Now I am even angrier because blogger deleted my first rant, so here goes again, hopefully I will leave the profanity out…
As I have mention before, I am a grad student. I will leave La Salle with my Master’s in Education and a teaching certificate in secondary English. In addition to my graduate work, the education department compared my undergrad transcripts to the English program here and decided there were some Undergrad class I still needed to take. One of them is this class.
It has come to my attention that I’ve ALREADY taken this class. At Mary Washington it is called Newsgathering – it is the introductory writing course you have to take before you can take any higher level writing class. This class is Advanced Composition, judging by the way it is taught by our prof as well as the other professors – it acts in the same manner.
I would like to take the time now to thank La Salle for wasting 1,620 of my precious dollars. I would also like to thank La Salle for wasting my precious time. Instead of sitting in a classroom where my classmates rarely participate in class discussion once a week for three hours I could have been at the library researching for my other class, I could have been taking a different class, I could have taken one night out of the week for myself.
That isn’t the most aggravating part. This all came about because I am one of those students, maybe the only one, who wrote “too academically” for their Philadelphia piece. First of all, I am a grad student so I have a really hard time believe a “too academically” exists. Secondly, this class is called ADVANCED COMPOSITION, not ADVANCED JOURNALISM.
I realize that Prof has decided to teach this class as though he was the editor of a paper and not our teacher. However, I NEED GRADES. Was does graded on effort really mean? I’ve put a lot of effort into learning about some arbitrary aspect of a city I loathe, yes loathe – more than hate – but I get the feeling that isn’t going to count for effort at all.
I could have been more successful writing a “Fredericksburg Piece” a town I have an unnatural love for rather than Philadelphia – a town Prof has an unnatural love for.
So here I am at the end of the semester, in a class I don’t need (and if I need work as a writer that will be covered in the “Grammars” class La Salle is requiring me to take this summer), unable to drop and get my money back, attempting to judge just how much effort I need to put forth to get an A. Because an A will satisfy me knowing that I have wasted either 5.4 rent payments, 6 car payments, 8 car insurance payments, or 10 months worth of food.
4 comments:
I agree with you on the grade thing. I just like knowing wehre I stand throughout the semester. I think it is hard to grade on effort, becuase the amount of effort that I have been putting in may not necessarily be recognized for what it's actually worth.
I agree completely with your rant! Isn't LaSalle awesome! lol
This is true. I personally know that I have put effort into this semester in this class as far as the papers and blogs, but only the professor is the final judge of that.
I did not want to do a piece on Philly either, so I'm with you there. But I was at least able to find something I was remotely interested in. Sorry you did not.
I don't mind not knowing what my grade is along the way. Typical grading fosters a mentality of what do I need to get an A instead of the notion that one needs to be as thorough, complete, creative, inventive, and insightful about the topic as one can.
Graded on effort basically means to me that if one does all the work, they can expect a good grade. But I can see how something such as no clear distinction of what it takes to get an A rather than a B may annoy some people.
As far as the remarks on class and La Salle I will only say there is some truth to be had there, but the remarks are also a bit unfair.
My final take on the class is hey, show up once a week, and it was not even that much writing. I wish this was the worst class I've had.
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