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Entry tags:	deep ones, fanfic

Scenes from Miskatonic
Title: Scenes from Miskatonic
Chapter Title: Psychology 110
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Atlantis belongs to SciFi and MGM. Lovecraft's works are public domain.

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Rodney McKay in his undergrad years. He knew attending Miskatonic University was a bad idea, especially for someone like him.

This was written in August 2009. Crossover with the Mythos.

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Some general education requirements should be waived under certain circumstances. At least that was Rodney's philosophy. Here he was sitting through a class that dared to mix "critical thinking" and "psychology" in the same title while calling itself "logic." While he was willing to concede that logic and critical thinking were entirely necessary skills he saw little reason to attach it to something as laughable as psychology. Nor did he see reason to declare such scientific skills a subset of Freshman English.

Nevertheless here he was, listening to his professor drone on about the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 and why it was bad. Okay so the experiment was ended six days into a 14 day run. Okay so the students who played prison guards let power go to their heads and sadistically tormented their fellows who played prisoners. It gave not only invaluable insight into the sadism of the human mind when put into positions of power but also the mindset of the professor who refused to shut down the experiment. It showed how blinded to the suffering of their fellows these humans could become when faced with the lure of knowledge. He sighed out of boredom.

"Is there something you'd like to add, Meredith?" Dr. Shakleford sneered, placing emphasis on the name.

Sometimes there were drawbacks to very small class sizes. "No, sir," Rodney replied, not even bothering to sit up.

"Oh but obviously there is," Shakleford goaded. "You must have some particular insight into the lesson that I'm obviously not getting if you can be so uncaringly bored about it."

Why the hell not. "Well, sir, it seems to me that the experiment was incomplete," Rodney said. "Not where it concerns the student volunteers or human right violations or the fact that there were eight days left. I'm talking about the effect of the experiment on the professor himself. You see, the fact that he was blinded to the suffering of his own students in his own experiment shows an utter lack of caring for their feelings and needs. His refusal to halt the experiment when people started getting hurt shows one of two things, either the total lure of new and exciting data leading to an addicting drive to see his name published again and again or utter uncaring, even sadistic disdain towards his students. The only way to know which it was would have been to see the experiment through all its 14 days and then see if he could bring himself to end it all himself or if he would have to be forced. After all, I believe the administration frowns down upon professors with an uncaring sadistic disdain for students and the realities they face in terms of responsibilities for other classes, time needed for sleep, and the utter drain of will that staying awake during boring lectures requires."

A twitch of Shakleford's eye was the only indication that he'd heard and recognized the blatant dig against his own teaching methods. The entire class stared in silence, an almost palpable horror permeating the room. Even when Dr. Shakleford returned to his lecture without another word the horror remained.

Dr. Shakleford's class was more than just passing a general education requirement. If that's all it was Rodney could have been on the Debate Team and put up with a year of master debater and cunning linguist jokes. No, he had to go and promise Professor Randall he was going to take classes from the soft sciences, psychology, sociology, biology, botany, even fields that weren't sciences at all like philosophy, literature, history, archaeology. Consider it 'enhanced general education requirements,' Randall had said. Bleh. And all for the promise of a letter of recommendation wherever and whenever he needed one, entrance into Special Collections, and the might of the university's parascience department whenever he might request the help.

As soon as class was over Rodney ignored the glares from his fellow students as they blamed him for the sudden change in their next paper's due date from 'in two weeks' to 'in two days.' He didn't feel it was particularly his fault that the Shakleford decided to prove Rodney's whole point by playing to his own ego and showing himself to be unfit for teaching. Too bad the administration would only see it that way if Rodney somehow happened to fail. Him, fail? Unlikely. He left, deciding to stop off at the office of the man he somehow blamed for all this.

"I blame you," he said as way of greeting.

Professor Randall looked up from his books. "Hmm? Oh, Meredith, come in, come in." He ushered the young man in and offered him chair and coffee.

Rodney dropped his bag and curled up in the comfy chair. He sipped his mug of coffee slowly. I could get addicted to this stuff. "Dr. Shakleford is an idiot and a fool," he said.

"I see," Randall said, abandoning his books and coming to sit next to the young hybrid. "And does he know he's an idiot and a fool or have you not yet informed him?"

Rodney gave the man a look. "Of course not," he snapped. "I haven't decided yet whether he even deserves the privilege of having me point out to him that he has a problem."

"So you only point out people's 'idiocy' to those who deserve it?"

"Many people deserve it. No, they have to earn it from me. I only tell people they're idiots if I feel they have the ability, drive, or possibility to correct their current condition. Dr. Shakleford has too much of an ego problem to even begin to gain the ability to correct his own idiocy so I'm not going to waste my time telling him about it."

The professor bit his tongue at the spectacle of two vast egos clashing in spectacular slow motion. He couldn't hide the amused smile.

"What's so funny?" Rodney demanded.

Randall cleared his throat. "Well, I think it only fair that you give Dr. Shakleford an attempt to prove himself worthy of your campaign to call all of your professors idiots," he said diplomatically.

"Well they all are," Rodney stated. "Including you, sir."

Randall grinned and got up. "Thank you, Meredith," he said, patting Rodney on the head.

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It really was funny once he could distance himself from the idiocy involved. Here was this petty, pitiful human wasting its life -- it didn't even have a particularly long life to waste -- all to defend an ideal model that had no worth or bearing outside itself, or even inside itself. Heh, a model that failed to model itself. The model was a failure, couldn't even be called a soft science. Only the evolution of the model had any purpose.

Maybe that in and of itself made the model important. The trilobite wasn't relevant as itself, it was relevant for the Cambrian Age it represented and the myriad of species it represented, the extinctions, the evolutions, the explosions...

Psychology was the trilobite, Rodney McKay soon realized. Irrelevant for itself but relevant as a representation of the humans it sought to model, the societies, the mentalities, the evolutions...

Maybe that was all it needed to be.

End