What I've Been Up To Lately...

[Jodo]

I went back and read them last night and saw several myself. Consider it a throw back to forums past.

So far in college, all of the essays I've written have made A's (or higher in some cases due to extra credit), aside from one. I had signed up for an ethics class, which at the time fulfilled a degree requirement. I had never had the teacher, and I really hadn't heard anything about him, aside from that he required you to call him "Doctor", and he would mark you down if you didn't abide by this rule. I took the class, and it was honestly really fun. His lectures were always really enjoyable, and he had a really dark sense of humor. At some points, he was sort of borderline obscene, to where he would make gay jokes, and tell the women he was their daddy...Which was moderate at first, but about 8 weeks in they were getting way too dirty, and he was making them way too often.

10 weeks in, we had a 3 page essay, as assignment which is no problem for me. I usually go over the page limit, and as usual, which he had already said not to worry about. I think I turned in a 5 page paper. It was nothing really over the top, or hard to do, because we were applying the characteristics we found about ourselves, as we had taken a personality test in the class. It was as simple as scoring our own answers, and just ranking the types, seeing what yours was. He said we could talk about 2 types if we had 2 major ones, and sure enough, I did.

I turned the paper in, and as always, I felt really good about it. I don't do half assed work, that's all there is to it. Fast forward another 2 and a half weeks in the class, and this had still been our only assignment. He said we might expect a test in week 15, and then have the last test on finals. I recieved my paper back, and it had an assortment of X's, check marks, circles, and arrows, none of which made any sense. I flipped through it, and I had recieved a C. A far cry from the A's I usually get on my papers! As the foreign exchange student behind me got up, he asked me, "eh, Jack, water you get on ze payper?", I told him a C. He held up his paper, and I saw he had recieved an A. The kid who couldn't speak English recived the highest grade possible....So I jumped into survival mode.

I went up to the profes-I mean doctor, and asked him if he could explain why I had recieved a C. He looked over it, and said I didn't fulfill the assignment. I asked him how, and he said he that I specifically was told not to do what I had done in this paper. Confused, I asked him to exlain, and he said he had said it enough times in class, and that I didn't pay attention. I could have walked out right then. I went on to ask what the X's, check marks, and circles meant, and he said it was just his way of keeping track of what was in the paper. Finally, I asked him about the arrow he had drawn, and he said it was because I had already stated the idea in a paragraph previously (of corse to my current beleive that is was a concluding paragraph does). I went on to explain him, making sure he knew I wasn't bragging, that I had made nothing but A's while writing my papers, and that I did pay attention in his class, as I had a notebook full of his projection slides to prove it. He then looked me up and down, looked away and said, "Well I don't know how you managed that".

I walked out, stunned, went to admissions, and dropped that class. It had been the only points we had made in the class that far, so I had a C. We were over 12 weeks into the class, and it was well past the point that I couldn't get my tuition back for the class,etc. but it was such a relief to get out of there. In hindsight, I should have went to the vice-president of student services to complain about his behaviour in the classroom overall, but I acted upon my feelings right then and there. It has sort of even turned into a joke, and even to some degree a rivalry, as when we pass each other, he will blatantly turn away from me, or look forward to ignore me. He favored a guy I was in the Pirates play with a great deal, and after seeing me with him one day, he also began to ignore him.

I've used him as inspiration for several skits in acting though. At one point in time he was a mean mall Santa. I played both he and I, and I went back and forth until I finally just blantly began yelling about how "I" couldn't write papers to save myself, and then the skit began to collapse as I yelled back at him,etc. Additionally, I always tell people what happened if I hear they're about to take his class,etc.

[Big Red]

Nothing irked me more in college than professors who allowed a personal like or dislike to influence how they graded papers. The first time I ran into it was in a high school religion class. I'd been a straight-A student since first grade or so, so when I started getting C's and D's in this religion class, I was stunned. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get above a C. I finally talked to the teacher and she said it was because she didn't like me. She was the sort who was trying to relive her high school years--only this time being popular. Had it happened 20 years later, I could have sued the school for her bullying me. The end result was that I took about three years off from applying myself at school.

By college, I had seen enough of it that I wouldn't put up with it anymore. One English professor's behavior was almost identical to the religion teacher's. To make matters worse, she had a thing for the barely literate guy who sat next to me, so while I'd turn in a typed, well-researched, wonderfully written 5-page paper and get a D, he'd scribble out half a page of illegible chicken scratch and get an A. I confronted her and threatened to go to the dean. I don't think she read another thing I turned in (although I don't think she read anything I turned in prior to that), but I got A+'s on every other assignment and ended up with a B for the class. Considering I phoned in the last half of the class, I got what I deserved.

The worst by far, though, was the racist Sociology professor who told us the first day that she wouldn't give anything above a B to any of the white students in class. Then, instead of her teaching the Comparing Cultures class we'd all signed up for, she taught a class on several Oprah episodes about African quilts (no joke). Yes, I reported her, and yes, the dean accused me and the other students who reported her of being racists then fell back on her being tenured as his defense. About halfway through my final project I talked to the professor and asked her what my grade was. I'd aced every test, including the extra credit, yet I was still only getting a B, as she'd promised. I asked her if I'd get anything less if I just quit showing up. She told me that if I turned in a perfect paper and aced the exam, I'd get a B. However, if I didn't turn in the paper or take the exam, I'd get a B. I thanked her, told her to have a good life and never went back. My partner was pretty upset and insisted on sticking with it, even though she was in the same boat. She wouldn't talk to me after that so I don't know if her extra effort paid off, or if she ended up with the B she'd been promised.

[figureaddict]

Had one near similar instance in a class in college, I can't even remember what the class was, all I remember it being was the instructor for some reason deciding he needed to let us all know that he was an athiest, and every discussion in every class was on that subject and not on what the class was supposed to be, a Lit class I think. I stopped going and can't remember what grade I received.

[Jodo]

I'm glad I'm not alone. XD

I remember reading about that BR! I want to avoid religion and "culture" classes as long as possible. I know a girl who took an African Culture class to fulfill a degree requirement (not by choice) at another college, and the instructor did something similar to the white students, to where she was prejudice against them. She said she wanted to drop it really bad, and try it out online.

The only other issue I've had with a professor was in a statistics class I took, which I think I talked about on the old GH. Long story short, he didn't like me from day 1. We did a research project that was above anything I had ever done in school ever, and it took 30+ hours to complete. He didn't give us any direction on how to set it up, and what he was looking for, just a short list of a few things that needed to be in it, and to handle it as if you were turning something into your boss. I handed in a 41 page project, and got an 86%. He said several things weren't in the project in his review sheet. I brough it back up to him after class and told him the things he missed were there, some even in bolded font. He said he'd look at it again. He held it for 42 days altogether, but tried handing it back to me with the 86% three times. Finally I got it back, and got a 96%...

The big issue was the second project was due 3 days later after getting it back, and I was relying on the hard copy he had for my numbers, as something had happened to the files on my flash drive. This project was based on the first, and everything went hand in hand with it. I started on the 2nd project that night, and worked very hard on it. I once again turned in a 41 page project. He said he would bring them in on our finals day, and hand them back. He did however have our grades, and I had recieved an A. Come finals week, he forgot to bring them, so the remaining 12 or so students in the class were out our binders.

I knew he would do this...because the slippery bottom hole had been stealing binders during his time at the school. It was evident to me, because a few weeks into the class, the girl infront of me asked where he got some of the binders that he was using to bring in our assignments, graded homework,etc. He acted realy strange, sort of choked, and said he thought some students may have left them behind.

So in short, research projects suck, stats suck, and I got my binder stolen.

[Big Red]

Religion classes can be a hoot. I took a class on the Book of Revelations early in my college career. The professor was very anti-Catholic and didn't know the material very well ("You're right! Madonna really could be the Whore of Babylon! It makes sense!"). There were also several very vocal anti-Catholics in the class and I was the lone Catholic. I wasn't nearly as well-versed in my faith as I am now, otherwise I would have been able to hold my own against the students and mop up the floor with the professor. He was quite fair with his grades, so I can't fault him that, but he had a tendency to deliver long tirades about Catholics and the Church that were completely untrue (I actually had to argue with him over whether the main purpose of the pope's hat is to cover the horns that grow when he becomes pope). I was at least able to point out how wrong he was in a few instances, at least before the guy who had a thing for alien conspiracy theories and the Illuminati dominated the argument. I don't think I bothered with religion classes in college after that.

[Jodo]

I would love to take a class such as that one, hahaha!

You mentioned the professor not knowing the material very well, and that reminds me of my wife...I mean...last math teacher, who was very pretty, but just didn't have a great in-depth knowledge of mathmatics. She would assign us problems, and really have no idea how to work them, or explain how to do so. It was almost as if she was learning on the job. I would bring the problem set into her office, and spend 40 minutes alone with her (...), and then come out of the office to find 3 or more people waiting to go in. She would then walk out and say she had to leave, yet in-class she would say she wanted every single student to visit her, and she would be available at nearly any time until 3:30 because her son would be getting out of school.

She was an excellent person, most likely one of the friendliest staff people I have ever met on campus, but she just skimmed the material in class, and when it came to her office hours, she had horrible time management for the other students. I never had an issue, but several other people hated me, because she always had an over abundance of time for me, LOL. I'm not that bad at math either, it was just the book wasn't very clear, and she sometimes didn't like the formulas they used...And then the formulas she would give us sometimes wouldn't work.

I know in the class following the one I was in, which I did not take, she administed a test around the midterm of the semester, and ALL the students in the class failed it. She then said they would retake it, but never got around to doing so. Then during finals week, she looked in her grade book and remembered she never let the kids do it again. She ended up having them come in an hour early to their finals (which were at 8:00), and had them do that test, and their finals back to back. ><

I still like seeing her in the hall.

[Big Red]

I've always hated my math classes, even though I've typically been very good at math, as long as I applied myself. My algebra 2/trig teacher in high school despised me, though. She was a nun, so her blatant hatred of me really threw me off. However, she was nuts about math, and I hadn't taken a math class in two years. This set her off from the start and that initial animosity really turned me off. This was during the period when I wasn't too keen on school in general, so her attitude didn't do much for my enthusiasm. She held group sessions after school, but she insisted the students she didn't like sit in the back, right-hand corner of the class while she had the students she liked crowd around her in the front, left-hand corner. She then didn't speak above a whisper, so her study sessions didn't do much for me. She refused to give me one-on-one time, and when I asked her questions directly she told me to look in the book. When I got my first semester midterm, it was a D. This kicked me into gear and I managed to pull it up to a B by the time the semester was over. This infuriated my teacher, which just discouraged me. My next midterm was an F, which shocked me. I somehow pulled out an A by the end. This actually turned me around academically (at least until I learned how to drink in college). She was disgusted with my grade and didn't hide the fact, which made all that hard work worthwhile.

Getting back to that religion class, it was something of a train wreck. We had the hardcore Evangelical guy who brought a new theory about the End Times to class with him each day, each of which tied directly into whatever smutty video he had just watched on MTV (for a hardcore, anti-smut Evangelical, he sure spent an awful lot of time finding the smuttiest videos he could). We had the alien conspiracy guy who the teacher never reined in, no matter how loud or insane he got. We also had this militant angry atheist who started every argument with, "Wrong, wrong, wrong!", and had proof that the Bible wasn't written until the middle ages and was based on Nordic myths. Then, of course, we had the professor who listened to all three of these kooks and agreed with whoever spoke last ("You know, you could be onto something with the cross being the Christian version of Yggdrasil!"). I should try to find my old notebooks to see what sort of comments I wrote in the margins. I'm sure the notes themselves wouldn't be very insightful.

[Jodo]

Ahhhh, sitting away from the favored kids? You were a "satelite kid" as my friend (who is a school teacher) would say!

That is hilarious about your religion class! I'm glad I'm not the only person that writes the stupid things other people say in the margins of my notebooks...I've done so for every class I've been in, and not one other person has ever done the same. Last semester in Eastern Civ, I had a very good friend who sat infront of me, and we would have some great discussions with the professor, and they were always hilarious. He was very suprised when the day of our final came around, and I read him some quotes out of my notebook. It was really fun to go back and relive some of the things we talked about, hahaha!

Speaking of finals, I added up my total points for 2 of my classes, and I only need to get 21 points, or a 35% for my film final to get an A in the class. Then in health and wellness, depending on how many bonus points I recieve for my volunteer and attendance, I may only need to score either a 38% or a 58% to get an A.

Additionally, I also filed for graudation a few weeks ago! Now to just figure out where I'll be transfering too.....

[figureaddict]

Wow. Graduating from college already. I feel old.

[Big Red]

Congrats on the upcoming graduation!

As far as being a satellite student went, it certainly wasn't by choice in that class, although I made a point of it in other classes. When I'd go in for the tutoring sessions, if I sat anywhere near the other kids she would stand there with her arms crossed and tell me she wasn't going to start until I took my normal seat (my daily, assigned seat way in the back corner). It was unreal. What's worse is that my parents wouldn't do anything about it because they didn't believe she was as horrible as I claimed.

You've gotta love that extra credit. I had several classes where the final was meaningless either due to the curve or the extra credit I'd turned in.