During my sophomore year of college I was taking an online Lit class in which I had to do a lot of writing. One of the papers I wrote was about a piece we had just finished reading titled The Coquette. I was pretty happy with what I had done and it's pretty rare that I get lower than an A on a written assignment because I am an English major.
That being the case, when I get my graded papers back, I usually just look at the grade and skim the teacher's comments to make sure I didn't make any silly mistakes. I got an A on this particular paper, so I proceeded to the comments when my eyes fell on one.
I had made a comment about In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, because what other parallel can you draw to a short novel about the imperialism of Great Britain still prevalent in Americans' lives in the 18th century?
The comment read: "The correct title of the song is "In the Garden of Eden".
I was shocked. Also disgusted.
I wasn't referring to some lame cover, or even talking about the stories about how the song came by it's name. I was talkin' original, Iron Butterfly version. I couldn't believe then, and have a hard time fathoming now, that my professor wasn't familiar enough with this song to know the difference.
In my mind's eye (because, being an online course, any encounter we had happened in my mind), my professor had at least been old enough in the late '60's to know about such things; that was her generation! Or should have been, had she really been what I imagined.
Still, come on! I was born in the '90's and I know about it. It was only rated the 24th greatest rock song of all time by VH1 in 2009. Between that and the wicked drum solo, how can you not know about it?
But I guess some people are just raised differently. And by differently, I mean wrong. My professor should be ashamed of herself. And her family.
For those of you who are interested and/or familiar with both The Coquette and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida--i.e., those who were raised right-- I've posted my paper here.
No comments:
Post a Comment