I am so mad about school right now. (i'm in college, so it's me not the kiddos!)I have to take child psychology which i thought might be interesting but is actually very very boring to someone who was an educated pregnant woman not too long ago, and I keep up on things. What makes me mad is we have to read these articles on fetal brain development and stuff and one of the questions is what did you learn? Well, I put I didn't learn anything since I read about this things for personal reasons and the teacher gave me no credit for that portion saying that is impossible that I didn't learn anything. I really didn't! I feel a little insulted that some man teaching a class is going to tell me it's impossible for me not to have learned something,like he knows what it is I must know. I know I have to bite it from now on and pretend I learned something and I just hate that. I had to miss the last class because dd had an earache and I just found out today that the project I have to do that is worth half the grade for the class is due TUESDAY! This class is more of a prenatal health class than kids , it will touch on older kids at the end of the semester.Of course the project is a partner project and I hate that. I do not have time to meet with someone else. The college I go to caters to non-traditional students, supposedly. Last semester I didn't have any group things like this. I got stuck with taking college algebra on the web since I couldn't get into the physical class and just when I think I get it, I don't. I haven't had math in 10 years and I don't use it. I'm going to have to get a tutor and that's something I don't have a lot of time for either. I just feel very overwhelmed, it hasn't been like this for me going back to school until this semester and it's only the beginning! I want to quit but I know I need to hang in there. My mind is so not ready for this online algebra I absolutely have to do. Sorry for the rambling, I'm jsut procrastinating what I have to do on here. Thanks for listening.

By Tunnia on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 04:26 pm:

Sorry you are having to deal with all this. I had a teacher that sounds very much like yours when I was in college. I swear that some of them think that they are the only people with brains. Vent away...

By Bobbie~moderatr on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 04:54 pm:

Vent away but keep at it.... You will get through this.. This too shall pass..

By Dawnk777 on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 06:18 pm:

Hang in there!

By Melissa on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 09:11 am:

I always felt part of college was learning how to play the game and deal with red tape. Part of playing the game is acting like you care when you don't and sometimes telling people what they want to hear. Annoying yes, but I do it everyday at work. When you wrote you learned nothing, the prof. couldn't know you had even read it. You could have said something like I really don't know that I learned a lot from these articles because I have read a lot about this in the past but I do think what they said about folic acid and neural tube defects is so important..... or whatever it was about, that would show you read it. I feel your pain but just look at it as practice for the job you'll have at the end. I'm at work so I'm off to play the game now.

By Marg on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 12:31 pm:

(((Rayelle)))

I agree with you and Melissa.

My first day of college in accounting class we were to take a test to see our level of understanding. I was the only one to get 100%. When she gave us the test she left the room for 45 minutes. Well to put it bluntly she thought I cheated somehow. She told me she lost my test and made me take another one the next class in front of the whole class. She had implied in front of the whole class that she thought my 100% was a fluke

I took the test received another 100 and it made her even more angry. It was a difficult year and 1/2 until she left.

85% of what I learned in college was text book and really didn't apply in the real world. In college a question (in accounting) always has a textbook answer. In the real world, this isn't the case.

I'm sorry you can't be honest and give your true opinion in college, but I've found that true for most colleges and professors. Though colleges state your opinion counts and there is no right or wrong answers in certain course; if your professors do not agree with you it is their way not your way

Good luck!

By Mrsheidi on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 05:30 pm:

Marg, what a rotten professor!

Rayelle, I'm sorry you have to go through this, but it's true...you have to "prove" everything you know and everything you've done. Being a teacher, I would expect someone to write something pertinent to the article. You learned about the subject at some point in your life, so you just have to prove it, etc etc etc. Anybody can write that they didn't learn anything.

Also, being a teacher, ironically I hated-hated-hated all the education classes in college. I felt it was busy work and didn't have anything to do with classroom management, learning about how administrations work, or provided any true knowledge of learning disabilities.

My roommate was an elementary ed teacher and her FINAL paper was a collage that she had to make...you know, glue/magazine cutouts, etc. I about blew a gasket when I found that out. I was a biology major and I had to get tutor after tutor just to make a "B" in my physics, math, and organic chemistry classes.

Tutors are worth their weight in gold, IMO. ;-)

By Dawnk777 on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 06:30 pm:

Organic chemistry sounds so hard! I never had to take it! I did take regular chemistry and biochemistry, though. Learning about the Kreb's cycle was hard enough! LOL! Microbiology was fun, though, and doing experiments in all my classes was fun! Just the lecture stuff, so you understood the concepts was a little dull.

I loved growing cultures, though.

Marg and Rayelle, I'm sorry you've had some unforgiving professors. Sheesh!

By Rayelle on Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 10:47 am:

Thanks for the support. I know what I have to do, I feel sort of mislead by the title of the course. I think child pyschology would be interested, I could probably test out of some prenatal calss,lol. I guess it's hard for me also to sort of "shelve" the mom in me, like I did my research about those topics as part of what I felt I should do to be a good mom and it makes me feel like I'm saying I dodn't do my job, ykwim? But of course my professor doens't care about my being a mother, so I have to go with the flow.

By Pamt on Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 01:59 pm:

Just a different POV. As a new college professor (2 weeks now), I would personally be taken aback if a student indicated that she hadn't learned anything from a reading assignment, esp. if I had no personal relationship with that student (i.e., a large class) I would think that the student was being flippant, was unteachable, or was a know-it-all. Whether or not that was the case, that would be my impression. If you truly didn't learn ANYthing from the assignment then a more carefully worded statement like "I didn't really learn anything new about X, but I like how this article referenced some of the things I had read about X before, particularly the aspects of Y and Z." This lets the prof know that you did do the reading and actually demonstrates some critical thinking skills. I don't think doing this is necessarily "playing the game," rather giving a professor who knows nothing about you some background info while still informing him/her that you did read and think about the assignment, KWIM?

By Yjja123 on Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 02:08 pm:

I agree with Pam.
I have taken several courses that, in the beginning, the information was stuff I already knew. As the class progressed, I learned a lot of new things. I would not tell a professor that I learned nothing. It is a matter of respect.
I understand that you are frustrated by the content of your class. One way to look at it is this class will be much easier than the others you are taking.