Filed under: The University
College is hard, yo.
I mean, I knew college was hard, but last week I honestly was ready to just drop out and walk away from the last ten years of taking classes and doing homework and jumping through those University hoops. (Ok, maybe not throw it all away, but I was pretty darn close.)
I am taking this class, and it is hella hard. It is a lot of writing and a lot of reading and a lot of frustration. But, I’ve been keeping up and doing fairly well. Until, the night before the midterm, our professor emails us the “Test Review,” all 93 single-spaced pages of it. NINETY THREE PAGES! OF REVIEW! PLUS (yes, ya’ll, there is a “plus”) 300+ multiple choice questions to review.
Let’s review:
93-single-spaced pages
300+ multiple choice questions
Test is 50 minutes long
Midterm is tomorrow.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
I sent a fairly frustrated email to my profess–who has yet to respond, by the way–about how that massive amount of information is not a “review”, it is simply noise and not at all helpful. And then I did what any dedicated college student would do, I took the day off to study my brains out. It wasn’t pretty.
And, it gets better. The day of the test my communist professor (not an epithet, he is an actual communist, it just fits so well in this vent of frustration) sent out a “Sample Test” which includes a pile of multiple choice questions, a double handful of short answer questions, and two essays. Let’s talk about the essays. These must be written on carbon paper during the testing period, one copy handed to the professor before we left class and the other taken home for resubmission. Before 3:00 am that night/the next morning, we had to take that carbon copy, type it out and make any corrections or additions (which had to be cited from our 1400- page convoluted textbook) and then submit via email before 3:00 am that night/the next morning. If we did not do the resubmit portion 25% of our midterm grade was automatically deducted.
WHAT KIND OF CLASS IS THIS!?
The rest of my studying is a blur of caffeinated soda, tears, frustration, more soda, more tears, more frustration. I have never been so upset by anything school related, and I have never been so completely baffled by a test.
I studied hard and I think I did alright. I know I aced the multiple choice section, the short answers I feel pretty good about, and the longer carbon-copied-retyped-and-resubmitted essays I still don’t know yet.
After an intense week of midterms (I had 2 more midterms in my two other classes) and a sleepless weekend at the Shakespeare Competition (which deserves it’s own follow-up post, a post filled with Awesome) I crashed. I have a terrific cold, I’ve slept for more hours than I’ve been awake, slogged through a miserable day at work, and I mostly feel like I would like to either die or crawl into bed with a heating pad and an IV of orange juice and not come out until November.
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Wow. I don’t envy you at all. Glad I didn’t have a class like this when I was in college. I’m sure you did great!
Comment by Lacey Bean 2011 October 11 @ 1:13 pmI am glad you are alive. Hang in there. It is almost over, my friend. The tears and staying up late and everything will be worth it. You can do it!
Comment by Steph 2011 October 11 @ 1:28 pmYou are so close to finishing! Plus you win the award for the worst test ever, I mean I guess it could’ve been worse if you had to take it standing on your head, but you did it!
Comment by Sarakastic 2011 October 11 @ 2:04 pmI’m going to, uh, rethink grad school now…
Comment by SR Braddy 2011 October 11 @ 2:33 pmBut you’re almost done! Rah rah rah!
Comment by Lisa 2011 October 11 @ 3:12 pmThat is insane. I don’t even have words. I want to shake your prof for being such a crazy person! Bravo to you for sticking it out and re-writing your midterm essay (seriously, never heard of that in all my years of school, but I think it is possibly the worst and cruelest thing to do to someone after writing a god-awful midterm). You rock! You deserve a cupcake!
Comment by Britt 2011 October 11 @ 3:42 pmGood job for dealing with horrid circumstances. Now at the end of six full-time years of university study, I begin to realise how weird their systems are and how the arbitrary actions of one professor or administrator, etc., etc., can throw you a curveball and offer no way of offering criticism.
Exhibit A: A friend of mine disagreed with his marker’s criticism of his honours thesis. He dared to question the grade officially, which you are allowed to do. Unfortunately the result was that the marker threw a tantrum, refused to be his supervisor the next year for his MA, and tried to persuade the other historians not to supervise him either.
Exhibit B: I recently got my thesis grade back. It took over a month, and quite a lot of nagging on my part, simply to be given my markers’ comments. On reading them, it became clear that one marker had a really awful attitude which had probably lowered my overall mark by at least one grade. But no one will tell me what mark each marker gave me, or how the final grade was arrived at, so I have no idea how to complain about my grade as I don’t know what effect the comments had on it. My supervisors say they’re not allowed to comment. I’ve been told not to rock the boat but now that I am out of there I no longer have to worry about university politics and I fully intend to do so.
So – I sympathise and feel annoyed on your behalf!!
Comment by Allie 2011 October 11 @ 5:28 pmHeidikins – you are so close. So so so close. You will get through this. I know it feels like you won’t, but you will. You will wake up one day on the other side of college and it will be all a bittersweet memory. Just hang in there! I know you can do this. Vent all you want and enjoy your fall break.
Comment by Becky K 2011 October 11 @ 9:16 pmI wish that I were able to award you a cruise to the Bahamas; if I could, I would. (PS: At first I typed “because you deserve it,” but that phrase always sounds so cliche, so I erased it.)
Comment by Melanie 2011 October 11 @ 9:45 pmDuring my last semester at BYU, I had 18 credits and I was (unknowingly) pregnant. I wrote 38 essays during that semester! I say that NOT to top your story but just to comisserate. The ONLY thing that got me through that last semester was that I had to walk past the Marriot Center and I would imagine myself on graduation day. I promise, promise that you will get through it and survive and it will be worth it!!!
That was a horribly stupid exam and my professional opinion (tee hee, teaching high school English totally gives me the right to say my opinion is professional, right???) is that your professor is a moron.
Comment by Amy So 2011 October 11 @ 9:57 pmWow. Let me just say that, although my law school classes are more demanding than any class I ever took in college, if one of my professors pulled that kind of bullcrap, the students would have revolted en masse. He didn’t send review notes until the day before?!? And 93 pages is a lot. My outlines for my law school classes average 75 pages per subject, to cover the entire semester’s worth of class. But I usually get about 3 days per class to review those materials and any practice exams for the class. And WTF is up with the carbon copies? I didn’t even know carbon copies existed anymore. That is malarkey.
Comment by Sra 2011 October 12 @ 1:06 amjeez, craziness!! i can’t remember studying law and getting my degree was this hard, be as that may i’m so so grateful i’m way past that stage in my life, and soon you will be too, hooray! hold on, you’re nearly there! it will be totally anticlimatic when you are, but only for a while, then it will be even more treasured, the coveted degree:) i hope you will be able to do something good with it once you get it, in these days and age you never really now sadly, but that’s another story…
good luck, fingers and toes crossed for you!
Comment by Pia K 2011 October 13 @ 3:44 pm