Homework Horrors

Over the weekend I attended CthulhuCon, a local horror convention. I had fun, met some new people, bought a book, discovered some new music...

...oh, and I did homework.

It turns out that the lounge part of a restroom is a really great place to study. It's not like people will be hanging out there for conversations, so it's pretty quiet. So long as there's decent lighting and a good place to sit, it's actually pretty ideal.

So I did homework. In particular I read Karl Marx, which for some reason my brain doesn't want to understand. I read it, got confused, revisited sections of it, thought I was finally getting it, and began to write the one measly paragraph required of me. But what happened? I realized I had no clue what I was talking about. So I spent about twenty minutes banging my head against a wall (well, not literally) before giving up and moving on to my easier science homework. Which was time consuming, but easy.

Later I revisited Marx, even taking to the internet to see if I could get it figured out. But apparently what I really needed to understand Marx was discussion with another person who could point out the important bits, and I did get in class today, but I didn't get over the weekend. I guess I could have cornered someone at the convention and forced them to discuss Marx with me, but I reasoned I would be undistracted Monday morning and that I could easily come up with something before my afternoon class.

My assumption was wrong, and went into class empty handed. I had nothing to turn in.

The professor's comment? "Next time, just try."

I'm trying (and failing) to not be angry over the apparent assumption that I'm too lazy to do anything at all if something isn't easy, when the truth is that I didn't want to just make bullshit up about something I didn't understand. It doesn't help that I'm also upset with myself since Marx really shouldn't have been that difficult.

I worked my way through Plato, Wordsworth, and Baudelaire. What was so freaking hard about Marx?