Rant for the day

I just got out of one of the most difficult tests I have ever taken. It was absolutely awful. I have no one to vent to because Chels is in class and we are way over on minutes this month, so I can't really call anyone. So my first blog entry is going to be a rather scathing and heated review of this teacher and his style of teaching.

First off, there are things that I hate in life. Waiting in long lines, dealing with obnoxious people, group projects with lazy people, math, and probably most of all chemistry. It didn't help that the test this morning was in chemistry.

Last semester I worked my butt off and I got an A in chemistry. This semester I worked even harder, and I might not even pull a B ( I am going to be borderline B, B-). Just to give you an idea what the tests were like, they were open book, open notes and the average for the first one was 55/100. The second average was 66/100 (or so) and the third was like 69/100. I scored 46, 83, and 91 respectively. I spent ridiculous amounts of time studying after the first test, and I improved each time.

There was a cycle that I noticed. My professor would explain things fairly well, but not with too much detail. His lectures were entertaining and understandable. He gave test reviews that seemed to be very thorough and clear, but when the actual tests came, it was a different story. He admitted on several occasions that he "would never give (us) a problem that we could just stick into an equation and get the answer", but that his problems were written with the intention of tricking us. WHAT?! He always painted this rosy picture of how fair he is and that he "won't put anything on the test that wasn't covered in class". I was under the impression that you are supposed to be tested on the material that is presented in the course, not what you can pull out of thin air, but I guess I'm wrong. With his seemingly thorough reviews, promises of fairness and open book, open note tests, he lulled us into a false sense of security.

In preparation for each test, I have spent more time studying and felt more confident. Although I have improved, the relationship between effort and performance have not been linear. Alas, there is nothing else for me to do but vent.

Why do teachers take it upon themselves to make things more difficult than they need to be? It seems to me that most teachers have an overinflated sense of the importance of their subject matter in the world. Take for example my first algebra teacher in college. She made us re-learn long division because she didn't think that using a calculator was acceptable. Are you kidding me? For the rest of my adult life, I will probably never want/need to perform any such calculations without using a calculator. If I remember correctly, when she informed us of this, being the surly back-row freshman I was, I voiced considerable discontent. In her equally lame and geeky retort, she cited some kind of "what if" desert island scenario in which I needed to calculate the fraction of coconuts it would take me to do something. I replied that statistically speaking, I would probably never find myself in such a scenario, and that if I did, I certainly wouldn't care to know. She was firm in her resolve and I muttered unkind things under my breath every time I realized that I had to do long division. I hated that class.

One more philosophical rant and then I'm done. Right now, I am trying to finish my pre-med classes so that I can get in to medical school. Most of the classes are pretty difficult and time consuming. Although I can see some application for the stuff (around 10 ppm of information that flows through my brain while in these classes), most of it is not going to be terribly useful. As a physician, I will not likely be concerned with trigonal bi-planar molecular geometries, enthalpies of fusion (one question I surely missed on the test), integrals, differentials, Arf/Sar complexes, or pretty much any of the physics I am going to be tackling this summer.

Why learn it then? Because it is a rite of passage. Why is that even necessary? Getting in to med school is such a joke. I am supposed to be taking this rigorous (and largely waste-o-time) course load, have 3-6 hours of volunteering per week, 3-6 hours of research experience per week, 3-6 hours of leadership hours per week, study for the MCAT, and still have a life that makes me a "well-rounded" candidate. It seems more like they are trying to kill as many people off as possible, and then after you get in, they try to kill you again in class, and then yet again in residency.

That probably didn't accomplish much, but if I were in my shoes (which I am, rad herringbone slip on vans to be exact), and I read this, I would respond with by shaking the "fists of fury" at the man. Just like grandpa Simpson always says "shake harder boy".