I consider myself a scientist. I’ve always been drawn to the “correctness” of questions in science. On exams, your answer is right or wrong, and there aren’t many scenarios where you’re attempting to convince a professor that their answer keys are wrong. (Aside from those where they misprint the question or answers, or there is some other vagueness. You are not arguing that the formula for gravity is different or that the mitochondria actually isn’t the powerhouse of the cell.) So you can imagine, I cannot stand English and history classes.
But, as you all know, I must take them as a Penn State student in order to graduate. And that’s how I ended up here, in CAS100C online, disliking every second of it. Every week I turn in a short paper about whatever prompt has been assigned and then I get my grade back from the previous assignment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing well in the class, but I’ve only gotten one perfect score thus far. Now, perfect scores aren’t a necessity but the thing that gets me is when the professor’s comments are about my interpretation of the text we’re reading. You asked me to provide you with my thoughts and you’re going to tell me my thoughts are wrong? Grading in the humanities feels a lot more subjective to me, which is often frustrating.
With us being more than halfway through the semester, it is safe to say that I am looking forward to crossing CAS100C off of my to-do list forever. You can find me writing lab reports instead!
Hi Jess, I definitely felt that same way when taking one of my philosophy classes last year. It was hard for me because the professor and I had so many similarities in the philosophies yet such different outlooks on them. Interpretations can vary slightly, which can open new ideas and meaning within the text. Ultimately, I ended up having a conversation about this with the professor, which went really well. If your professor is truly there to teach that subject, especially in a class where interpretations matter, then they should be fully open to your course of thinking and writing. Don’t be afraid to have that conversation with them! Good luck with the rest of the semester. I definitely know that feeling of being done with a class that frustrates you.
Hey Jess, this was literally me last semester!! But instead of CAS, I was taking ENGL 202C which is the technical writing course. I was really frustrated since I was putting my full effort into my assignments but was getting feedback that I didn’t really think was objective or things that I could have improved upon because they were not included in the assignment details.
I was also really lucky since when I took ENGL15/CAS100, I took the honors version of ENGL/CAS137/138T so I got a lot more feedback and the professors were more lenient. But ENGL 202C was nothing like that. I can tell you though that once I submitted my last assignment for that class, I was really happy!