For this week’s low, I will be discussing Economics 304H.

Some of you who read my blog last semester may remember my struggle in Econ 102H (aka hell on earth). My professor provided no grading criteria, did not answer his emails, did not hold office hours, and was not available to answer questions after class. Definitely got my money’s worth there. In addition to all of that, the content of the class was difficult for me. 

All in all, Econ 102H was one of the worst experiences of my life. I am always willing to put in extra work if a class is hard, but it’s pretty much impossible to do that if the professor is not willing to help.

This semester, I signed up for Econ 304H praying it would be better. It is definitely more difficult, but I am happy to report that it is a much better learning environment. My professor is willing to answer questions, answers emails promptly, and holds office hours in person twice a week. 

My low did, however, occur in economics this week. Unlike my recent lows, this was not a catastrophic event; it was a rather small event that had a disproportionately large emotional toll.

I was sitting in economics class and my professor was going over a complicated derivative. I am not the best at math, so sometimes I get lost when she starts solving complex equations (she also does them very fast – which doesn’t help). She finished the derivative and began to move on to the next topic, but I didn’t understand how she had solved one of the steps.

I raised my hand, she called on me, and I pointed out the line that confused me. My professor looked at me with a furrowed brow. She said, “you don’t understand where I got that?”

I told her I didn’t, and asked again if she would explain it slowly, step by step. My professor sighed, looked at the board, looked back at me, and said (in front of the entire class), “you are not proficient in math.” 

I was shocked. Speechless. I have always been a high achieving student, so being told I was “not proficient” in any subject was a new experience for me. It was also embarrassing to be told I was (basically) not ready for the class in front of everyone else. 

That happened last week. Since then, I’ve been in office hours twice a week (in Kern, a 20 minute walk) trying to catch up. I can follow most of the material, but I have to work twice as hard as everyone else to understand the math stuff (curse my liberal-arts-oriented brain). 

In case you thought that was all of the verbal abuse I could incur from my econ professor in one week, she also told me I needed to take a class in logic. Oh right, and she said that I must’ve missed the part of fifth grade where we learned to do word problems, because I clearly have no ability to connect numbers to words. Ouch.

So summary of the low this week: my econ professor makes me feel like a complete idiot. 

I do want to make something clear – I don’t dislike my economics professor. Actually, I think she may be one of my favorite professors at PSU. I really like her honesty, her style of teaching, and how she pushes me to be the best student I can. That being said, my exam this week did not go well, so maybe I don’t like her as much as I think I do. 

My high this week is that it’s finally warm enough to ride my horse outside. Warm weather makes everything seem brighter (even a tough economics professor). There is hope that winter will end!!