Really? It's really that hard?

[Twin2]

Been a lurker for a while on this site, and have two recent college sightings that have left me a bit dumbfounded. As of this year I'm enrolled in a pretty standard sophomore English class with the reading literature, writing about it, and quizzes and what not. The first incident came about on the date which the first paper for the class was due. It wasn't a big deal, a short three to five page paper on a topic of your choice in regards to the Epic of Gilgamesh. I come into class, put my paper on the desk, and am treated to one students shock when the teacher handed them their paper back as it wasn't the required three page limit (apparently it had three lines on the third page, and half the first page was essentially blank to fill space). Several other students had their papers handed back, and were getting annoyed over it. All the while I'm thinking to myself, "Dear god it's a three page paper how the hell are you unable to do that in a sophomore level class". The teacher allowed them the ability to hand it in by the end of the day to avoid being late, but aside from that people would be getting lower grades for late papers.

The second incident took place today with a small quiz with around seven or eight questions on Euripides version of Medea. After the class had finished I heard a few students complaining how hard the quiz was, and one of them apparently only answered one question if I heard them correctly. How hard was this quiz you ask? Well it featured such brain busting questions as, "Where did the story take place?", and "What city was Aegeus ruler of?". These are questions that even a high school student who did a cursory reading of Medea could answer, and people in a college level course were complaining about them. Am I wrong in being dumbfounded how this one happened?

Part of me feels pained that teachers have to deal with this sort of thing, but the other part of me says it's the students hanging themselves out to dry being that it is a college course, and they'll pay for it in the end. Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing?

[TexasT]

First of all---the subject line----that's what she said.

Yes, I experienced that all through college.

[Thuringwethyl]

There will always be those who don't want to do the work. My sister is teaching a literature course with vampires as the main focus and she had students complaining that she required them to read "Dracula". Not the whole book, mind you, just a 40 page excerpt. I would have killed to have had that as required reading when I was taking english.

[LillFilly]

Well, we've learned on this site that students consider that paying for schooling makes them 'customers' and thus the classes and professors should cater to them. Some feel they're basically 'purchasing' their grades.

Hee, my old economics professor gave us the final assignment of write a paper on ANYTHING having to do with economics...

MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I set the standard for the final that year, for I did it in story form. In costume.

[fireheart]

I'm probably part of those who pads their pages a little, but not that much. Thankfully our essays are set by word count, not by page amounts. (high school the highest was 1500, uni first year was 2000, uni second year was 2000-2500) The word counts do not include references or bibliographies. I tend to pad them a little by including my references

[Red_Dazes]

There will always be those who don't want to do the work. My sister is teaching a literature course with vampires as the main focus and she had students complaining that she required them to read "Dracula". Not the whole book, mind you, just a 40 page excerpt. I would have killed to have had that as required reading when I was taking english.

...Holy crap! I want to take that class! That would be like the accumulation of all of my dreams!

...but seriously a 3 page paper! How hard is it to make 3 pages. I can bs three pages in my sleep if I need to. Normally I find it hard to STOP at 3. I weep for humanity.

[Shalom]

Brooklyn College has what they call the Core Curriculum, this being a series of about 15 courses that they believe all liberal arts students should have at least a passing familiarity with. Of course if you take serious courses in those departments you are exempt from the core; e.g. a CompSci major can skip Core 5, which was maths and computers, etc.

(Although I just looked at the current requirement http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/portal/core/ and it seems it's been dumbed down with the rest of the world; when I was there in 1990, we had to take 2 credits each of chemistry, physics, biology and earth sciences, but apparently enough people put those off till their last semester and then couldn't pass them, and couldn't graduate until they did, that they now require only two of the four. I took both core chem and physics in my first semester, over the objections of the faculty advisor, and liked it enough that I became a chemistry major, but I am told that was unusual.)

In any case, Core 2.2 was music. The professors in the music department used to draw straws to find out who would be the unlucky sucker who had to teach about classical music to kids whose ideas of music were shaped by people like Sean Combs. The year I was there, it was Professor Harry Saltzman, who was the director of the college chamber chorus. The way he ran his class, he would distribute tapes (which he charged you $3 for, or you could copy someone else's with his blessing, all the music thereon being in the public domain anyway). You listened to the tape, read his handout, listened to the records he played in class along with his commentary, and took the exams. If you did the first three steps, you would have no problem at all with the fourth.

So after the first exam, he strides to the board and draws a bell curve. "This is the usual distribution of exam grades," he says. "A few A's, more B's, lots of C's, fewer D's, and very few F's." He erases that. Draws an upside down bell curve. "Now this is the distribution of the grades from the last exam. 16 A's, 15 F's, and maybe three of everything in between. Instructors hate to see upside down bell curves..."

Of course what had happened was that those who listened to the tapes got A's, those who blew it off got F's, and the ones in the middle were either foreign students who had somewhat of a language barrier, or else had blown it off like the F's, but knew enough about classical music to fake it. I felt so sorry for Professor Saltzman; my brother was a piano major (and in his chamber chorus), and I at least grew up with classical music all around me, so I at least had some background in the field, but the ignorance around me was stultifying, and it was so frustrating for him. I remember once he played the recording of Bach's Little Fugue, which was on our tapes, and nobody in the class but me could figure out what instrument it was played on. I was sitting there with my hand up, and he called on everyone but me (at one point he looks over at me and says "Put your hand down, Shalom, I know you know what it is"), and the guesses were getting more and more outlandish (seriously, how can you confuse a saxophone with a pipe organ?) and his No's were getting louder and louder. Finally someone says "Uhh, is it a keyboard?"

Prof looks hopeful, says "Could you be more specific?" Student says "Ya know, a synthesizer." and Prof yells "No!!"

(On the exams, he'd play records of the assigned pieces, and we had to identify them, but he threw the class a curve ball on this one: he used a transcription for horn ensemble instead of the organ solo, to see if we'd recognize the melody and not just the specific recording. I don't know how many students missed that.)

[Sheldonrs]

Now you know the real reason Medea killed her kids!

[sms001]

Welcome aboard Twin2!

Sadly, yes. I think most of us who went to college experienced this kind of thing in varying forms. I tried to look at college as a major purchase I was making and tried to get the most value for my money as I could, but there are definitely those EW's who look at as a "purchase" that should be taken out to the car, taken home, set up for them, then spoon fed every last detail about operating.

On the plus side, if your school grades on a curve, it sounds like you'll have plenty of people filling the plot points to the left of you!

[Docmayhem]

I had an exam in a metrology (no I didn't misspell that) class where the professor added a bonus question.

Three students (including me) wound up with grades above 100.

One student got a 14.

[AccountingDrone]

LOL When my friend Eddie and I were in school, he found out he needed ethics to pass, and as a joke he asked if he could just pay someone to write his papers and admit he had no ethics. The prof told him as long as he could pass the final, he didn't care. I made a few hundred bucks writing papers, and he passed the final.

I loved college ... one semester as part of one of my legal classes I had to spend a couple days a week attending court and watching proceedings. Absolutely fascinating. Did you know that in many states in the US they have a law stating that the municipality [typically county seat or higher] had to maintain a public law library with librarian so people could actually use it to research for themselves? Who knew that there was actually a non legal office job out there for paralegals!

[Sheldonrs]

... Who knew that there was actually a non legal office job out there for paralegals!

I did. I used to be a law librarian as well as a legal asst.

[wynjara]

I had to read Medea three times: high school English and college theater and history. I almost smacked my entire history class, who came to class asking what the story was about. It's not that long, people! And it's actually interesting, unlike most of the stuff they had us read.
My saddest grade time was one lecture class, 100+ students, where the average on the first test was about 46 and the high grade was 68 or so. At that point, the teacher decided he needed to re-evaluate his teaching strategy. (Sadly, I was not the high grade, although I was close.)

[AccountingDrone]

I did. I used to be a law librarian as well as a legal asst.

There are great positions out there that the school counselors never seem to mention to students *sigh*

Although I would love to work in publishing reading ebook slush at home. I have a friend who used to be a slush reader for a publishing company. She shared a couple of the worse books with me once. Holy crap

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Finally someone says "Uhh, is it a keyboard?"

Prof looks hopeful, says "Could you be more specific?" Student says "Ya know, a synthesizer." and Prof yells "No!!"

Keytar!