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Mertzy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, so this is my first year of college. I'm a biology major, and I began the year with a huge determination to rock my gen. eds. Until I got to my Biology class.
My main issue is, the material he's having us learn isn't difficult. A lot of it is simple memorization. The issue is that his lectures follow his own predetermined curriculum, which is questionable in real-world application, and our notes structure is guided by a gigantic packet (which we had to buy for $30) with a "fill in the blanks" approach.
This is perfectly fine with me, although I much prefer to make my own notes, which I am doing. You see, he also assigns readings from the textbook, from which I take my personal notes. In class, labs, and tests, however, he does not refer to the book and these assigned readings in any sense at all. All of the materials we are to learn are according to his notes, which are often sloppy, and give a sense of relevance pertaining only to the class. While I should be glad that it's laid out this easy, I'm becoming very frustrated
He doesn't give us any learning outside of what he teaches, and he skips over a lot. Some of his categorizations are very "old-world" in comparison to the book, and to almost any other resource I try and use for studying. When I confronted him on it, he even told me that he had simply "stopped altering the curriculum them because the field was changing too often." This just annoys the crap out of me.
The class also has a weekly 3-hour lab in addition to the tri-weekly 1-hour lectures, and in no way does he attempt to line them up in a way to tie them together. Our first few labs consisted of studying the phylogeny of organisms, and we didn't lecture on them until a month later.
Perhaps I'm fretting too much over generals, but I'm seriously losing my mind.
The obvious answer would be to just focus on the grade, but I just don't see the benefit of that once the class is over.
My main issue is, the material he's having us learn isn't difficult. A lot of it is simple memorization. The issue is that his lectures follow his own predetermined curriculum, which is questionable in real-world application, and our notes structure is guided by a gigantic packet (which we had to buy for $30) with a "fill in the blanks" approach.
This is perfectly fine with me, although I much prefer to make my own notes, which I am doing. You see, he also assigns readings from the textbook, from which I take my personal notes. In class, labs, and tests, however, he does not refer to the book and these assigned readings in any sense at all. All of the materials we are to learn are according to his notes, which are often sloppy, and give a sense of relevance pertaining only to the class. While I should be glad that it's laid out this easy, I'm becoming very frustrated
He doesn't give us any learning outside of what he teaches, and he skips over a lot. Some of his categorizations are very "old-world" in comparison to the book, and to almost any other resource I try and use for studying. When I confronted him on it, he even told me that he had simply "stopped altering the curriculum them because the field was changing too often." This just annoys the crap out of me.
The class also has a weekly 3-hour lab in addition to the tri-weekly 1-hour lectures, and in no way does he attempt to line them up in a way to tie them together. Our first few labs consisted of studying the phylogeny of organisms, and we didn't lecture on them until a month later.
Perhaps I'm fretting too much over generals, but I'm seriously losing my mind.
The obvious answer would be to just focus on the grade, but I just don't see the benefit of that once the class is over.
THE END.
Mertzy on
0
Posts
Every university has professors for whom undergraduate teaching is a huge annoyance for them. Learn by it. Learn who these professors are, and avoid their teaching if possible.
Just ride it out. You're a biology major, now. In the future? Who knows. Biology is the #1 most dropped major.
you're gonna have a lot of teachers that don't necessarily teach things how you 'like'.
the best advice is to just get over it, bitch about it to your friends a bit how your professor sucks, and then do the 3 months.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
Professors are generally required to select a textbook for each class, whether or not they want to use it. I can count on one hand the number of classes I have ever taken where the book was the primary guide for the course, rather than the professor's own notes or slides (except, of course, when the professor WROTE the book).
Not all professors are great teachers. It takes a lot of time to prepare and update lectures, refine teaching methods, and so on. If you're at a research university, then the professor's incentives push him/her away from being a great teacher. The general standard is more-or-less "excellent in research, adequate in teaching, participating in service." The fact is, as long as this professor isn't doing something egregiously out of line, it will have very little negative effect on his career.
If you're really passionate about the subject, keep learning on your own. That's good! As Lewisham said above, though, don't take this guy's classes again if you can help it. Or do take them because they're easy and you're going to learn the stuff on your own anyway which may be more productive and less work.
When I was an undergrad, there were two professors that taught the same few classes. One was an old guy who just sort of went through the material, introduced and went through all the concepts, and had multiple-choice tests. The other was a hyperactive young professor who went through exactly the same material, but assigned 10 hours of homework per week for each of his classes, having each student build an example of everything covered, and so on. Since this was not my favorite area, I took classes from Professor #1, since I had better things to do and learned perhaps 90% of what professor #2's students did, with 10% the effort.
Follow-up question:
How much do gen-ed. grades matter? That isn't to say I'd ever let one slip because it didn't matter, I'm just curious as to how much I should care.
Grades mean nothing in university unless you were using them to apply towards scholarships or admission into some advanced program/another department/school/grad school.
Otherwise, dont worry about them.
^
what he said. i think you're still thinking with a high school mentality.
as far as i know, an employer doesn't look at how well you do in school, as opposed to the fact that you just got the degree.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
In that case you're certainly right to worry about your grades, though it's true that your GPA probably won't be as much of a factor as you're used to. Also, generally the gen-ed. ones tend not to matter too much in the end. Just pay attention and the grades will take care of themselves. You might even learn something along the way.
For your first job your grades are extremely important as its basically that and any internships you happened to do that will differentiate you from other potential candidates. Also having a high gpa can results in getting paid more than some one who has a lower one or being able to apply for more positions.
Do you need to apply to your major? If so then your gpa will matter for that and courses that directly relate to your major will probably be weighted more heavily.
If you're getting a job, one or two figures will matter.
1. Your 'in-major' GPA, the weighted grade point average for all classes taken in your major.
2. Your 'overall' GPA, the weighted grade point average for all classes taken including those in your major.
It's generally expected that your overall will be a couple tenths of a point below your in-major GPA. So if a company sees:
In-major GPA: 3.8
Overall GPA: 3.6
Then you're good. However, if they see:
In-major GPA: 3.8
Overall GPA: 3.0
Then that raises eyebrows - why did he do so well in bio but so poorly in other classes? Is he a one-subject nerd? Does he slack when he's given something he doesn't find interesting? I know many companies ask for a transcript but I'm not sure they look at it in great detail.
Some general advice I suppose:
- The text book is almost always supplementary to the class material. For most disciplines they are notoriously bad (much like how most professors are not teachers, most text book authors are not writers). Whenever possible engage with the in-class material first, then use your professor's office hours and TAs for clarification, and then the text book as a last resort. I used to read the text and take notes too, but I have to say it's not a very useful way of learning the material for exams (not that this should be your priority) nor is it a good way to really learn about the material in general.
- The first one and possibly two years of your studies will be very, very frustrating. A lot of the courses you take will be "sampler" courses covering a broad range of whatever subject your are studying. However, while going through these courses pay careful attention to the particular areas being studied and try to find what you are interested in and what you are not.
- Grades matter. Grades matter a great deal and never listen to people who say they do not. Sure, for some disciplines they might not matter (arts maybe) but grades absolutely matter for switching programs, scholarships, internships, jobs. Most undergrads will find that they become interested in something else other than their original major. When that happens to you, you will be incredibly thankful you maintained a high enough GPA to transfer into whatever program you feel like. And this is just for your undergrad! Also consider things like grad school, law school, med school, and so on. You might not think you want those things now (or maybe you do) but the point is one day you might. If you can study hard and earn those marks, why shouldn't you? Never close doors for yourself. And lastly, employers absolutely do care about your marks. Maybe not your typical summer job, but when you are looking for a serious position they most likely will. If two people with similar work and volunteer experience apply for a job, and both are equally well liked, I'm fairly sure the one with the higher marks will get the position as they have demonstrated a commitment to doing good work. In some professions recruiters WILL toss out applicants with low GPAs at the pre-screening process.
you are subject to the whims of whoever is teaching your class. If you don't like what they are teaching you have 2 options
1) switch classes
2) everything else that won't accomplish anything
I took a class as part of a BCom degree, in a HUMAN RESOURCES course, and was shown the data that GPA was 2nd from the bottom on a list of like 22 qualities that employers consider important for prospective employees to have.
They just doesnt matter. How would they even have access to them? There are so many more important things to worry about.
GPAs matter for:
1) maintaining scholarships
2) applying for graduate/professional schools
3) gainful employment (some employers DO heavily weigh GPA; ask for data from companies and business that don't have traditional HR departments)
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
i don't know if grades matter, but i do know we get resumes everday, even when we're not advertising positions to be filled. when a position needs to be filled a filtering criteria will be applied just to get the resume count down to a manageable level. for an entry-level position, GPA might be a filtering criterion used. this is also why spelling and grammar matters in your CV, when you're going through hundreds of these things, any little reason to discard an application is sufficient.
Certainly this guy is not the best professor, but if you learn to read him you can get more education out of the class AND be better prepared for the exams.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Is this for all jobs or your entry level jobs for that field? Maybe engineering is way off the charts in this, but every single employer I know of at the very least has a GPA minimum requirement and all the HR people I asked said it was weighted pretty heavily.
For a lot of jobs, GPA will matter upfront. From my personal experience and what I have seen, jobs in the financial sector (investment banking, etc), accounting (in particular in public practice firms - especially the international firms), engineering, etc. will request transcripts in their application process. And then what do they do? They look at the GPA and toss out the ones that aren't making the grade.
Let me ask you this - what are the other 20 qualities that rate higher than GPA? Do they include: hard skills (technical skills in your area of study), ability to learn, doing quality work, etc. etc. GPA is not in and of itself a meaningful statistic, but for a lot of employers (and I have no doubt this includes those in your survey) it represents a number of qualities in a student.
"congratulations. *whisper* life's not fair *whisper*"
Also interesting, very interesting.
Do independent study and pay attention to what he says, even if it might not make sense.
Just store it for later, you never know when you might need it.