I started a course in History in Uni in August. At a city that's about 2 hours travel time away (door to door), meaning I spend about 4 hours a day traveling whenever I have to go there.
It started off with my timetable: I have 12 hours of contact, which could be fit into a grand total of 2 days in an optimal situation (6 hours of college per day, meaning if we'd start at our earliest (8:45, meaning I'd have to get up at 6), we'd be done around 16:00 and I'd be home by 18:00. Those would be fairly rough days, but hey, it'd be 2 days a week; I'd be free for the other 3 days.
Now what happened was that instead of going anywhere near the optimal setup, they gave me the worst setup possible. That is to say I've got to get up at 6, follow a college, have five hours off and then follow a second college (and get back home at 19:30) on both monday and wednesday. On tuesdays, thursdays and fridays I've got a grand total of 1 hour of college, meaning that three days of my week I spend more time traveling than actually having college. I later found out that this ridiculous timetable was done this way on purpose, because the teachers wanted students to 'know what a week's worth of study meant' (keep in mind we're talking about 19-25 year olds here who all have either decent sidejobs or have even already completed a pre-university study). And then I'm not even mentioning the fact that I used to be in a contact group that had slightly better hours (no 5 hours off on wednesday, at least) but got transferred at random because there were too many students in my contact group.
But hey, forget the timetables: lets delve into the two subjects I spent my first period on. That would be something called "Historical Practice" and "The ancient world" (Archaic/Classical Rome & Greece).
For the first course in that line, the course goes like this: lectures (where you sit and take notes) are once a week, and you're obliged to come. Out of the 8 lectures I've had so far, 1 actually did something for my grade (we had to make a summary of the college and that got graded), 2 were actually interesting (and that includes the one I had to summarize) and all 6 others were both boring as hell and useless in terms of grading - none of the stuff we heard in there is ever going to come back to me.
As for seminars, we have these instead of lectures every two weeks. Our 'teacher' is someone who himself is (I think) in the last year of the History course at my uni. He's a total moron. Aside from the fact that nothing he does actually helps us in any way (he brings up our answers on a powerpoint and tells us whether they are wrong or correct, without even saying why), I shall illustrate this by giving two examples:
1) We use an online system, Blackboard, to turn in our assignments. This guy doesn't like to inspect our work on a PC, so he's forcing us to print all our assignments as well and turn them in on paper. And he's forcing us to print them again so we have our own work with us when we're at a seminar. When one of my groupmates asked him if he couldn't simply hand us back the assignments we turned in earlier during the seminars so we wouldn't have to print them twice, his response was literally (and I quote) that "you do gain benefit from him double checking your answers". He dodged the entire question. Speaking of dodging;
2) Last seminar he told us that we really should've turned a specific assignment in on paper in a specific way. One of my groupmates said that we had no idea we were supposed to do that. He said he sent an e-mail about it. Since I've got my laptop with me during these colleges, I checked my mailbox and said we never got any such e-mail. The guy just repeated his earlier line ("I sent you guys an e-mail about it") and then went on to talk about a different subject. My groupmate and me looked at eachother, shrugged, and continued staring out of the window.
Now I partake in a specific group that attempts to make uni courses better by registering complaints and passing them on. People from all different workgroups in my study are in here. ALL of them said that their Historical Practice teacher was a bad one, the course was set up in a really terrible fashion and that nobody knew what to do half the time (there's a lot more to this; stuff like the lead organizer for this course setting up group assignments during our week off when nobody's actually present at the uni and everybody's at home learning for his exams next week). Funnily enough, the guy running this course also runs the course of 'Medieval Studies' that I've just started now that I'm in my second semester. Which, so far, is also a complete mess (a wall of non-important obligatory assignments bigger than this text)
But to go back to "The ancient world", the second course I spent my first semester on: this one was actually well organized and fun. I was the top student in my class when it comes to seminars; I made the most (and best) points in our discussions, turned in all assignments days before they were due and just got complimented all-round for my work. In terms of lectures, I skipped one out of about 25. A friend of mine skipped about 5 or 6. When the exam was coming up, I spent a week studying and created a summary in the form of a highly detailed timeline, complete with colour codes and all important events in a specific period of time. That same friend spent the week on holiday to England, and all he did was read through a summary of our book once. He got a 6 for his exam, I got a 5. I won't know why until next week wednesday.
But Mozared, I hear you think; if all of this stuff sucks so badly, why aren't you complaining to your uni? There should be people who can fix this stuff for you, right? Correct, and that brings me to my point. There's a 'study-advisor' who's job it is to do something about situations like these. But guess what: she's only reachable between 8 and 10 on tuesday and thursday. And guess when my lectures are on those days? You got it, 15:45 'till 17:30. Meaning that if I'd ever want to talk to her, I'd immediately have a week where three of my days were of the "get up at 6, follow a lecture, somehow spent five hours keeping myself busy there, follow a second lecture and get home at 19:30" kind.
So yeah, long story short: I too am in a situation where school and its teachers are screwing a lot of stuff up for me while I'm trying to keep my head above the water. The only way for me to fix this is to have an even heavier week and give up even more free time. Not to mention the irony that is obligatory lectures that do absolutely nothing for your grade, and non-obligatory study stuff that actually helps your grade; meaning that I'm now having to skip out the important stuff in order to do the useless stuff. Good luck with your situation, other than bailing out I'm not sure if there's a lot you can easily do to fix it. Writing an angry mail could possibly work, but you'd need someone who listens, and not the gay ass teacher who is the cause of your problems.
You have no idea how well I understand your position. Prepare for a big rant somewhere in the upcoming days, when I've got time to spit out the situation I'm in. Precisely this is the reason why I spent two years at home after finishing high school. School screws up, creates shit for you when all you want to do is get a damn paper, and the only way to fix it is to create even more shit yourself.
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Wall of text time!
Right, so - my situation.
I started a course in History in Uni in August. At a city that's about 2 hours travel time away (door to door), meaning I spend about 4 hours a day traveling whenever I have to go there.
It started off with my timetable: I have 12 hours of contact, which could be fit into a grand total of 2 days in an optimal situation (6 hours of college per day, meaning if we'd start at our earliest (8:45, meaning I'd have to get up at 6), we'd be done around 16:00 and I'd be home by 18:00. Those would be fairly rough days, but hey, it'd be 2 days a week; I'd be free for the other 3 days.
Now what happened was that instead of going anywhere near the optimal setup, they gave me the worst setup possible. That is to say I've got to get up at 6, follow a college, have five hours off and then follow a second college (and get back home at 19:30) on both monday and wednesday. On tuesdays, thursdays and fridays I've got a grand total of 1 hour of college, meaning that three days of my week I spend more time traveling than actually having college. I later found out that this ridiculous timetable was done this way on purpose, because the teachers wanted students to 'know what a week's worth of study meant' (keep in mind we're talking about 19-25 year olds here who all have either decent sidejobs or have even already completed a pre-university study). And then I'm not even mentioning the fact that I used to be in a contact group that had slightly better hours (no 5 hours off on wednesday, at least) but got transferred at random because there were too many students in my contact group.
But hey, forget the timetables: lets delve into the two subjects I spent my first period on. That would be something called "Historical Practice" and "The ancient world" (Archaic/Classical Rome & Greece).
For the first course in that line, the course goes like this: lectures (where you sit and take notes) are once a week, and you're obliged to come. Out of the 8 lectures I've had so far, 1 actually did something for my grade (we had to make a summary of the college and that got graded), 2 were actually interesting (and that includes the one I had to summarize) and all 6 others were both boring as hell and useless in terms of grading - none of the stuff we heard in there is ever going to come back to me.
As for seminars, we have these instead of lectures every two weeks. Our 'teacher' is someone who himself is (I think) in the last year of the History course at my uni. He's a total moron. Aside from the fact that nothing he does actually helps us in any way (he brings up our answers on a powerpoint and tells us whether they are wrong or correct, without even saying why), I shall illustrate this by giving two examples:
1) We use an online system, Blackboard, to turn in our assignments. This guy doesn't like to inspect our work on a PC, so he's forcing us to print all our assignments as well and turn them in on paper. And he's forcing us to print them again so we have our own work with us when we're at a seminar. When one of my groupmates asked him if he couldn't simply hand us back the assignments we turned in earlier during the seminars so we wouldn't have to print them twice, his response was literally (and I quote) that "you do gain benefit from him double checking your answers". He dodged the entire question. Speaking of dodging;
2) Last seminar he told us that we really should've turned a specific assignment in on paper in a specific way. One of my groupmates said that we had no idea we were supposed to do that. He said he sent an e-mail about it. Since I've got my laptop with me during these colleges, I checked my mailbox and said we never got any such e-mail. The guy just repeated his earlier line ("I sent you guys an e-mail about it") and then went on to talk about a different subject. My groupmate and me looked at eachother, shrugged, and continued staring out of the window.
Now I partake in a specific group that attempts to make uni courses better by registering complaints and passing them on. People from all different workgroups in my study are in here. ALL of them said that their Historical Practice teacher was a bad one, the course was set up in a really terrible fashion and that nobody knew what to do half the time (there's a lot more to this; stuff like the lead organizer for this course setting up group assignments during our week off when nobody's actually present at the uni and everybody's at home learning for his exams next week). Funnily enough, the guy running this course also runs the course of 'Medieval Studies' that I've just started now that I'm in my second semester. Which, so far, is also a complete mess (a wall of non-important obligatory assignments bigger than this text)
But to go back to "The ancient world", the second course I spent my first semester on: this one was actually well organized and fun. I was the top student in my class when it comes to seminars; I made the most (and best) points in our discussions, turned in all assignments days before they were due and just got complimented all-round for my work. In terms of lectures, I skipped one out of about 25. A friend of mine skipped about 5 or 6. When the exam was coming up, I spent a week studying and created a summary in the form of a highly detailed timeline, complete with colour codes and all important events in a specific period of time. That same friend spent the week on holiday to England, and all he did was read through a summary of our book once. He got a 6 for his exam, I got a 5. I won't know why until next week wednesday.
But Mozared, I hear you think; if all of this stuff sucks so badly, why aren't you complaining to your uni? There should be people who can fix this stuff for you, right? Correct, and that brings me to my point. There's a 'study-advisor' who's job it is to do something about situations like these. But guess what: she's only reachable between 8 and 10 on tuesday and thursday. And guess when my lectures are on those days? You got it, 15:45 'till 17:30. Meaning that if I'd ever want to talk to her, I'd immediately have a week where three of my days were of the "get up at 6, follow a lecture, somehow spent five hours keeping myself busy there, follow a second lecture and get home at 19:30" kind.
So yeah, long story short: I too am in a situation where school and its teachers are screwing a lot of stuff up for me while I'm trying to keep my head above the water. The only way for me to fix this is to have an even heavier week and give up even more free time. Not to mention the irony that is obligatory lectures that do absolutely nothing for your grade, and non-obligatory study stuff that actually helps your grade; meaning that I'm now having to skip out the important stuff in order to do the useless stuff. Good luck with your situation, other than bailing out I'm not sure if there's a lot you can easily do to fix it. Writing an angry mail could possibly work, but you'd need someone who listens, and not the gay ass teacher who is the cause of your problems.
You have no idea how well I understand your position. Prepare for a big rant somewhere in the upcoming days, when I've got time to spit out the situation I'm in. Precisely this is the reason why I spent two years at home after finishing high school. School screws up, creates shit for you when all you want to do is get a damn paper, and the only way to fix it is to create even more shit yourself.