Is this an all online school degree mill or something? How in the world can you possibly be taking 7 classes in one semester? I can’t imagine they are very hard.
Yeah, i was pretty staggered at the number of classes.
A standard full-time load (i.e., finish in 4 years, with no summer school) at my university is 5 classes per semester, and some students have trouble coping even with that. Most places where i’ve been a student or worked have upper limits on the number of classes students are allowed to take, and while those limits are sometimes bent for people who just need an extra class to graduate, i’ve never been associated with a university that would allow seven full-credit courses per semester.
I know this a bit of a hi-jack, but you say you have 7 classes? Are they all online? IF so, this truly amazes me.
I have to question the quality and difficulty of these classes if you can handle 7 of them in one semester, and also, you are pulling an A in a class that is driving you nuts.
If these are all 3 credit classes to transfer to UConn, then finish the damn class and have your revenge after the grade is posted.
Maybe she feels that this subject is so easy, even someone that hates her “teaching” style and has 6 other classes to handle each week can still get an A with all of these ambiguous questions, her heart isn’t into it.
I’m not defending the teacher. You should always have access to a professor to ask questions to, usually during posted office hours. But the on-line program sounds like a joke (no offense), so maybe she’s not that motivated to make it a stimulating experience.
Wait until you run into a tenured professor who absolutely can’t stand teaching or you can’t guess what in the hell they want… and you need the class. THAT’S when the ulcer’s start.
OK, this question you have no gripe with. She says typical, and no other answer falls within that typical range. She may not have expressed it as nicely as you wanted her to, but she isn’t exactly wrong either. You got it right. Good for you. You also knew the range. That’s even better. But this was not an ambiguous question in any way, and was not meant to trip you up. You have an affliction known as “exact-itis” (I made that up). See your next example for proof.
Seriously? You think you have a point worth arguing? She used the textbook definition of what a funnel cloud was, and you over-thought it. If you KNEW the right answer (and it seems that you did), you talked yourself out of the right answer because you thought she was going to “trick” you. :rolleyes: C’mon… you are really picking nits. Again, if she has a history of asking trick questions, then fine. It doesn’t sound to me like she does. She just asks questions that you dissect instead of using your intellect to pick the obvious answer.
Think of it like this… A meteoroid is a rock-like thing that begins to enter the earth’s atmosphere. Until it hits the earth, it is a meteoroid (the trail it leaves, the one we see, is called a meteor, not the rock itself). When it hits the earth, the name changes to a meteorite. By your logic, the rock laying on the earth is still a meteoroid (and maybe it is). But the definition of meteorite makes the use of the term meteoroid useless at this point, doesn’t it?
You may be technically right, but you are wrong. Let it go, take your “A” and thank your lucky stars you can take 7 courses a semester.
I’d agree with her. It’s a very poorly worded question for multiple choice, as clearly a funnel cloud can touch the ground (at which point it becomes a tornado).
Ah, the old debate over whether a blowjob is sex, always one of my favorites.
yeah, but you aren’t the one who wrote the question.
And no one refers to a tornado as “the funnel cloud that’s hit the ground”.
Look, I don’t disagree with you (or her) fundamentally. But it’s not a point worth arguing about. After all, if a funnel cloud that hit the ground was still a funnel cloud, the word tornado wouldn’t exist! 
It’s a real college. I have 19 credits - the max you can take without special permission from your advisor and the head of your major. It’s really 6 and a lab. Three are online and 3+lab are on site. I normally wouldn’t have taken the last 3 credits but I knew Speech would be a cakewalk and my precalc professor is the amazing one so I had a feeling it would be easy too (I was right). So, I didn’t think it would be a problem. And it wouldn’t have been if I didn’t want to kill my 7th professor.
It’s a point worth arguing about when every single quiz she gives has at least one of these questions and they’re worth 5 points each. This class has cured me of my need to get a 100 on everything but it’s still pissing me off that it’s for this reason. Normally I wouldn’t argue.
Oh, and the reason I am able to take 7 classes is because I have no job, no children, and dogs who sleep all day. I have 24/7 to deal with my 7 classes and as long as I can keep the procrastination and absentmindedness in check, I can handle it. My speech class is 3 hours a week and preparing for it takes at most another 4 (only if I have a speech due - which I don’t most weeks). Precalc generally takes me only 2 or 3 hours a week. The vast majority of the time I spent on my classes are only spent on Bio, Spanish, and Weather. Lab is easy. Psychology takes me a long time but it’s a very slow paced course so it’s ok.
And no, when I get to a 4-year, I will NOT be taking this many classes.
That doesn’t follow.
If a pair of pants that flared out at the bottom were still pants, the word bellbottoms wouldn’t exist!
I really have no idea if tornados are a class of funnel clouds or something that funnel clouds morph into, but the language of the textbook implies the former.
I think you should suck it up and finish the class. I’m guessing with five weeks left, your advisor isn’t going to let you out with a simple drop because you don’t like the instructor. Since you are getting an A, and your rationale for dropping the class honestly doesn’t have a lot of meat to it (so she isn’t a great instructor, some aren’t. I’m not seeing any ambiguity in either of those questions. Maybe her personal life has exploded this quarter/tri/semester and she is just trying to hang on. I took an online class from a stats professor where we didn’t have access to anyone else in the class and she never answered an email. The entire grade was three tests, and she didn’t bother to grade the tests until grades were due, so no feedback. You know what - two semesters later I found out she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer about the time I had her).
Someday, someone will ask you the interview question “How did you work through a difficult situation.” This is a great one if you persevere to answer that question with. You will have had to 1) develop a network of classmates 2) figure out her testing style and 3) just get through it and finish it off the best you can.
Also, if this is a two year, and your intending on transferring to a large public 4 year, you might as well learn to work this out now. I had professors at my large school who wouldn’t talk to students - they were paid to research, work with grad students, and teach an undergrad class - in that order of priority. Or make sure you transfer to a smaller 4 year without a research arm.
You make good points Dangerosa. You all make good points. I definitely didn’t expect everyone to come in and tell me how right I am and that she’s a horrible person. It’s nice to get a POV from a bunch of different people. The frustration with this class has been building for weeks and the email from her yesterday was more than I could take. I actually feel oddly relaxed right now. Maybe freaking out yesterday emptied my pissed-off coffer and I’ll be good to go for the next 6 weeks.
I still want to quit the class but if my adviser wont let me, I will stick it out, continue to do my best, and leave a well written review of the class at the end.
This. Lord Ashtar has hit it. Make your review as scathing as it needs to be, and be prepared to justify it (keep copies of emails, copy posts off the board and save them, etc., etc.
If this is the quality of work that she is doing, then be blunt and say so. Good luck and I hope you work everything out.
My last three years in college I was taking 6-8 classes every semester (not including choir) and did fine. It was busy, but do-able.
Education in America is in a pretty sorry state. Your experience is not atypical.
It is very busy. I don’t think I’ll ever do this again - voluntarily. Even with 2 classes being so easy, I am always looking for more time and more sleep.
I know someone who took 6 engineering classes a semester for 2 years, while also playing on the varsity hockey team and maintained a 4.0 GPA. I’m not sure he was quite human (also, the fact that he was gorgeous, relatively rich, and a twin made me occasionally wonder if I’d slipped into an episode of 90210…)
IME, most schools have a course drop deadline, but even if you drop the course before then, it will still show up on your transcript as a withdrawal, but no grade will be attached nor will it impact your GPA.
Your teacher sounds terrible. I’ve had worse, I think. I had one prof who was basically illiterate - his slides, his exams, all the course material provided were jumbles of words almost but not quite forming sentences, let alone questions. It was such a frustrating course, though luckily it was very easy since he pretty much only ever talked about one thing (O-rings! Challenger explosion! O-rings!) It was a bizarre experience. Another prof would just throw equations on the board with little to no explanation, just saying “it’s easy!”. Fluid dynamics, easiest topic on earth, really!
Well, I heard back from my adviser today. I can drop the course before April 8 and only get a W on my record.
But, the comments here and the pep talk from my adviser have convinced me that I need to suck it up and finish the course. Not only do I need the practice dealing with classes I hate before transferring, if I drop the class I’ll probably forever regret letting my frustration take control of me.
So, I’m going to stick with it. Thank you for all the input. It seems silly to say but bitching about my frustrations to complete strangers really does help, even when the strangers don’t agree with me.
I think your two examples of questions are valid complaints, and I really think you should start preparing detailed notes on the inadequacies of the class, so you can present three to six complaints with adequate supporting evidence.
I had instructors like that. I aced their courses just some my critiques would have weight. I will never waste my time like that again. But you have to go through it at least once.