HALIFAX, NS— For the majority of students, the syllabus goes unread until it is spoon-fed to them on the first day of classes. With class names being sometimes ambiguous, confusing, or downright misleading, it isn’t unheard of that students incidentally enroll in classes with content wildly different from their expectations.
This rings especially true for fourth-year kinesiology student, and captain of the Dalhousie men’s track team, Rick Norbert.
Norbert enrolled in second-year Law, Justice, and Society course, Critical Race Theory, with hopes of learning the ins and outs of the ‘mental game’ behind racing.
As he logged onto the first zoom call for the class in early January, he was shocked.
“This class has literally nothing to do with running,” explained Norbert.
“It has ‘race theory’ in its name for fucks sake—I was expecting to get the inside scoop on gaining a competitive edge on StFX for our upcoming season. Instead, all I’ve learned about is the cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law,” he continued.
Norbert realized his mistake after his question about ‘running negative splits’ was met with blank stares from the rest of the class. He says that while the class is not what he expected, he has been enjoying the content, claiming it has been ‘very eye-opening towards the deep-rooted issues in our social justice systems.”
“I guess I’ll just have to watch some YouTube videos about the best mental strategies to use during my next 400m,” he concluded.