posted
Ok, so I'm a junior in high school and i've been up till atleast 1:30 the past 3 nights writing papers and doing various other assignments for classes. My schedule isn't all that demanding, i mean it goes Chemistry 1-2, Algebra 2-2, Spanish 2-1, AP US history, and theatre productions. Why do teachers not understand that their class isn't the only one that I'm taking and that I kind of enjoy getting atleast 6 hours of sleep. I mean at this very moment I'm taking a break from A US history paper to wine about it... and it's not like i've been putting this off, he assigned a 1000 word essay on manifest destiny due tomorrow, and put a no quote restriction on it... I just wish teachers valued students time as much as they want students to value their time... I mean he wants this paper in one night, and then he's going to spend 3 weeks grading 60 of them with very few other assignment inbetween now and then. AHHH Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I'm a freshman in college and I wish I had that kind of workload. I wish I had any kind of workload. I wish I were working at all. *mutters*
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Just wait until college. It only gets more fun. The professors do know that you have other obligations, but don't care.
Actually, I was a lackluster student in high school. The two years I spent at a small tech school, I did very well. The two years I've spent at a liberal arts college... not quite as good. Better than in high school.
Blacwolve: I wish I had your nonexistant workload.
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If you don't go to a public university. If you go to a public university you see ads like the one I saw the other day. It advertised a companion class to introductory psychology that is worth two credts and will teach you the study and test skills you'll need in Psy 120, "the most notoriously difficult freshmand and sophomore class."
I'm in Psy 120. I have one of the hardest professors. I cannot think of any class I took in high school that was easier than this, possible economics, but I'm not even sure about that. (note: econ was a required class for graduation and was considered the easiest class in the school) We have one homework assignment due each week. It generally takes from 20 minutes to an hour. If you're having trouble, you can go to a review session where they tell you the answers. There are also 3 tests, that require a maximum of 3 hours of studying each. The most difficult part of the class is that you're only allowed two absences.
I'm really starting to lose hope in this whole college thing.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
You should take some engineering classes blacwolve, I think you're right in that mot of the LA classes are kind of slacker-happy, not that I have a wide range of experience to talk on about this, it's based on about three classes I've taking in from the LA department but as far as I can tell, yah, that's what you'll get. I spent two straight weeks doing homework untill 4:00am or later and waking up at 6:30 (minus weekends, I slept in till 10:00 on Saturdays and I don't do homework on Sundays...
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Words cannot express how uninterested I am in engineering. Though it would be so nice to be challenged.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:it's based on about three classes I've taking in from the LA department but as far as I can tell, yah, that's what you'll get.
We liked to laugh at the "slumming" E-School kids who realized they didn't like 40-page papers very much. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Liberal Arts classes are better in some places. The amount of reading we have in one of my two days a week class is at least half an hour a night (every night) for an average reader to read and comprehend (though most did it in longer reading sessions). And we've had two five page papers (graded moderately harshly) and a ten pager coming up.
Of course, that class is 300 level, but that's the elvel you really have to take classes on to get a solid education in a subject anyways (with a few exceptions). Go as fast to the 300 level classes as you can if you wish to be challenged.
And at some private universities one will find more stringent courseloads, though hardly all. It will always depend on school, on department, and on teacher. Its actually sort of funny, some of the very most exclusive private schools are actually among the easiest to get straight A's in. Its often the ones that don't quite make the top grouping that have the more stringent courseloads.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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My first semester at college, I started out taking a history course in which I would have had to read at least 100 pages a week and write several large papers. That was a freshman course. I dropped it. The other humanities course I took was an American politics course. It was also for freshman and had a similar work load to the course Fugu described. But that was at a top private college (Vassar). I suppose it's different at other schools.
Posts: 1658 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Sometimes they just don't acknowledge the fact that you could be busy too and sometimes they just don't feel that they should worry about it. Teaches believe that they are preparing you for college and that everything isn't easy. I'm a sophmore in highschool taking Physics H, Chemistry H, English 2 H and Trigonometry H. It's tough and I have a 800-1000 paper due Tuesday for Chemistry, Science project research due Friday for Physics, 10 page study guide due Monday for Trigonometry and a HUGE technology project for English due Tuesday. Along with that I'm learning 3 dances for 3 different performances, editing movies for English and friends, I have French 3 AP and I'm active in at least 4 clubs.
Just live with it. You're not the only one under stress.
Posts: 4628 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote: I'm a freshman in college and I wish I had that kind of workload. I wish I had any kind of workload. I wish I were working at all. *mutters*
Freshman = first year, right?
I am a first year. Although I have no exams this is just another way of saying "professors off early, everyone has midterms!"
The lineup:
Politics paper, due 6 hours ago: compare nationhood and identity between Canada and the United States in the context of the quality of democracy.
Abstract, due two days ago of a scientific paper my professor wrote.
4 synopsises and analysis of science fiction stories about time, due next wednesday.
Finish C.S.Lewis' novel The Dark Tower, that he wrote the start of before he died. I know why he died; this story is unfinishable. The catch? Finish it as if it was a short story. Due Wednesday.
Narrative Midterm. Read various ancient texts to refresh memory. Tuesday.
Politics Midterm: Read notes and look up how to define certain politic terms in very detailed way. Tuesday.
Narrative Essay: Discuss the narrative theme that underlines the stories of King Arthur, Jesus and Perseus. Tuesday.
I am official doomed.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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blacwolve, I'm going to give you the advice I wish I got my freshman year as a psych student (and not just because I'm feeling guilty about not being there for you earlier). At most schools, psych is an almost ridiculously easy major, especially in terms of workload. It's usually one of the default liberal arts majors, which means that many of your classmates aren't all the serious about their studies. This actually provides some pretty cool opportunities for you if you are a serious student though. The professors generally love serious psych students and can be great resources for getting a much more extensive education. Get to know your profs, take them to lunch and stuff, and maybe look for jobs in the psych department.
At my college, psych was one of the easiest of all majors. You had to essentially show up to class to graduate for it. But, by senior year, all of the dedicated students were working their asses off with all the extra work they took on (and/or second majors).
Seriously, there's so much more out there to get in psychology than is presented in the courses. Stay after class and talk about the stuff that interests you. Ask if they can recommend sources to follow up on it. Check out the current research that's going on at your school. It's so much better and challenging when you do that.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote: At my college, psych was one of the easiest of all majors. You had to essentially show up to class to graduate for it.
Here the Psych100 course is specifically extremely hard to weed out this kind of thing, and I think the professors revel in that kind of thing. I don't take it, but the drop-out rate of that course I hear is huge.
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Squicky- Thanks! I'm double majoring in political science, so that provides a bit more challenge. Next semester I'm taking two Pysch courses, one is the psychology of personality, which sounds really interesting. The other, however, is basically statistics in psychology. I talked to the professor who teaches it, and was told that since the only prereq for it is a D in Algebra, many of the students haven't learned to work with variables yet (those were the words she used). So I decided to take Elementary Statistics so that I could actually learn Stat. Next year I'm hoping to take Pysch 390, which is basically being a grad student's minion in their research, but it should be really interesting. I'm hoping after this semester I'll know what I'm getting into and be able to make things challenging for myself. I'm taking 18 credit hours next semester instead of fifteen as a start.
I'll definately start talking to my profs, though. Right now it's sort of hard because my only psych class is a huge lecture and my professor is only in town three days a week, so he's really busy those three days.
Oh, and don't feel bad, I'm so relieved it was because it was caught in filters, not because you thought it was presumptious, that I don't care at all. Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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*at Florida St.* Homework? What's that? Seriously, the only homework I have is a once a week math assignment that's about ten questions long, multiple choice, online, not timed, and I get three chances to get the best score possible. I did have 1500 word paper once that was assigned the first day of class and due a few months later... Despite the workload, the professors do grade strictly though...
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:If you don't go to a public university. If you go to a public university you see ads like the one I saw the other day. It advertised a companion class to introductory psychology that is worth two credts and will teach you the study and test skills you'll need in Psy 120, "the most notoriously difficult freshmand and sophomore class."
Don't overgeneralize. I'm a freshman at a public university and my courseload is pretty tough.
Posts: 2149 | Registered: Aug 2000
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blacwolve, as others have said, it will get better. I HATED my freshman year because most of the courses weren't challenging and a lot of my classmates didn't care - which made for an icky learning environment. However, once I got past the 100 (sometimes 200) level, and especially into the classes that were in my english major, things changed drastically. My classmates were involved and enthusiastic, and the courses were awesome.
Speaking of homework, I attended a private college and had ton! IMO, the college was a bit too "high schooly" for me. I normally had homework every night in all of my courses that had to be turned in at the next class meeting. Though I loved the small atmosphere, I often wondered if a large public college would be a better fit. My husband attended one where the profs' attitude was basically, don't show up for class...fine...fail the exam later so you flunk my course. It's all cool with me.
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kaioshin, I went to Penn, which I think is the 4th ranked college in the nation right now. There was an outcry in my Learning psych course when the Prof (Dr. Rescorla) gave us homework on, get this, the Rescorla-Wagner model. I finished up the homework by the time he was done handing it out to the entire class, but some of my fellow students thought it was a large imposition. (To be fair though, it had math in it and we had people freak out when presented with Ellis's C = B(A) paradigm, which only looks like math.) In some cases, the "best" colleges are hard because of the comparative nature of grading, not because of the excessive workload. Their students, even the lazy ones, are just too smart for most people to compete.
However, I swung both ways in college, so on the other side of the coin, in my other major (Comp Sci) Freshman year was weed-out time in terms of workload. At one point we put in around 35 hours in the lab in one week. We graduated around 95 out of a starting class of around 380. It was actually kind of fun watching people break under the strain, at least if you had gotten the assignment done.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I was just trying to poke fun newfoundlogic. He *disgust* goes to Florida State, and I go UF.
quote: *at Florida St.* Homework? What's that? Seriously, the only homework I have is a once a week math assignment that's about ten questions long, multiple choice, online, not timed, and I get three chances to get the best score possible.
I get endless homework. And I'm almost certain Florida State isn't one of the best colleges because of its comparative nature of grading.
And they do have the best circus college in the nation, or so I hear.
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Unfortunately (and i'm not trying to insult anyone; i do it myself), most the time when people have large projects due, they've known about 'em for a long time. That 6 page paper wasn't assigned last night. I think some teachers just plain expect students to not procrastinate constantly. Sad, but true (and slightly dillusional).
Thousands of job-types have similar "crunch times" such as this end of semester pile-up of which we complain. But in the "real world" you're expected to not wait til the last night to write up your fiscal presentation to the board of trustees for example.
That said, I'd like to read to you all the saying on my PC's desktop:
quote: PROCRASTINATION Hard work often pays off after time. But laziness always pays off Now.
posted
Miro- I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to insult anyone. I'm just rather frustrated at the moment. If I were going to a school that was known for what I'm studying things would probably be a lot better.
quote: I think you're right in that mot of the LA classes are kind of slacker-happy
Hold up! There is not a single thing about my classes that is slacker-happy, and I'm as liberal arts as you get. I haven't done anything but homework and papers and projects for weeks now...and that's including all of Thanksgiving break. Just because a major isn't math or science intensive doesn't mean it's a joke. I work just as hard as the next person, and an awful lot harder than many people I know. Even some engineers.
Posts: 119 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I was a CS major, and I had a similar experience to MrSquicky.
In my freshmen year, there were hundreds of CompSci students, by graduation, we were maybe 30 strong. Most that enrolled as CompSci ended up graduating with an Information Science degree, which we looked down upon. Pretty much nobody struggled in IS.
At times, we had to spend 20-30 hours in the labs, and I made some good friends there.
As far as my LA classes, it was mostly a mixed bag. My astronomy 101 class I only showed up for the tests (not even the quizes) and got an A-. I already knew beginner astronomy, and the quizes only counted like 10%. So that was fun. My Music 301 class though, had multiple papers due a week, and a HUGE paper due for the final. Pretty much everyone in the class took an incomplete, as did I. My CS classes took up all my time in finals week, so I was prepared to take the D in Music. Good thing she let people take incompletes.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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I'd like sleep too. I've had three hours of sleep each night this week. I go to work, drink diet coke, come home, drink diet coke, study, drink diet coke, write papers, drink diet coke, study more, drink diet coke, write more.
I took a break this afternoon and figured out that I have averaged writing twenty pages per week this semester. I'm not even behind. I haven't even procrastinated. I'll be very happy when this semester is over.
Posts: 862 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I'm curious, JP. How many pages long is the US history paper supposed to be? When is it due, and how long have you known about it?
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Hold up! There is not a single thing about my classes that is slacker-happy, and I'm as liberal arts as you get. I haven't done anything but homework and papers and projects for weeks now...and that's including all of Thanksgiving break. Just because a major isn't math or science intensive doesn't mean it's a joke. I work just as hard as the next person, and an awful lot harder than many people I know. Even some engineers.
posted
The most-failed class on campus here is Math 222 - Second Semester Calculus. I rarely went, didn't do much homework, and still wound up with a good grade. Oh well.
As far as relative workloads and any relation to course difficulty goes, you just have to look at the major. Example: I'm in Ballroom with a bunch of Engineering grad students/majors. They're doing all their hard work and telling me about it (I can't even remember the titles of some of their classes; they just sounded ridiculous). I then say "Oh, yeah, I'm a Classics major and taking Greek, Latin, and German right now, and I'll be doing that again next semester." Their jaws drop, since they can't imagine learning three foreign languages at the same time. But it's easy for me, much as their psycho-crazy Engineering classes would be hard for me.
Also, for anyone who thinks Theatre may be a slacker major, it's not - a kid in my German class is one, and his Drafting class is kicking his butt. Though he does draw lovely set designs
And the real slacker majors here: Agricultural Journalism and Kinesiology. The departments are... sympathetic... to football players. And Portugese, for some reason.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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*sighs* People, Hobbes and I go to the same University- Purdue. When we talk about LA classes we're talking about classes here, and Purdue is not in anyway known for the School of Liberal Arts. Our intent is not to denigrate your experience. I grew up in the same town as Indiana University, and I am very aware that Liberal Arts can be very challenging, that's a large part of the reason I'm upset that I'm not being challenged.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I'm a sophomore biology major double minoring in English and Latin, and I have to say that in general there is more reading than in high school classes, but per class the amount of work load is about the same or less, as in actual assignments. The primary difference is that when you have class approximately 4 hours a day three days a week, and 90 minutes on the other two days of the week, there's so much time that even if you're working, volunteering, and part of half a dozen organizations, there's still so much time to waste. In high school I rarely even got home until 11 on week nights by the time I was done with class, sports, knowledge bowl, volunteering, and working on any given weeknight. So having more time makes college a hundred times better, and I tend to get eight hours of sleep at night, and usually a 2-3 hour nap during the day. Bottom line, college is soo much easier than high school.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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She's a friend of mine here. Hey, we should so all meet! I've seen Mike once, by accident in the engineering mall and that's the last time I've seen any Hatracker (minus Celia, who I see about twice a week in the ME building).
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That'd be cool. Are you really busy next week? I am (obviously) not at all, so I could do something anytime then.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Cheer up Blac - college can and probably will get better further down the road.
With the exception of the "weed out" courses, the frosh experience is usually about getting used to the new freedoms, putting on fifteen pounds and catching your breath in the new environment.
As you advance in harder classes, you can usually count on getting discussions going and the paper topics can be a lot of fun if you look at them sideways and imagine your entire paper as one long, uninterrupted post.
On a more curious note, what is the underlying narrative theme that links King Arthur, Jesus and Perseus?
posted
Me, I'm really liking the lower workload of college. Not right now, cause its exam time, and I'm working on 4 papers for Christian philosophy and 3 for philosophy of responsibility. But usually, its relatively light and easy, and I like it that way, cause it gives me more time for extra reading, or research on whatever I want. College is so much easier than high school...
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I took that Psych 120 class. I'll admit, the lecture itself was not overly difficult, but I felt like I really learned a lot in it, so I was happy. I got a lot out of it. I was also in the honors division, however, and I didn't enjoy that so much; it was very rigorous. We had to meet for hours outside of class every week and we had all kinds of additional homework.
That's just one class though. In my experience with the LA classes at Purdue, some are harder than others, depending on the profs and subjects. My hist 102 class is insane, but my EAS 102 was a snap, aside from a horrificly endless paper I had to write about orca whales. The best part about that class was the fact that I did so well on everything, that I was exempt from the final exam. That's some kind of beautiful.
But the classes I'm in right now are not jokes and I am working very hard. I have friends who are in the interior design program and I don't think that anyone in the entire university works harder and stresses more than they do. I know this from first-hand experience too; I watched my roommate suffer through it last year. In addition to that, just because someone is in engineering doesn't mean they're overwhelmingly hardworking or dedicated. Hobbes, your own engineering roommate has only been to about half his classes for the last two months.
Sorry; it's a touchy subject for me. I really resent the constant insinuation that because I'm an LA major, I don't work hard and that my good grades are because I take blow-off classes. I'm a double major and a double minor and I have a 4.0 that I'm trying to maintain. I work hard. And I earn what I get.
Maybe Purdue's LA program isn't world renown, but it is the second largest school in the University. There's only three hundred more undergrads in engineering than in LA.
Edited for: Hobbes' name is Hobbes, not what I usually call him.
quote:I took that Psych 120 class. I'll admit, the lecture itself was not overly difficult, but I felt like I really learned a lot in it, so I was happy. I got a lot out of it. I was also in the honors division, however, and I didn't enjoy that so much; it was very rigorous. We had to meet for hours outside of class every week and we had all kinds of additional homework.
That's just one class though. In my experience with the LA classes at Purdue, some are harder than others, depending on the profs and subjects. My hist 102 class is insane, but my EAS 102 was a snap, aside from a horrificly endless paper I had to write about orca whales. The best part about that class was the fact that I did so well on everything, that I was exempt from the final exam. That's some kind of beautiful.
I love my Pysch class, I've learned at ton in it and it's really interesting. It's my favorite class by far. It's just not hard. And saying it's one of the most difficult classes for underclassmen sort of upset me.
You know, I almost took Hist 102 on top of my current schedule just for fun, because I thought it would be just as easy as Hist 103. I'm glad I didn't now.
What are your majors and minors? I'm Pysch/Poli Sci, but I might have already said that.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Blac, when I was at Georgia State and they first implemented the "basic skills test", I was shocked to see students re-testing on the "written" section for the third and fourth time.
Mind you, the "written" part of this test was the ability to write a four paragraph paper with a clear introduction, body and conclusion.
posted
I'm majoring in creative and professional writing, and minoring in Spanish and history.
I took Hist 103 my first semester and I loved it. 102 isn't bad, but the prof is different and requires different things, that's all.
Posts: 119 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Hey, we should so all meet! I've seen Mike once, by accident in the engineering mall and that's the last time I've seen any Hatracker (minus Celia, who I see about twice a week in the ME building).
