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  • Biology: FML

    School started again today, and it's my last semester before moving on to a university. These are filler classes, electives -- basically, whatever is left over to fulfill the requirements of my degree, plus whatever it is that I happened to want to take.

    One of the classes that is required of me is a biology class, and I'm only in the one I'm in because -- as I understand it -- it didn't involve cutting anything open. However, after today's first class, I have a problem.

    Several, actually.

    Problem 1 -- My teacher, though she may be brilliant, is from Mexico and has a very thick accent. Think Consuela from Family Guy, except she speaks much faster and her accent is much thicker.

    Problem 2 -- My fellow students are idiots. One, at the front of the room, addressed the lecture hall at large four times and each and every single time he did, he managed to work his recent stint in the military into it. It's as if to say that he has nothing else left in his identity except for his service as a warrior, and disdains the rest of us because none of us have been blown up in Iraq or Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a student sitting beside me in the back of the lecture hall -- an Hispanic man -- kept a sarcastic running commentary in English and Spanish alike going on every-goddamn-thing the teacher or any other student said. It was a solid fifty minutes of uninterrupted blithering.

    Problem 3 -- Going back to the teacher, this is her first year teaching. As such, she does not know how to use the online interactive feature provided by the school. Because of that, she does not know how to post assignments online, meaning that if you want to know what's due, you have to go hunting for it in the mishmash of Excel and Word documents. Meanwhile, because English is her second language, her pronunciations are creative, to put it kindly, as is her spelling.

    This is going to suck horribly.

    My other classes are fairly interesting, however. The Abnormal Psychology professor admitted to the class that he hates teaching Abnormal Psychology, but somebody has to do it. Later, the Creative Writing teacher danced on tables while reaching for blind cords dangling up near the ceiling. My Introduction to Criminal Justice class is taught by a cop, and the entire book for Social Psychology is online, meaning if you want to read, you're going to be glued to a screen.

    But it all goes back to Biology. Ugh.
    Drive it like it's a county car.

  • #2
    Oh man. I remember taking a uni class with a prof who had a thick and (to me) incomprehensible accent ... I got used to it fairly quickly, luckily, but when you combine that with a newbie teacher ... all I can do is wish you the very best of luck. Just keep reminding yourself "It's my last semester here ... it's my last semester here ..."

    And I sympathize about the chatterers. My math class is three hours long. The teacher, knowing this is excruciating, is giving us a break every hour, but apparently for many of my fellow students, that's not good enough. In the final hour of the first class, they were fidgeting, talking, yammering endlessly while the teacher was trying to teach. They are supposed to be fucking adults but they are behaving worse than kindergartners. I am having visions of them by mid-semester, whining about how they don't understand this stuff and it's too hard and yada yada yada yada, whereas if they'd just STFU and pay attention, focus, concentrate, they might actually learn something.

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    • #3
      The accent you should get used to pretty quickly, at least (my fifth-grade Sunday school teacher had a super-thick accent that I could not understand at all at first, but fortunately it didn't take long before I got it). The other things are going to be more difficult to adapt to. You have my sympathies.
      Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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      • #4
        Quoth Pixilated View Post
        And I sympathize about the chatterers. My math class is three hours long. The teacher, knowing this is excruciating, is giving us a break every hour, but apparently for many of my fellow students, that's not good enough. In the final hour of the first class, they were fidgeting, talking, yammering endlessly while the teacher was trying to teach. They are supposed to be fucking adults but they are behaving worse than kindergartners. I am having visions of them by mid-semester, whining about how they don't understand this stuff and it's too hard and yada yada yada yada, whereas if they'd just STFU and pay attention, focus, concentrate, they might actually learn something.
        I had this for a TWO hour class on differentiation. One group in my class would NOT shut up for the entire 2-hour class. I managed to scrape through with a pass on that one, although as it turns out, I wasn't the only one.

        Someone posted a VERY lengthy rant on the online discussion board about student behaviour in the lectures and tutorials. It was mainly about people who WOULD NOT STFU under any circumstances. I joined in and pointed out that "hey guess what, you're here to learn. You may not like the class, but it's a necessity, it's something you will ACTUALLY use when you go on your field placement and there are people here who would like to pass the topic."

        The general consensus seemed to be that this was one of those classes you could ditch when you got out into the real world. The undergrads had quite a few of these topics, which is another reason why I opted to finish my BA first instead of transferring over to a double BA/BEd degree. The topics I've had? All very much relevant.

        (Seriously, my first YEAR in my teaching course covered English, Maths, Arts, PE, learning disorders involving literacy, challenging behaviour, a general course on special needs that gave us a chance to focus on one topic that we were interested in and a teaching prac. Last year focused on the rest. The other students had a good CHUNK of their first year taken up in somewhat useless topics)
        The best professors are mad scientists! -Zoom

        Now queen of USSR-Land...

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