Growing up in an Italian family, I was raised into the Catholic religion as Italians always are.
Up until now, as an essentially non-practicing Catholic, I was under the impression that God was an unobtainable, unseen power.
However, during my infinitely long, perpetually-almost-graduating college career I have found that I am wrong about who or what God is. There is more than one God, and they are all on campus daily. They are called professors.
First, allow me to lay down a warm blanket of protection for professors, a nice comfy blanket. The majority of professors that I have had in my college career have been excellent instructors who have gone above and beyond. They are passionate about what they preach and understand the life of a present-day student. This blanket is for those professors.
As collegians climb the rungs of the university ladder however, they may find that the higher they go, the more copious and "loose" lectures become. Lectures that sometimes never even correlate with quizzes, tests or labs.
And as bizarre and utterly ridiculous as that sounds, it does happen, we all know it. Most of us are left with two questions: "Why?" and "How come nothing is ever done about it?" At least this is my assumption, and I stress the word assumption.
I am sure many of us have said, "I'm paying the tuition, it's my money, and I want to be taught how I want to be taught," or something similar to that. Well, as we all know, it doesn't work that way, and unfortunately we do not always get what we pay for.
Collegians are threatened in professors' syllabi with the familiar phrases: "No make ups given under any circumstances," "no excuses," and the dreaded "three absences results in a drop of a letter grade." All too vain I must say, and why I say it's vain requires no explanation. We all know the life of a student and how stressful it is. Those phrases say it all.
Some professors appear to be trapped in their cozy little world of academia. It is this group that fails to realize how things operate in the life of students who have to read, study, work, sleep, attend class and maybe have a little personal time. Professors love to think that their one class is the only thing that students have to do in life, and is the most important thing for them.
I have heard students complain so many times that they have three books to read, plus a quiz to study for, and a response paper, all which is due on the same day, all for one class. It's perplexing to me that a professor could confidently assign all this and not consider that the student is enrolled in at least three other classes that all require the same workload.
If professors don't consider that factor, they should. But what if they have considered this already? It merely proves the point. A workload as described, spread over three to five classes is absurd, and can also backfire.
In the end, the excessive workload can lead to an aggravated student. A student who uses whatever resources possible to just get the work done and get credit. Unsatisfactory grades. A student who never really has the time to absorb information, cramming for tests and losing the information afterwards because there is no room for digestion. It is a binge-and-purge cycle of academics. Nothing gained and nothing really lost.
There is one thing that personally aggravates me more than anything. When lectures simply do not correlate with labs. Unfortunately, this happens more often then not. I find it very disconcerting when I attend lectures, and then attend a lab that has absolutely nothing to do with the lecture.
Of course, the TA's are there to assist, but never really teach. What results is the student teaching themselves from the book, and again only getting the work done, dropping the info, and moving along.
Perhaps all this is because professors are still trapped in a liberal ideology that corresponds with the trends of the '60s and '70s. They don't realize that things aren't as ideal anymore and students have many, many other legitimate things that they need to do other than smoke pot and protest.
God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Professors bring the plague in five, get two days to rest and summers off.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
