A Glass Half Full

My winter vacation from school is half over, well more than half, but I just realized this morning that I only have a week left, and I'm merely reflecting on my time off. I've had a few good lazy days, a few hectic, a couple of good recreational days, including a drive yesterday through the Cleveland National forest with my dad, which is something I haven't been able to do for a long time.


(A view of Orange County and the coast from Modjeska Peak)

I am glad though that this time off is almost over. In my time in school, I've found that I retain many of my good study habits if my break between classes is a short one, but that on extended breaks, I get bored and lazy, and can find it difficult to get back in to a good study routine. Of course that's merely my feeling on the matter, and I'm sure there must be students out there who benefit from a longer break, I'm just not one of those. Im also happy that my semester is staggered a bit by having one of my classes start in February and ending in June, that will extend my semester a bit and bring me right up to the start of summer classes, with you guessed it, just a short break between classes (if that). And of course the end of that class will signal the start of my application process to all the local Community Colleges with a Nursing program, and all the testing/stress/running around involved, which I'm sure will be fun.....well, at least it should keep me busy.

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Allergic to Micro?

Well today was my last lecture class for microbiology, and couldn't be happier. This class has been a thorn in my side since September.

I started out the semester with an open and interested mind, but it's amazing how an instructor can alter ones perspective. I want to be very careful not to turn this into a typical "bash my professor" type rant.
So I'll set the scene:
At registration I had a choice faced by many frustrated students, take the last professor available, even though they have negative points @ www.ratemyprofessors.com/, or wait a full semester, hoping for a better registration date. I took the first choice.

As I said, I went in completely open minded, hoping, that she was merely a tough teacher, but a good teacher, I've had a few of those, and they've always been my preferred sort anyways. I was wrong. So very wrong.

It started small, her showing up for lecture 15 mins. late everyday, next she wasn't posting the power point slides that we had fill-ins on (or you wouldn't get the all the info), until 1 hour before an 8 am class. From there she decided to heap work on us toward the end of the semester be laying giving us information on something we could have started the first day of the semester. Then she gave us a project, giving us experiments to do and telling us to write notes for later grading, without giving us the instructions on how to catalog and present everything, until 3 CLASSES LATER!!! so we were doing everything blind. By this last lecture, she had 5 student other than myself, asking her why they were missing point off they're exams.

The class average for our first 3 lecture exams were, D, F, D (the F one she later bumped up by giving everyone 10 extra points). Her study guides she rips-off the internet from a different instructor, and when you ask her a question, she doesn't even seem to know whats IN them. If for some reason you can't find something in your notes from her lectures, or the power point slides (the only stuff she claims you'll be tested on), to answer one of the study guide questions and you ask her about it, she'll tell you to look it up on the internet. The internet?

I'll be honest, her lectures are like a guided study group, and her labs are like a supervised lab. That's for the most part about as good as it gets. Like having a senior student around, although they know some stuff, you don't feel like your in the presence of a person knowledgeable enough on the subject to be teaching future health care workers.

A guy in my Anatomy class got stuck worth her next semester, and I already warned him to be prepared, and I'll give him some more pointers before he heads off in to the pit of despair that is this classroom @ IVC.

2 exams left, 1.8% away from an A ....this close......