SANTA MONICA, CA – When Christian Boliviar was getting ready for the Syracuse University in Hollywood semester, he was excited for a lot of things. But one thing stood out above all the rest: “Frank Goldman was teaching us, how couldn’t you be excited? He’s a big shot. Yeah, practically no one our age has ever heard of him or cares, but he’s huge!”
Now for those idiots who don’t know or don’t care, Frank Goldman is the Syracuse Grad who went on to run the three major broadcast networks (BSC, CBN, and CAB). He then went on to donate a silly amount of money to Syracuse. So when he was approached to teach a class for the SUH semester, he obviously asked for some of the cash back.
Students soon got a feel for the class after the first several weeks. The class pretty much consisted of three-hour lectures on different television genres. “I’m pretty sure he was reading straight Wikipedia entries,” says student Natasha Yeager. The class also featured clips of certain programs. For example, Goldman showed the class a five-minute clip of Dr. Phil that was one hundred percent necessary. Besides the three-hour lecture, it also took about an hour to and from class for every student. How did they spend the time? Simply by getting amped for the amazing class on the way there and dissecting every minute thoroughly on the return home.
“There were no tests, no assignments, and attendance didn’t seem to matter,” said Boliviar. “We were all sure we were getting A’s.” That was until Goldman announced the final assignment- a 500 word list of any words the students could think of. It was literally writing down the first 500 words that came to your head. The class was shocked. “This assignment was…wow,” said Yeager, ” I was so…the class was so worried.” Yeager continued to say “We knew this was a serious assignment which required all of the knowledge we learned over the semester.”
The students spent their entire last weekends working on their projects. When they handed the assignments in, they released a collective sigh.
Three weeks passed, and the students received their grades. The class average was a C+ and the highest grade was a B+ for Yeager. Boliviar actually received the class low, a D-. Predictably, no students were pissed. “I understand that my list of 500 random words was not a good list,” says Boliviar. “The amount of time we spent listening to the man and driving to the class did not compare to a final assignment that didn’t really require anything learned in the class. The quality of the assignment is the definition of objectivity.”
Unfortunately, for future SUH students, they won’t have the privilege of receiving low grades for one assignment and 50+ hours of their time lost. Mr. Goldman is not teaching next semester. He is said to have enjoyed himself teaching, despite looking completely miserable the whole time and only laughing at the expense of his own jokes or outdated comedies.
