Ok, i need to blow off some steam. I'm a junior at the university of Arizona, and I am a biochem/biophysics major. I love science, i always have. Basically yesterday I got in trouble in two of my classes, but not for the reasons you'd think. So here's the deal: I show up to my bio lab, and we're doing this stupid crap about chemistry and the scientific method, stuff i did in 4th grade. The prof asks us what a covalent bond is, and I respond "a bond between two non-metals in which electrons are shared, and there can be cases where the sharing is improper because the two atoms have different electro-negativities". She turns to me and says "can you make that sound simpler?" and I'm thinking to myself, I am an effing college student, no I can't. That is the definition and it's in its simplest form. I'm not going to dumb down my language and definitions just to accommodate those that didn't do anything in high school. So she's not so hot on the fact that I choose to not dumb down my answer. Anywho, time passes and she's asking a lot of organic chemistry questions, functional groups and crap like that. No one raises there hand except for me. Eventually she's so fed up on calling on me she asks why i even show up to class if i already know the answers. Whatever, she's a b**** right? I go to my ochem lecture and we're discussing aromatics, and yet again this prof also decides to ask a lot of questions, no one wants to answer them. yet again i'm the only one. Eventually he says I'm not allowed to answer anymore questions. The thing is, I want to know when we as a people in academia became so... basic. No one wants to answer questions, no one wants to participate, no one wants to learn, they are there for that piece of paper. Is that the students' fault? The most ridiculous thing i've run into is the fact that all homework from everyone of my classes is due online. The homework is graded by the server and the prof literally does nothing but lecture. On top of that, he doesn't even have to submit grades anymore, the online homework system does it itself. Sad. On both ends the students and profs are lazy. Some profs are starting accept wikipedia as a valid SOURCE!!! As long as you list it's sub-sources! Thats a joke! When did we as a people start to describe surface tension as "stickiness" and not as molecular interactions? When did we start dumbing down our colleges to the point it mirrors high school almost identically? It bothers me. I want to go to medical school, and what scares me is that i look at my "peers" and fear for the future. How can these people become doctors?! I'm not trying to be elitist, far from it, I want to be challenged. I'd rather take a class that I barely pass than a class that I get an "A" for just showing up on the first day. Above all, when did we stop teaching and stop learning?
I know what you mean, but I think the prof just wanted other students to answer some questions. And for the first part of your post, I think "a bond between two non-metals in which electrons are shared" is probably what she was just looking for. But her statement "she asks why i even show up to class if i already know the answers" was way out of line.
I kid, I kid pizza. I think you have every right to b**** about it. I had a similar situation happen to me at work a few years ago, my friggen boss, basically wanted me to do the same thing, with a client, because the client couldn't 'understand' my explanation, even though the client went to Purdue, and I went to SFA. I gave our client the dumbed-down version, rolled my eyes, and went on about my day.
Do you feel the glare of all those students' eyes when you keep raising your hand? But yea, wtf with that prof comment?
I have no problem with simpler explanations if they are still correct and appropriate for the situation. If someone wants to substitute an explanation of thermal expansion with 'they plump when you cook 'em' then so be it. This on the other hand is getting out of hand. Everyone has started to trust wiki like its the bible. I've come to realize that when the majority of people say they did research on something they mean they took 5 minutes to read a wiki on the topic.
When did it start? When being an idiot became an admirable trait that makes you able to be President of the United States...so, I'd say around 2000. NCLB hasn't helped with schools forced to teach how to take a test. I'd bet that college professors realized that their students are less and less prepared for what college used to be and have adjusted. It's a damn shame, too.
being a junior you should know to take professors that you want... ones that will challenge you. meet them before you sign up for their class or sit in on one of their classes or go to ratemyprofessor.com if you arent being challenged talk to them after class. sure it wasnt a review or some thing? semester did just start like a week or two ago.
Dude, calm down, you go to the University of Arizona, if you feel you need to be challenged or if you feel you are a little bit brighter then most of the students, GO TO A BETTER SCHOOL.
we're four weeks into the semester. review ended a while ago, in fact in both classes we're covering "new" material. it's just the little things i think add up at the end of day. i mean, i took vector calc last semester and we had a total of 4 proofs (two of them were the dot and cross product). WTF? Come on. I went and asked the prof what's up, and he told me the math department is putting a lot of restriction on the content. Basically he was told to teach to the common final and that's that. Essentially what i inferred from that was use formulas glibly and don't question where they come from. The irony is, i don't think it's just the profs, i really believe teachers are told to water down their material.
relax, not everyone who wants to be a doctor becomes a doctor... its good that you know youre stuff bc youll need it on the mcat. FO SHO!!! but as far as your classmates, maybe they do know the stuff but dont want to answer and look like a know-it-all-goodie-two-shoes-who-does-all-his-homework-months-ahead-of-time... good luck! (but seeing as how you seem like youre on top of things, im sure everything will work out w/ medical school )
I had something similar happen to me in high school. And, believe me, I'm no nerd...not even close. I was in spanish class and, for whatever reason, we would watch some film in spanish. Then, the teacher would stop the film and ask us to repeat the sentence the actor just said aloud. Nobody was really doing it. Me...being the non-nerd that I am and thinking this was too easy...was more than happy to appease and say the stupid sentences in spanish aloud (not even knowing what they meant mind you). After a few minutes of this going on, I was basically called out in front of the class by another idiot student for being a nerd. I couldn't get offended because I know what percentile I was in and it wasn't the first quarter percentile of students with highest GPA (lol). I mean...I can hold my own grade-wise...but I wasn't no A student. I basically chalked it up to most of my classes...either in high school or college...where none of the students really wanted to participate. It wasn't that they were dumb. It's that they just didn't participate. I've been on the non-participation side plenty of times...sometimes for not knowing the answers and sometimes just not wanting to participate. I remember several different professors in college who got tired of calling on the same people who kept raising their hands. Many of them would get pissed off at lack of participation but there wasn't anything they could do about it. Some would try to call on different students at different times but all they got was dumb, quiet looks most of the time...so that didn't work. In summary, plenty of people go through high school and college without participating. Teachers and professors may hate it...but unless they are constructing their grades around class participation (which they may but it's usually only a small % and not enough to fail someone; may drop a letter grade which most students would likely willingly take to just sit there and not be bothered)...then they are SOL. lol
Why you hating on wikipedia. It is a great place to learn. Things change every day. The moderators on their do a good job of keeping up the quality. If you want a challenge you should have gone to a better school.
