Vague!
Mondays and Wednesdays I have my Communication Skills (Writing 101) class with Jim. Now, I've done college freshman English before, and gotten an A. It didn't take much more effort than high school - it was just different because I had to do some research for one of the papers.
Jim's class, however, is a nightmare. Not only is the workload rather high (124 pages of reading for the next class session, and that not over the weekend), but he has no idea how to teach us to write. Frankly, he's not a very good writer, either, if you look at his textbook. (He's using one he wrote himself. Though he's the linguistics professor, it doesn't even have good grammar.)
Our first writing assignment: "Observe something. Do research. Write a paper. 5-8 pages, rough draft due on Monday."
WTF?!
We asked for clarification of what he wanted...we got nothing. We asked for an example paper...he said if he could find one he might show us next class (when the rough is due). We asked for examples of things we could observe...we basically got the few things that I had been contemplating.
How on earth is one supposed to tackle an assignment like this? How does this teach us to be better writers? It's more likely to simply teach us never to take his courses again, if any of us can even pass this one. I should be able to pass freshman English, yes? Get an A in it, probably, a B at the very worst. He has us all worried that we're going to start out the class with lovely F's. Now, I have a scholarship which I have to keep my grades up to keep. It's not very high - 3.0. However, I have two classes with Jim, a total of five classes. My other classes shouldn't be too hard, but if I were to get a less than stellar score in one, and bad grades in Jim's classes...I could start out my very first semester barely meeting that. Without my scholarship, I have to go back to CC. I really don't want to do that - it's high school with ashtrays and it's absolutely pathetic. If he just gave us concrete assignments, I could handle it. Maybe not get perfect scores, but between my own work and the Writing Center, I wouldn't be worried. Right now, I'm worried. Graaaaaaah! Somebody save me...
Okay, ending rant and going off to work on the bloody thing now.
Jim's class, however, is a nightmare. Not only is the workload rather high (124 pages of reading for the next class session, and that not over the weekend), but he has no idea how to teach us to write. Frankly, he's not a very good writer, either, if you look at his textbook. (He's using one he wrote himself. Though he's the linguistics professor, it doesn't even have good grammar.)
Our first writing assignment: "Observe something. Do research. Write a paper. 5-8 pages, rough draft due on Monday."
WTF?!
We asked for clarification of what he wanted...we got nothing. We asked for an example paper...he said if he could find one he might show us next class (when the rough is due). We asked for examples of things we could observe...we basically got the few things that I had been contemplating.
How on earth is one supposed to tackle an assignment like this? How does this teach us to be better writers? It's more likely to simply teach us never to take his courses again, if any of us can even pass this one. I should be able to pass freshman English, yes? Get an A in it, probably, a B at the very worst. He has us all worried that we're going to start out the class with lovely F's. Now, I have a scholarship which I have to keep my grades up to keep. It's not very high - 3.0. However, I have two classes with Jim, a total of five classes. My other classes shouldn't be too hard, but if I were to get a less than stellar score in one, and bad grades in Jim's classes...I could start out my very first semester barely meeting that. Without my scholarship, I have to go back to CC. I really don't want to do that - it's high school with ashtrays and it's absolutely pathetic. If he just gave us concrete assignments, I could handle it. Maybe not get perfect scores, but between my own work and the Writing Center, I wouldn't be worried. Right now, I'm worried. Graaaaaaah! Somebody save me...
Okay, ending rant and going off to work on the bloody thing now.