as another uchicago alum i am DESPERATE for papal sim class discourse omg. like. it requires Unpacking lol
Omg anon I know you asked this two months ago but I forgot and i just refound it sry 😭 but needless to say you are SO FUCKING RIGHT and im really pissed at. so much about it and how I feel Ada palmer abdicates her responsibility as a professor in sooo many ways around it. like I was straight-up bullied imho but it's always "she can't help that shitty people take the class" and never "she creates an environment with incentives to act poorly, cover for acting poorly, and that forces people to often continue to engage with people that treat them poorly, and then does nothing to resolve any of that." to say nothing of how she and the staff often treat it more like a play for their entertainment (and then get mad when students go "off script," without them even really knowing what the "script" is) than an actual simulation for historical learning.
Plus, verbatim I told her I had [insert negative emotion] the entire sim and she told me that that's the intended outcome of my character.
I would looove to talk more about the sim or Ada Palmer with you at any point 🫶