Oct 27: FUCK THIS FUCKING CLASS!!!
In order to locate the point where I went flipping shit pissed off beyond all descriptions, I'm afraid you're going to have to pick up a pair of binoculars and look behind you. Why am I so ineffably angry, you ask? Motherfucking Russian History. So, let me give you some background on the situation....
We only have two tests in the entire class, which make up 70% of our grade, so basically, do bad on the tests and you automatically fail. So, for our midterm she gave us a full Page And A Half of terms. Not terms to memorize, oh holy fuck no, that would be Too Nice. We had to know All About them. So if it was a person, we had to know who they were, when they were alive, what they did, what this led to, where in the country they lived, etc etc. A page and a half. Then she told us that out of all of these, she's be using only four on the test. When asked if they would be four of the most important she replied "I'll probably ask you two that are very important and two that aren't so important". Fan-fucking-tastic. Then the rest of the test would be an essay that we had to write.
So, we took the test (she gave us like 7 ID's to choose the four from by the way), and it went sort of ok. Then I looked at Blackboard, where she posts the grades, and I saw that I got..... drumroll............... an 80%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I was happy with this. Not ecstatic, but pleased that it wasn't lower, especially after she was quoted as saying that anyone who got "above a 70% did EXCEPTIONALLY well" (ie. everyone failed). So earlier today I got my test back and sat down to read it about an hour ago whilst thinking "I probably just fucked up some of the Id's really bad and did real well on the rest". Then I started reading......
First page she said was "Excellent!". A few pages later, not so great comments, but then again, I didn't know what the fuck I was writing on there anyway, so it was all good..... THEN, I get to my fourth ID, over Novgorod (a city) and read her comments. She'd told us that we didn't have to write complete sentences, that bullet points were fine. So, I'd written "first capital" as one of my bullet points since, prior to Novgorod, there was no government in Russia, just a bunch of tribes. And what does she write behind it? She writes "of what?". What the fuck? What do you MEAN, "first capital of what?". OF FUCKING RUSSIA!!!! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE'RE STUDYING HERE?????!!!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!! Then for the essay she sits there and puts all of the other things that I could have included in there. Keep in mind that this is like, 800 years of history here. No book, no notes. And she apparently expected us to remember ALL of it!!! AMAZING!!! How in the fuck can you expect students to learn that much about something they have no background in, will never use unless it is part of their major (which for most it is a gen ed), and really don't fucking care about? Honestly, I'm not studying to be a Russian History professor, so stop expecting me to know as much as you know about it!!! It's fucking ridiculous!!
And she's also not curving the test. The day after we took it, before we'd even gotten it back, at least half of the class dropped it. An entire class of students don't drop the class at once unless something is Seriously Wrong. There were several other people in there who said that they've had 500 level classes that were easier, and this is a 100 level, UN-BELIEVABLE!!! My Multimedia class isn't even this demanding, and it has a fuck load of tutorials to watch each week! The russian class has at least 200 pages of reading a week, we have a 500 page text book, 200+ pages of printed material (each page has two pages of paperback on it in teeny tiny lettering), a 120 page paperback, and a crap load of stuff she posts on the internet for us to read. That's roughly 1000-1200 pages for one class, depending on how you count the printed paperback material. If I didn't feel a little bad about it, I would be cursing terrible things upon you right now Tsar Smith!!!
In order to locate the point where I went flipping shit pissed off beyond all descriptions, I'm afraid you're going to have to pick up a pair of binoculars and look behind you. Why am I so ineffably angry, you ask? Motherfucking Russian History. So, let me give you some background on the situation....
We only have two tests in the entire class, which make up 70% of our grade, so basically, do bad on the tests and you automatically fail. So, for our midterm she gave us a full Page And A Half of terms. Not terms to memorize, oh holy fuck no, that would be Too Nice. We had to know All About them. So if it was a person, we had to know who they were, when they were alive, what they did, what this led to, where in the country they lived, etc etc. A page and a half. Then she told us that out of all of these, she's be using only four on the test. When asked if they would be four of the most important she replied "I'll probably ask you two that are very important and two that aren't so important". Fan-fucking-tastic. Then the rest of the test would be an essay that we had to write.
So, we took the test (she gave us like 7 ID's to choose the four from by the way), and it went sort of ok. Then I looked at Blackboard, where she posts the grades, and I saw that I got..... drumroll............... an 80%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I was happy with this. Not ecstatic, but pleased that it wasn't lower, especially after she was quoted as saying that anyone who got "above a 70% did EXCEPTIONALLY well" (ie. everyone failed). So earlier today I got my test back and sat down to read it about an hour ago whilst thinking "I probably just fucked up some of the Id's really bad and did real well on the rest". Then I started reading......
First page she said was "Excellent!". A few pages later, not so great comments, but then again, I didn't know what the fuck I was writing on there anyway, so it was all good..... THEN, I get to my fourth ID, over Novgorod (a city) and read her comments. She'd told us that we didn't have to write complete sentences, that bullet points were fine. So, I'd written "first capital" as one of my bullet points since, prior to Novgorod, there was no government in Russia, just a bunch of tribes. And what does she write behind it? She writes "of what?". What the fuck? What do you MEAN, "first capital of what?". OF FUCKING RUSSIA!!!! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE'RE STUDYING HERE?????!!!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!! Then for the essay she sits there and puts all of the other things that I could have included in there. Keep in mind that this is like, 800 years of history here. No book, no notes. And she apparently expected us to remember ALL of it!!! AMAZING!!! How in the fuck can you expect students to learn that much about something they have no background in, will never use unless it is part of their major (which for most it is a gen ed), and really don't fucking care about? Honestly, I'm not studying to be a Russian History professor, so stop expecting me to know as much as you know about it!!! It's fucking ridiculous!!
And she's also not curving the test. The day after we took it, before we'd even gotten it back, at least half of the class dropped it. An entire class of students don't drop the class at once unless something is Seriously Wrong. There were several other people in there who said that they've had 500 level classes that were easier, and this is a 100 level, UN-BELIEVABLE!!! My Multimedia class isn't even this demanding, and it has a fuck load of tutorials to watch each week! The russian class has at least 200 pages of reading a week, we have a 500 page text book, 200+ pages of printed material (each page has two pages of paperback on it in teeny tiny lettering), a 120 page paperback, and a crap load of stuff she posts on the internet for us to read. That's roughly 1000-1200 pages for one class, depending on how you count the printed paperback material. If I didn't feel a little bad about it, I would be cursing terrible things upon you right now Tsar Smith!!!
crispy_boy:
My friend Sean is in that class. According to him (and you it seems) it's ridiculous.
agcu:
lol, that's probably the biggest understatement of the year!