:

“My teaching methods aren’t shitty you bitchy freshman!” the alleged professor calmly protested. “You’re suggesting a video on the ‘YouTube’ can teach better and faster than me? Next thing you[‘ll] say is the Bermuda triangle doesn’t exist!” Get a load of this boomer.

“If you [do] not attend my lectures, you[‘ll] lose marks because they are meant for you to engage with my material.” After attending a few of his heavily-accented lectures fully awake (unlike most others), his methods for “engagement” included tediously spewing unoriginal text from a PowerPoint while never interacting with the class outside rhetorical questions.¹

Ghandi clarified that the lowest rated profs speak too fast for the students to write everything down. But, when I challenged him to record lectures, post relevant material online, or encourage students to use AI to answer questions, he replied “I could do that, but then what would be the point of having lectures or professors? Oh, wait.”

The universal note taking method is to write down important topics during lecture. Yet, I struggle with paying attention, excluding “fluff”, and writing content down at the same time. My suggestion is we pay full attention to the speaker and reserve note taking for after class. The problem is definitely not me. No way.

Despite my entitlement, I’ve noticed a reduced attention-span in youth. “TikTokers” adapted by using quick jump-cuts and the film industry adapted by reducing pauses between dialogue. Lecturers were among those who didn’t— and in many cases— couldn’t adapt.

“Back in my day we used to watch everything at the speed our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, intended” commented my 29-year-old gun-loving neighbour, Paul. “Ever since Harambe died, things have gone south.”

Whoever decided life moves slow when you go fast has clearly never attended university. (Up yours Einstein!) Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to the future: hopefully another pandemic, so I don’t have to deal with this in-person bullshit.