Saturday, November 22, 2008

A little rant

I just finished a dumb budget-spreadsheet thing for my cost-management class that is supposed to be 3% of our final grade, to be emailed to my professor since I'll be gone on Monday. I spent a good four hours on it, but I'm really frustrated because I know it's all wrong. I just put together all the crap I could and hoped it came out looking somewhat real. I'm a little mad because he just kind of threw this thing at us without really spending much time talking about it. "C'mon, this is the easy stuff," he says. "You guys are lucky I'm easy on you," he says. Apparently, when he taught in Georgia and Lousiana and Canada or wherever the heck he was, he was much much harder on those students than he is on us Utah students, because those students were students first. Apparently we are different because we all have jobs and families and other responsibilities besides just school. We are not students first. (Shame on us). The funny thing is, and all the other students will attest to this, this guy gives us more homework than any other professor we've had. That may say something about the quality of our education, but mostly I just think he's on a high horse. It just gets me so mad.

You know I really want to learn from this class, and in fact I have learned a lot - it is potentially the most useful class I've had here yet - however, it is this kind of thing that makes me just do whatever I can do and throw it back to him hoping to get a passing grade. I'm really interested in budgets, really. I really am. But this is literally the first time I've seen it in my education and he expects that we know it already so, no need to teach it, right? Let's just hope to get a passing grade.

I'm not going to cry, I'm not. Frustration is detrimental. I chose this, I chose this, I chose this.

I'm going on vacation. And I'm going to have a good time. Forget school.

I'm thankful for my home.
I'm thankful for my job.
I'm thankful for my husband.

2 comments:

Jax said...

You probably don't want to hear this, but my limited experience bears out what your professor says. I did a little bit of college in Indiana before going to BYU after my mission, and even though BYU is ranked better than that college (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, a.k.a. IUPUI), I could tell a difference in the rigor of the classes I took at that school versus those in Utah.

It's kind of hard to pinpoint with words since it's like an abstract concept or feeling, but in a way I always have thought of it like this. In movies--dumb comedies aside--you see college portrayed a certain way--as academic and challenging and with the professors being almost impersonal and unrelenting. My Indiana college experience strikes me as being true to the movies, which are presumably reflections of reality. My Utah college experience was, well, not the same. It did feel different in some way, almost easier and like the professors weren't being quite so relentless.

I don't know. All I know is that I've always recognized that distinction, even before reading your blog entry tonight. As always, this is my two cents; we all have our own experiences and opinions, of course. :-)

Cali said...

Jax-

Your two cents is appreciated, as always.

And you probably don't want to hear this, but BYU sucks anyway.

;)