Venting: Stuck with a Class of Politically Correct Back-Patters

[Cacophony]

I'm going to go mental. Seriously.

One of the online courses I'm currently taking towards my Personal Fitness Trainer diploma is a Leadership Development course. There are seven of us. The entire class is structured around online discussion, debate, and reading. I'm stuck with a group of very polite, very vague, "I agree with this point" people who write single sentence answers to theoretical and philosophical questions. I've had one person so far respond to a post in regards to one of her posts and it was "I see your point however I'm obviously not making myself clear. Hopefully I'll learn to do that through this course." And not a word from her since on any topic out of four discussion posts. In four days (the course started last Wednesday) not a single person has posted anything that includes supporting comments or even detailed information on their views and opinions. There are a whole lot of "I think self-control is important" posts. Ooookay.... Why? In what context?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I was REALLY looking forward to this course and I'm getting so frustrated after the first half week that I almost don't want to check my email because if I see one more "That's nice. You're smart" posts in response to someone's extremely vague one sentence answer to questions like "Define the traits Plato's Philosopher King would possess and do you feel those traits are still evident in the world today" I'm going to burst into tears. These aren't leaders... they're SHEEP. They're not even sounding like SMART sheep!

I know. I need to work on my patience and tolerence. *sighs* This bites.

*kicks the soapbox off to one side and sulks*

[Alethea]

Awwww, poor Cacophony. I ran into that once myself... philosophy is meant to be discussed and thought about, not just nod along to! If you want more stimulating conversation, you could always post your topics here for us to play with. That Philosopher King one is genius, and completely applicable to fitness. After all, the philosopher king loves knowledge and knows how to best impliment it, just as the most effective way to be healthy and fit is to understand what you are doing and why.

[joshua.m1001]

I feel the same way in my english lit classes. Why doesn't everyone else chime in and offer thoughts and opinions about the works and your reactions to it? That is the whole point of lit classes and in having in class discussion.

[Cacophony]

I have a plan of attack. I've switched up my response criteria and I think I've come up with the best post ever. Current discussion topic is based on the Theory X-Y Interpretation Continuum (basically negative/pessimistic to postive/optimistic attitudes towards the nature of people in general). I'll cut and paste:

My Results: Theory X (8) <-------------------------> (92) Theory Y

I'd feel confident assuming that, due to the nature of the profession, PFTs are going to rank high along the Theory Y aspect of the continuum pretty much exclusively. I just don't see someone who's pessimistic regarding the nature of people in general putting the time and effort into a career based on helping people to grow and change certain aspects of themselves.

How realistic would this be:

"Hi, I hear you're interested in booking a package of sessions with a Personal Trainer. Yeah, I can see why. Here: you skim this over without actually reading any of it, sign on the bottom here, and give me your credit card so I can set it up for preauthorized payment. We'll schedule you a time block you're probably going to want to change at least twice. Then we can go do your initial assessment and you can lie to me about your lifestyle choices - I mean, go fig. Your Grade 2 teacher actually knew what she was talking about with all of that Canadian Health Food Guide crap, hey? - and we can do a physical assessment while you tell me some story on how it's a bad day for you because you've had that cold/flu/hangover going around. It's okay though, because I'll end up having to ignore most of what you tell me and design an exercise prescription around what I think are more accurate answers anyway to avoid the risk of decreasing your current health level instead of improving it and getting sued. Then you can show up a couple of times and complain because I'm going to try to get you to sweat and you think I'm supposed to be some magical voodoo doctor capable of making you lose weight simply by being in your presence and you can chose to either drag out the rest of the sessions completely disillusioned or just stop coming until we stop calling you to rebook. Then you can set up a meeting with the gym manager to demand your money back while bashing my credentials, professionalism, gender and/or race and nationality while sucking back a Caramel Macchiato with whole milk and extra foam. When he points out that you signed a contract that commits you these sessions, you can stomp out of here, loudly and angrily telling anyone who'll listen to you that this gym sucks and you're not only never coming back here again, you're telling all of your friends that we're just out to make money off of the poor people who come to us for help with their personal health issues. Sound like a plan?"

.........somehow, I don't think so. =)

It's going to become a psych game to see if I can manipulate my fellow classmates into responding to something with honesty. You don't have to come and play, I'll bring the game to you.... *evil smirk* I don't HAVE to use my powers for good, you know....

[tei]

Hee, I approve of this immensely.

Joshua, I guess I always got lucky because my English lit classes were always the ones where most of the class hates each other by the end of each class, and came in cheerfully the next day ready for another round

One of my favourite scenes from any book is in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, in which a discussion was broken up when "The pro-consensus, anti-confrontation elements then seized control of the conversation and broke it up into numerous small clusters of people all vigorously agreeing with each other."

[jacobmovingfwd]

Yeah, but Randy and taht other dwarf were ready to battle! poor dwarfs...

[joshua.m1001]

Hee, I approve of this immensely.

Joshua, I guess I always got lucky because my English lit classes were always the ones where most of the class hates each other by the end of each class, and came in cheerfully the next day ready for another round

Wow, never had an English lit class like that before.