Sometimes in life you spend ten weeks with an instructor you hate - or two years with a boss you hate, but you can’t afford to quit and can’t find another job that pays as well. Or five years raising a teenager, who you do love, but drives you CRAZY and is barely human (and far less rational than your instructor). Persistence is a good skill to gain - and if you get to practice it in a class where you are getting an A - or maybe an A-, in a two year college - you are fortunate.
Enjoy writing the evaluation though. I had one prof that drove me BATTY. And it was a required course AND she was the only person who taught it.
Except for my freshman year, I took 6 classes/semester, which was our maximum load. People thought I was nuts. I graduated with maybe 20 extra credits. I don’t know about the OP, but I was so deathly afraid of sitting around having nothing to do that, in the back of my head, studying was the “noble” thing to do.
Also, there were so many classes I wanted to take…really, for me, uni was like having the world at my feet and and damn, I was going to take advantage of it.
Those are actually 2 very good reasons for why I keep wanting to max my credit load. Even at the community college level there are so many classes that look so cool and I want to try to fit them all in. After all, it can’t be possible to learn to much, can it? So far, I have only taken 2 classes that I didn’t need. My government class last semester was very interesting and I learned so much (including how little I knew about my own government). The A&P class that I want to take in the summer is filled so now I’m wimbling between Plant Biology and Principles of Ecology. I have to keep telling myself that I can’t take 2 lab sciences and Trig during the same session because the summer classes are so much more intense but 2 classes doesn’t seem like enough. My brain keeps telling me to just sign up for all 3 even though I know it’s a bad idea.
The other reason, being afraid of having too much free time, is a huge one for me. I know me. “If you want something done, give it to a busy person” - the motto for my life. It sounds stupid but my problems with focus and procrastination are so much more under control when I’m so busy that I am almost TOO busy. In my case there’s nothing noble about it though. I just know that I function better when I’m insanely busy. This was apparent when I was actually working. After I got a promotion that required moving away from my product line, they needed 2 people to replace me. Even though they both already worked for the company and knew the customers and products, they still weren’t able to keep up with all the work I did and they ended up hiring a part timer too. It sucked all around though because my new line was much less busy and I ended up finding a new job because the boredom made me constantly feel like I wasn’t doing enough and that I would get in trouble for having down time.
Just as a question and not as a snark, but how much did you google for the information you were asking the professor?
Also, how did you ask the question? Was it just asking “Why is this wrong?” or did you ask "My though is that “A funnel cloud that touches the ground is classified as a tornado. This does not make it no longer a funnel cloud. So, funnel clouds DO touch the ground. They just get a spiffy new name when they do. It kind of runs along the scotch/whiskey lines - all tornadoes are funnel clouds but not all funnel clouds are tornadoes.”
I think one problem may be with expectations.
(my bolding) Why does it take her to explain it to you? Can’t you find this out definitively with google within 10 or 15 minutes?
You may already understand this, and if so then be ahead of 90% of college sophomores, but the further you go in school and then afterward, the less answers there are in the back of the book, or can be readily given by the instructor and the more people have to find out the answers themselves.
It takes her to explain it because she is the one using a particular definition of a funnel cloud in order to assign a particular answer to the test question.
One of my responsibilities as a teacher is to explain things that my students don’t understand. This responsibility is particularly important in cases where i’m the one setting the questions and determining their grades. Any teacher should be able to explain to a student in his or her class why a particular answer is right or wrong (or part-right or part-wrong).
I’ve always been a great admirer of the “flaming bag of poo” method.
Especially useful in conjunction with interior office doors.
Stick it out, and crucify her when you get your eval form. I had a first-year prof this past fall who I personally like, but I didn’t mince words when I evaluated her. She was the second-worst teacher/prof I have ever had in my life, and I’ve had some serious stinkers. (The *only *reason she wasn’t the single worst was because that one had a personal grudge against me which put them over the top.)
I don’t think she sucks because she wants to, but she really needs to learn some better teaching methods, and if no one tells her that little fact, she won’t change anything, and they’re going to lose people left and right because she’s slated for the intro classes for the next few years. I tried to not be totally nasty, but I was straightforward about what she was specifically doing that was counterproductive or simply stupid. Sadly, there was a lot of it.
Don’t think of it as being mean. Think of it as helping the school utilize their resources more effectively!
I google everything before I ask anyone. If I can’t find it from googling, I’ll either ask my friends on facebook (most of them are way smarter and much better educated than I am). If that fails, I’ll typically ask here. THEN I ask the professor. In this case, I googled and then asked her directly.
When I asked the question, I was polite and brief (yes, I am capable of being brief - though it takes me 2x-3x as long as being long-winded). I explained why I felt I was right and asked her to help me understand why I was wrong.
This is the answer I got back (and no, I didn’t remove the punctuation or capitals):
page 303
at the end of the third paragraph under tornado development
THAT was the response that pissed me off so badly. I already read that damn paragraph and it was what led me to the conclusion that the answer was false. Rereading the paragraph wasn’t going to change my opinion. Googling led me to the same conclusion I had already reached: funnel cloud is a description of the shape of the cloud and that tornado is just a spiffy name for a funnel cloud on the ground. And THAT is why it took her explaining it to me.
By the way, I did email her again and she did get back to me with a much better answer. I’m still not convinced but at least I understand why she chose her answer and I’m willing to accept her explanation.
By the way, when I went to check my email (you had me all paranoid that I was rude or something so I had to double check), I noticed that my grade for this week’s quiz was posted. For the first time all semester, I managed to get a 100 on a quiz. The shock caused me to shout out, “Holy Shit!” Since I shouted out the same thing about 5 hours ago after finding out someone had died, my poor boyfriend came running up from the basement in a panic, wanting to know who died this time.
Transferring to or from UConn? I’m in Storrs now which is why I ask. Anyways, If I were in your situation, I would probably just continue BSing my way through the class, make it through to the end of the year, and take the good grade towards my GPA.
Oh, and then rate the professor horribly during course evaluations.
This. If this is the worst experience you’ve had with a class, you are astonishingly lucky. And while you seem to be under the impression that her tests are unfair, you’ve got an A, so who gives a shit?
It’s definitely not the worst experience I’ve had with a class. It’s just the worst I’ve had at this school. All but 1 of my 6 classes from my first attempt at college are still competing for that title. Those classes were a very large part of the reason why I dropped out and gave up on college for so long.
I reminded myself that I’m not 18 any more and while her teaching style really pisses me off, at least she’s not a Science Fiction professor who hasn’t read anything more recent than Shakespeare or a Literature of the Bible instructor who can’t remember if he’s teaching from the Old or New Testament and who changes the research paper guidelines every 4 days (on average).
I am staying in the class. I’m going to suck it up and deal with it. You guys are right. There is a whole lot that could be worse, and probably will be worse before I’m done. I have at least 3, possibly 5-7 more years to go, depending on what I do after my BS. I have a huge amount of opportunities for suckitude. There’s no point in throwing in the towel now.
Student. Currently a sophomore, junior next semester. Still figuring out what I want to do, but better late than never I suppose. I didn’t really figure out what I wanted to major in until now, where I’m finally declared Material Science and Engineering. So I’m looking to graduate in 5 years instead of 4.
