More College Rants

[Rageaholic]

I'm not as bitter about college when I first signed on, but there are still some things that really annoy.

Lack of communication in group projects: I've gotten to like group projects a little more, but if there's one thing that's a must, it's communication. You got to know the role of each group member and you must meet at least once to discuss these things. If you don't, you end up with one team member doing all the work while others are left confused. I was one of those who were left confused and while it wasn't entirely my fault, I still feel like a jerk for getting credit off the work of others. And this is assuming I even get credit.

Also, on the discussion of group projects, not everything has to be a group project. Big research projects? Powerpoint presentations? Yes, I can how working in a group can be beneficial to those projects. But I've seen some real half ass attempts to make simple one man assignments into group projects. In my lit class, we actually had to break up into groups for a simple 15 minute response paper. Typically, you just write a paragraph or two on the reading you did the week before. But yesterday, my instructor had this bright idea that we should break up into groups to write this one little response. It ended up taking twice as long than it normally does because we were all trying to figure out how we could each contribute. I think he was trying something new, but not all experiments work out. This one didn't.

Jerkassery from professors: I haven't experienced this too much, but I had at least a couple of professors who were jerkasses. They could teach and knew how to keep students interested, but they were jerkasses! This one I had spent a good portion of the first class talking about how hard her class is, how hard college is, how easy high school is, and how strict unflexible she is. She siad she'd give you a zero on an assignment if you turned it in even 10 minutes late. Now how could you turn it in 10 minutes late? Well she decided that the assignments were due right at the beginning of class. So you could have the best midterm ever, but because you were 10 minutes late to class and unable able to turn it in right away, you get a zero!

And I mean she wouldn't accept any excuses, no matter how legit they were. Got in a car accident? Too bad, you should have been more careful. Got the flu? Again too bad! I mean, I understand professors not wanting to be too lieniant, but that doens't mean you can't ever be flexible or accomodating. Shit happens, and sometimes it's out of our control. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a good class, but her condescending attitude got under my skin.

Bland shit 101 (to steal a line from the Nostalgia Critic): These are classes that are composed almost entirely of lectures, textbook reading, and tests. God damn these classes! I have had more than enough of them. I am so fucking sick of textbooks I wanna scream. Yes, I understand it's cost effective yada yada yada, but there is only so much you can learn from them. Sometimes you need hands on experience to understand things better. All this theoretical stuff is nice, but it would be nice to learn some fucking application for once! You know, stuff I can actually use in my field. When am I gonna learn that?

And those are the big 3. Feel free to add your own if you have any!

[Eisa]

My History of Psych professor has a very simple policy on late papers--if you don't hand it in within...say...the first 15 minutes of class [as she IS a tiny bit lenient on if you're a little late to class...she's not a total ogre], then you get it automatically marked down one letter grade. So turn it in at the end of class, or turn it in at 5 p.m. that day, it's the same markdown. Each day it's late is another letter grade down.

It really motivates you to get your shit in on time.

BUT...she's also understanding of "shit happens" as long as you actually TALK to her about it...as soon as possible. She's not going to be just like "ok fine" if you don't talk to her for days and then whine about it. But if you're in a car accident and you email or call her as soon as you can...then that's cool.

[gremcint]

Why can I not have my assignments ahead of time, a lot of courses I take use the same assignments every year but wait to give them to you. I will read ahead and get them done if I have them but no I have to have 5 assignments due all at once and only two weeks to do them, I actually have had to get people to take a couple shifts so i can do homework, but during reading week i only actually had one assignment to work on.

[BigGiant]

This sucks:

And I mean she wouldn't accept any excuses, no matter how legit they were. Got in a car accident? Too bad, you should have been more careful. Got the flu? Again too bad! I mean, I understand professors not wanting to be too lieniant, but that doens't mean you can't ever be flexible or accomodating. Shit happens, and sometimes it's out of our control. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a good class, but her condescending attitude got under my skin.

Keep in mind that she may just be trying to prepare you for what could be waiting for you in the workplace.

I work at a place that has an attendance policy like that. It's called a "No-fault" attendance policy.

[Rageaholic]

This sucks:



Keep in mind that she may just be trying to prepare you for what could be waiting for you in the workplace.

I work at a place that has an attendance policy like that. It's called a "No-fault" attendance policy.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.

I still think it's bullshit. Just because some employers are going to be jerkasses doesn't mean she should be a jerkass to us. It only encourges jerkassery from those in authority.

[Rageaholic]

Here's another couple of things

Citations and the MLA format: GOD DAMN THIS FORMAT. No one understands it, it's confusing as hell, very specific, and is always changing. I've actually gone out of my way not to quote anything to avoid messing up on the MLA format. Knight Cite helped a lot, but even that's not perfect. I've gotten marked down on otherwise perfect papers all because I didn't perfect the fucking format. As long as I give credit where it's due, it shouldn't matter if a period is in the wrong place or there isn't enough spaces. Fuck MLA and fuck citations!

Long answers from professors (or anyone for that matter): There's a reason students are reluctant to ask some professors questions. Instead of giving a simple answer, they go on and on for five minutes. I'm sorry, but it shouldn't take 5 fucking minutes to answer what can usually be stated in a sentense or two. All that does is make it ten times more complicated.

[guywithashovel]

In college, I had some profs who would act like total hardcases about late papers, missed days/exams, etc. on the first day of class, but later on, if a student had a legitimate problem that prevented them from getting a paper in on time, getting to class or a test, or anything else, they would make an exception. I think it was probably to put a scare in everyone in effort to prevent people from being careless about turning stuff in or getting to class. That does kind of make sense. If people got the impression that a prof was really super lenient on absences and test make-ups, then there would be a handful of students taking advantage of that.

"Ah, Professor Smith is really cool. I'll just go ahead and go out drinking tonight instead of working on the paper for class tomorrow. He'll understand if it's not in until Friday."

Not saying you would do that. Just giving it as an example. I don't know this for a fact, but I think that what I described above is a tactic that educators use a lot. They'll start off strict but then ease up as the course progresses and people get a grasp of what is expected of them. I think I heard a teacher say once that a lot of teachers do that. And come to think of it, I can see where some of my previous teachers have done this. In high school, almost every teacher I had would tell us on the first day that he/she very rarely ever gave hall passes to students for the restroom, so make sure you go before class. But as the class progressed, if students needed to go, they were usually allowed to.

[Rageaholic]

Yeah, I think this one was just using scare tactics to get a mood for the class because she actually was pretty nice despite being treating students like children. Still, that attitude always rubs me the wrong way...

[AdminAssistant]

Citations and the MLA format: GOD DAMN THIS FORMAT. No one understands it, it's confusing as hell, very specific, and is always changing.

I've never found MLA to be that difficult. Granted, I prefer Chicago/Turabian. But I can do either/or almost from memory now. Here's a style guide for MLA that might help: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

In college, I had some profs who would act like total hardcases about late papers, missed days/exams, etc. on the first day of class, but later on, if a student had a legitimate problem that prevented them from getting a paper in on time, getting to class or a test, or anything else, they would make an exception. I think it was probably to put a scare in everyone in effort to prevent people from being careless about turning stuff in or getting to class. That does kind of make sense. If people got the impression that a prof was really super lenient on absences and test make-ups, then there would be a handful of students taking advantage of that.

gwas is absolutely right. I've had professors do that, and it's very effective. If students would be more motivated to turn assignments in on time and come to class barring illness or other circumstances, then professors could spend more time educating instead of having to play the hardass. I had to do it a couple of times this semester, because I had a particularly chatty group of girls in one class. They quieted down after I threatened to assign their seats like they were in kindergarten. Then, later on, I noticed a couple of them started using Facebook during lecture. So, I said that if I caught them on Facebook again, they'd lose all of their participation points for the entire semester. Extreme? Yes. But it stopped them playing on Facebook when they're supposed to be paying attention.

I do have some aggravations with my own professors. One feels the constant need to show off his Ivy League education, and I know he looks down on some of us who came up through the public school system/state universities. He's also the professor-of-record for the class I TA for, and he lectures wayyyy over their heads. I'm so glad he won't be teaching that class next year. Another is a really good teacher, but our class is supposed to be a discussion, and she just talk talk talk talks and we don't get a chance to ask questions or have input.

[muses_nightmare]

One of my instructors had a "well that's not my problem" attitude towards late assignments, and late meant if you handed it in more than 5 minutes after class started, and our assignments weren't papers, we had to do packaging mock-ups, brochure mock-ups and such, those take a long friggin time to print and bind, never mind the design time. He would never acknowledge that the printers at school sucked, there were 3 laser printers, half the time 2 of them were down, sometimes all 3 had some sort of issue, and usually when that was the case tech was unreachable, but of course we should all have printed earlier. Yeah, when he would do a critique the previous week basically telling you to completely redo 20 spreads, you need pretty much the whole week to do that.


I also hated the fact that we took a course on packaging, where we were basically assigned projects. There was no discussion of how to make dielines or anything like that, basically he didn't really teach us anything it was all projects and critique, which would be fine if we all knew the basics of it.

[guywithashovel]

The different formats (like MLA, APA, etc.) can be a little confusing at first. It's sometimes hard to get used to doing everything the way the format wants, but if you use one of them for a while, you'll get the hang of it. I don't know much about MLA because I haven't used it much. I may have used it one or two times in composition classes, but most of the time, I use APA (American Psychological Association). I was a psychology major in college, and psychology programs usually stick with APA (obviously). In grad school, I earned a degree in library and information science. I continued to use APA, though some people in library and information science use MLA. Either one seems to be acceptable. Most people just told me to use whichever one I was most comfortable with.

[McDreidel09]

One of my literature professors is starting to tick me off. We are reading "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. We are really far behind on discussing the book because she likes to repeat one point over and over again for almost 20 minutes (out of a 52 minute class). However, she wants us to continue the reading as put on the syllabus.

Okay, why? You want us to read almost a hundred pages a night, but we aren't going to go over it until waaay later? How the crap does that make sense?

And just as a disclaimer, it's not the fact that we have to read a lot that makes me mad. It is the fact that we are really far behind because of the professor, but she wants us to read really far ahead. I dunno about the rest of you, but I like to do the readings that we will discuss the day before so the information is fresher in my mind and I can contribute properly to the discussion.

[Boozy]

It's because she knows she's going to run out of time for class discussions, but material for the entire book will be on the exam. She's done this before. She knows that she needs to keep the class moving forward with their reading, even if she doesn't have the self-discipline to keep herself moving forward in class.

I've had many a professor like this. Trust me -- stay on the syllabus timeline for the readings so you don't get slammed later in the semester. She probably isn't going to change the content of her final exams based on her snail-speed in the classroom.