Cal 2, Organic 2, Psych 2, all made unnecessarily difficult?

Post Reply New Topic

Psych 2 for me was 'Research Methods of Psychology,' a class I took in the mid 1980s. And yes, I think it was made intentionally difficult, pretty much as a weed-out class.

Besides learning research methods, which I'm all in favor of, we also wrote up trivial experiments in order to learn APA. That part I wasn't as crazy about.

==================

I wonder if other people have experience where the second class in a series seems to be made unnecessarily difficult?

I enjoyed taking computer science classes like that.

Calculus would be more manageable and easier to learn if they split it into 2 semesters.

College calculus is set up for engineers. The first year they learn the basics of single variable calculus. The second year they learn two variable calculus. Then the third year they get to apply it to their particular engineering specialty. They need to do this before they start their job hunt on the fourth year.

I'm an international student at an university. In the country I'm located people learn differential calculus in secondary school (I think it would be the equivalent of high school for north-america). I'm taking calculus 1 right now and the beginning of the semester was quite turbulent for me; in my home country we stop at pre-calculus and calculus is only taught in universities; so I started at quite a disavantage in comparison to everyone else, I spent many weeks being sleep-deprived from having to study differential calculus on my own by watching lectures on Khan Academy. I'm far from being a math genius - I can study biology, chemistry and physics on my own just fine but I really could use an actual teacher to help me with math. I got behind every other class, had emotional breakdowns every other week.
I'm going to have to review a lot of the material in calculus when the semester finally ends because I just rushed through everything. I will also study calculus 2 on my own before the next semester starts since I have already learned that college lectures are just useless anyways and I might as well learn on my own.

Hi k.wolf , I'd challenge you thusly: Even a really good cardiologist, for example, knows some things skimmingly and others things well. And that's one way we as human beings think and understand the world around us. So, I think it's okay to rush through some things.

I'd also encourage you to experiment with different ways of pre-studying. That might be enough to make a mediocre lecturer still worth listening to, but probably not enough to bring up a genuine crappy lecturer. I remember one guy giving honest advice about success in medical school and one thing he said was, don't go to class. He simply could not justify the time for the little bit of benefit he got out of it. An alternative might be to go to every third class or every other class. But I think you've got to have a note-taking service, or at least a person or two in the class who can give you info about assignments, etc, and maybe this is where you do your part by attending every third class. Or something similar.

I actually stopped going to 2 classes this semester, one because people in class simply wouldn't shut up and I could never fully focus despite sitting near the front row, and another because the professor seemed to have anger issues and would constantly shout at his students and interrupt his own class to give someone a sermon. Neither of these had mandatory attendance. Not attending the first class didn't seem to have a relevant impact on my grade. I'll see about the second one (finals here are after christmas break).
I wish I knew someone to tell me what went on every class I skipped, unfortunately I don't have any real classmates (because I am an international student and bottom priority I wasn't assigned classes with people from my major, I just take different classes with people from different majors, which makes it extremely hard for me to get to know someone, because I build relationships with people very slowly - here I never see the same people every day).
Sometimes I really regret leaving my home despite it being a third world country with all its disadvantages.

Unfortunately there are professors who make their classes unnecessarily difficult to "Weed people out". Personally I think this is elitist or self serving (why create more people with PhDs who will only be competition for you as a professor?)

Personally I believe that the purpose of education should be for common good. Give people the information and see what good they can do with it, and the only limitations on it should be when disseminating it can easily pose a security risk. For example, I wouldn't do a series of Youtube tutorials on how to make an atomic bomb from scratch if I knew how (I don't).

I took Calc II last semester, and it was the single worst class I’ve ever been in. Our professor did not know how to teach and we were all clueless. I legitimately thought I was going to fail, but I ended up getting a B because the class is so curved and no one can get higher than a 50 in it.

I used to love blowing away curves. The average would be 50 and I'd get a 98. And being very helpful to anyone who asked. Why not? Nobody was competing against me.

Honestly, if you were in my class, I’d probably hate you.