Jamie Swears in Contemporary Problems Class

From The Extended Group

In the Spring of 2003, seniors Lukas and Jamie take "Contemporary Problems" class under the supervision of the hard-grading and yet whimsical Mr. Schnabel. The class was focused on issues taking place in the present, and the classes "textbook" was simply a subscription to Newsweek magazine. Articles were supposed to be read and discussed in class as well as a couple other peripheral assigments, such as commenting on political cartoons. This class just happened to fall in the historic build-up and then invasion of Iraq in March 2003. As could be expected, this dominated classroom discussions with many spirited debates including the likes of Erica Mercker and Sergei Volkov.

On one particular day, Jamie was assigned to give a group-presentation on some article pertaining to United States intelligence gathering. Upon mentioning (now former) George Tenet, the unfortunate Jamie pronounced the surname as though the "-et" ending was the more French pronunciation of "-ay" as in "George Tenay". Mr. Schnabel quickly corrected him to which the interupted Jamie said "Ah, fuck it" quite noticably to the entire class causing all including a rather penguinesque Mr. Schnable to laugh heartily for a moment. The presentation then resumed normally.