Academics here are ridiculous, but I haven't really said much about them so far. Pretty much, if the course material that was covered here was taught by competent professors in the US, it would be the easiest thing in the world. However, the professors/TAs here don't really make expectations clear and seem to make up grades. This makes it pretty difficult to get good marks, not that it really matters anyways since the scales are so steep (a 75 or above is an A. Seriously?) Today I received one of my first lab reports back with a 30% grade. Behold the only marks on the entire report:
Those two dashes and a 2 in a circle help me figure out how I lost 70 points. Nevermind the fact that I submitted this at the beginning of March in the second week of classes, and even if there were constructive comments here it wouldn't affect the other 7 labs I've done since then. Do I really care? No, since the lab portion of the course doesn't count for much (every final must count for at least 50% of the course grade, as decreed by the administration here for reasons that are not known). Also, my grades aren't being counted into my GPA at Williams, otherwise I might be spending a lot more time doing work and crying with frustration. I got my first invertebrate biology test back a while ago, and although I still got an A on it, I got a couple of points deducted from it with the only one comment on my essay on how queen fire ants control their colony's behavior: "how does this compare to the control that a prime minister has over a country"? What? What planet am I on?
The education system here seems to be based off of arbitrary grading with no opportunity to actually display what you know and be credited for it, so I can understand why so many students here are fairly apathetic towards their coursework. Although it's constantly kicking my ass, I'm definitely going to have a newfound appreciation for Williams next semester. It's tough and it sucks but at least it makes logical sense, instead of the alternate universe where I'm currently going to school.
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