Hey everyone! So I joined this forum specifically to ask you all for some advice. I think people here are my best solution for what’s been going on with me this year. I am a second year graduate student at the University of Southern California. This is my last year, and I’ve loved every minute of it so far. This semester we were given the option of a few courses we could take which are with primarily undergraduates. Thinking that I would humor myself, I decided to enroll in a law course. One of my majors in college was political science, so I thought I was set. I am also the ONLY graduate student enrolled in the course, so I thought that would warrant maybe some recognition? But ugh I’m wrong. I’ve only gone to this class twice since school just started last week, and we have it once a week. But I’ve found myself in a class which is entirely dictated by the BIGGEST brown noser, know it all classmate I have EVER met. For today’s class, I decided to keep a tally of how many times he would interrupt another student to have a one-on-one conversation with my professor in comparison to how many times the rest of the class could contribute. FIFTY ONE TIMES. And in comparison, my class of twenty students spoke a TOTAL of 20 times. That’s one comment PER student. And the worst part is that my professor encourages it. I get it: this student is EXTREMELY smart. My professor is a lawyer, and this student knows ridiculous facts like who was the lawyer for a prior restraint case of Wisconsin on a certain date, or like certain addresses for lower courts, you name it. But it is SO distracting. I’m pretty sure this kid has asbergers or something, because I heard him talking to my professor saying he needed him to sign a slip of paper approving him for some kind of special test taking because he got in a surfing accident. I get it. I’m not trying to be mean. But it is UNBEARABLE. I have to stay in this class. I don’t have a choice. I have almost a perfect GPA, but I got a C- in a class last semester (considered failing by USC standards) and I can NOT drop a class or else I will have to pay another 7,000 to enroll in another class. I am graduating this year. I love all of my other classes. None of the other students seem to REALLY mind all of the interruptions, but by the end of the class, I was fuming. And the worst part is that our professor is condescending to everyone except him. I made a comment which I KNOW is factual (I read it in the textbook,) and he just brushed me off. It makes me not want to even contribute at all. All of the rest of my classes are AMAZING. But this class is really really upsetting me. If you were me, what would you do? Am I in the wrong?
find another class. Its not going to get better.
NO use being miserable in your last year at USC.
I dont think it is correct that you HAVE to stay in that class or lose $7000.
Talk to the registrar and see what your options are.
Graduating on time is Job #1. If you can switch classes with drop/add then do so. If not then suck it up, get through the class (show up, contribute when you can, do well on exams, maybe go see professor once in a while so he knows who you are) and get through it. You are almost through the program and at least you like the rest of your classes.
There’s nothing you can do except live with it. As you proceed in adult life, you’ll encounter many situations that make you unhappy or upset, but you have to deal with anyway. Fortunately this one will be over in a matter of months. Think about how many hours of each week you’ll actually be in the classroom for this course and you’ll realize this is a small problem indeed. After year-end, you’ll never have to hear or see either this prof or this student again.
That is just too much text. Can we either get paragraphs or a tl;dr version?
You could try speaking to the professor privately about the issue, perhaps during office hours or some other time outside of class. Perhaps you could say something about finding it difficult to have a discussion or to hear the opinions of the others students when one student gets much of the discussion time. Do you’re best not to sound angry or accusatory about it–just ask if the professor has any suggestions for what you could do to get the most out of the class discussion.
I’ve had courses where some students monopolize discussions–not all of the time, but it certainly happens. It wasn’t uncommon for a professor to interject and encourage other students to speak, rather than the same student over and over again. And other times when some students go off on tangents or speak for a while I’ve had professors who interject and invite the student to continue the discussion in their office hours, rather than monopolize the class time. If you’re professor knows that its interfering with the learning of the other students, he might be more willing to guide the discussion so that other students get more of a chance to speak.
If you don’t feel comfortable speaking to the professor about it or if the professor doesn’t want to do anything about it, then all you can really do is suck it up. There will always be people who annoy you. Sometimes, you just have to deal with them. It’s only once a week. You’ll live.
Deal with it. In life you will find yourself in situations with unbearable people- coworkers, bosses, clients and you have to learn to deal with it and move. on. It’s one semester.
Merged Three Identical threads
Sorry if it makes it hard to read
ED
Thank you all:) It actually has been getting better. I feel like I don’t even notice it as much anymore. Maybe learning to be more tolerant is a lesson I am learning. I will know more about how I feel about the situation as soon as I get my midterm grade! haha
Thank you. I agree. I decided to just suck it up. It’s not like he’s really hurting anyone, and his intelligence is impressive. Sometimes it gets frustrating when all I want to do is learn the material, have a meaningful/intelligent/relevant discussion, then be done for the day. I don’t believe that college courses are meant to be a “who knows the most” competition.