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« on: November 17, 2017, 11:46:08 AM »
My thermodynamics class is a lost cause at this point. Never mind that it's the hardest course in the entire catalog at my college, and they only offer it during sophomore year, but it is organized so poorly that it's set up to be my worst grade in my entire academic career, a lot of it feeling wholly undeserved. If you've read about my other topics talking about my workload, you'd know that I tried to drop this course like hell, to no avail. It's not the main reason I switched from mechanical engineering to electrical engineering, but I'm loving joyous that I don't have to take it again and that it doesn't count towards my new major in any meaningful way.
Surprisingly, only a bit of it came down to the material. It's mostly the fault of the teacher. If there were a different teacher, I guarantee you I wouldn't have gotten to the point that I'm ranting about it on the BLF. This guy was made out to be a nice teacher to have to start off thermodynamics. He's a quiet, calm guy who is really into the subject, is currently doing research projects, and knows his stuff. So I had high hopes.
The problem with this teacher is the way he teaches and his surprisingly unforgiving attitude. He barely follows the syllabus. In it, he outlined that he was going to try a different way of grading work; the hand-in homework would be graded only for completion, and the actual assessment would come in the form of one-question quizzes that would be taken after every class. That fell apart about two weeks in, though. I noticed that I was getting my assignments back with grades on them and that the quizzes at the end of class were few and far between. The last time we've had a quiz in class was the 24th of October. Before that, there was a two-week period in between that quiz and the previous one. I got the impression that he was doing it to help us out, but what helps me out is doing the problems, even if wrong, handing it in, asking questions and then taking a quiz at the end of the class to cement what you've learned. There is no sort of constructive feedback from this grader, either. He just checks or crosses out the question.
This would be okay if there were a tutor to help out. I had signed up for a tutor for math after dropping out of multivariable calculus last semester, and I went into this semester looking to do the same. I have never met this tutor, despite several attempts to attend sessions. Talking to the professor, he's supposed to be in the same room we meet for class every night before class from 7:00pm to 8:00pm, but he never is. This tutor has no contact info and I only just learned his name. What's even better is the fact that even though the professor knows what time he's supposed to be in the room, even he doesn't know whether or not he'll be there. I tried visiting him to study for a quiz, and the professor apparently mixed the rooms up, even though I checked every room in the building. I tried visiting him to study for the first exam, and after emailing the professor about where he was so I could avoid the same mistake, I get an email back an hour later, after searching every room again, saying that there is no tutor anymore, because the tutor had apparently quit. I try studying for the second exam last night, and I check my email at seven to see that I got a loving email from the professor saying that the tutor would be meeting with us from 5:30pm to 6:30pm in the "same place". I've essentially given up on trying to meet with the tutor.
All this would be bad enough, but even the professor is hard to reach and not very helpful. His main teaching philosophy is that of "if I give you the answers or supplements then you won't be good at these problems". Honestly, it's an okay position to hold, but not in the hardest Mech-E course in the entire syllabus. He tells us if we have questions, that we should email him and he would answer. Regardless of the fact that I have a strong distrust in emailing professors because, in my experience, they never answer in time, I'm pretty sure no one else really emails him, either, because he doesn't even read emails late at night when everyone does their work. I can tell you right now that everyone logs in to the Google Doc with the homework problems on it at about midnight, which is about three or four hours later than when he responds to emails. The way the problems are presented, there is no possible communication between other students in the class like there is with my math courses.
This all comes together into the main reason I'm even ranting. A few weeks ago, I missed a legitimate quiz, as in more than ten points, in class. I was emailed about it, unaware that I had missed a quiz. So I emailed him back, asking if we could meet sometime last week in order to sort everything out and so I could hopefully redeem my grade, which was already appalling because of the reasons discussed above. He told me that he was busy, and so I would have to set something up for this week, the week I had five other exams. Literally. I agreed, and so I spent the weekend looking at my schedule. I wasn't able to find any free time until I was emailed by another professor saying that there would be some free time later in the week due to some changes in the schedule, so I had a time set up to talk with the professor. I was going to email the professor Wednesday when without telling any of us, he showed the quiz solutions in class. So there goes even talking about making it up because once you know the solutions, there's no way you can possibly take an assessment ever again. So I pooled my time into trying to study for this exam, today. I had no idea what I was doing and it didn't help that the tutor was all over the loving place. I ended up just studying late into the night and going to bed, planning to skip a morning class so I could study more. I woke up with such a massive headache that I couldn't think straight for three hours, and with nausea that wouldn't even allow me to leave the room for more than five minutes. Was it due to the frantic studying? I don't know, but I emailed the professor saying that I wasn't going to be able to take the test because of this. Granted, he had no reason to believe me, but I was hoping that we could reschedule it in order to be able to sort everything out and then redeem my grade with the exam. He emailed me back saying that the state I was in was "not a reasonable excuse" and that he had contacted the associate dean and my counselor (the old one that I don't have anymore, lol), saying that "it is clear that you are wasting your time and my time". I was going to contact him back about how I was planning to contact him about making up the quiz (BTW, now two quizzes, which he had failed to mention before), but I stopped myself and asked "is he right? is this just a big waste of time?".
And you know what? He's right. This whole thing is just a big, loving waste of time. Thermodynamics isn't even discussed in electrical engineering. It's all circuits, signals and electrical systems, no "mass flow rate" this or "second law" that anywhere. If I fail thermo at this point, so what? Even if I dip below the required GPA to graduate, that'll be made up next semester because of how much of a cakewalk it'll be. Will it be my first time failing a class ever? Yes, and it leaves me feeling sick, but I couldn't honestly give a crap at this point. I'm even sitting here debating if I should even go to the rest of my thermo classes. I have more important courses that are suffering right now that I need to pass in order to succeed at electrical engineering, and I don't need to be bogged down by this piece of stuff useless loving course that at this point I'm positive I'm going to fail. I know it's pretty terrible to just give up like that, but so loving be it. At this point, all I'm going to get is some stuff from my parents, who I can tell about the teacher and that'll be mitigated.
idk motherloving /discuss
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