<p>In my D’s case, the somewhat unreasonable prof. was said to ease up later on in the class. This did seem to turn out to be true, to a degree, and my kid passed the class. (BTW this happened to be the only person teaching that class at that school - make sure that isn’t the case before you drop, if that’s what you decide to do. Good luck.</p>
<p>I’m actually shocked that your prof even checks homework although it’s of course within her right to. OTOH, this is college after all. I had math profs that had Webwork (online quiz program) but never collected the homework. </p>
<p>Anyone else find hw check in college strange?</p>
<p>RedDinosaur, most of my classes have had graded homework. It’s pretty rare in Math, Chemistry, and Physics so if those are the subjects you’re used to it might be different, but in many subjects there is graded homework. Infact, I don’t have a single class where less than 40% of our grade is homework this semester.</p>
<p>PhysicsMom, can you say what math class this is?</p>
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OP says the professor wants the answer in a certain FORMAT, not in a particular methodology. If the problem has more than one acceptable path to the answer (“I did it in my head” - not acceptable!) the professor has to accept it. Also, she has said that the answers have to be correct by the end of the semester, which seems like it means she would not be grading them until then.</p>
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Nearly every college course I have taken or taught had graded homework.</p>
<p>As to not getting the answers in the back of the book, if you can demonstrate the work to show that her answer is incorrect, then you can make your case. That’s the beauty of a math course - not all that subjective.</p>
<p>I do find the bathroom thing strange. When I have taught freshman, often in some class early in the semester some polite young thing will come up and ask if he or she can go to the restroom, to which I invariably respond that this is college and one no longer has to ask to go to the restroom, just enter and leave discretely.</p>
<p>If you want to drop this class but you need to be taking another 3-credit class to keep full time status, is there any chance of adding an on-line class? (At my D’s school, you can add on-line classes at any time, and many of them can count toward your degree.)</p>
<p>It’s calculus. I’m worried I wouldn’t be able to make my case because she says she won’t take our homework until the final exam, so I wouldn’t really have a chance to discuss it with her.</p>
<p>I hadn’t thought of the online class option.</p>
<p>@Vladenschlutte, I took mainly STEM courses except for humanities requirements so I guess this is why collecting hw seems so strange to me.</p>
<p>I went to a big state U so we had online homework which was graded by the online program and TA just had to record the grades. HW was also assigned from the book but was never collected. For grades I had: essays, labs, exams, “clicker quizzes”, and online hw. </p>
<p>PhysicsMom, would it be possible to speak to the prof right after class? It seems like you would pretty much have to corner her to talk lol. If it were me, I’d talk to the prof before going to an advisor or the dept. head.</p>
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Then I agree with Red that you need to charge right up after class and point to some previous problem (not one from that day) you have worked out where your answer agreed with the book and hers did not, and ask to explain the discrepancy (politely, of course). This is not subjective stuff. If you went wrong somewhere, then she should be able to point it out (conversely, if you copied her steps from the board, then perhaps YOU can see where SHE went wrong and point that out to her).</p>
<p>If she tells you to email or come to her office hours, you can discuss the fact that you have unsuccessfully attempted to do so in the past.</p>
<p>Apparently withdrawing does not affect my scholarships or financial aid in any way, so that is what I’m going to do. I’m also going to file a complaint about her missing office hours and making herself generally unavailable.</p>
<p>At Lima for post #11.</p>
<p>A CommCollege professor is far less likely to exhibit the behaviors described in the OP and I’ll tell you why. A CC prof isn’t under the pressure to publish and do research and therefore has far more time to actually interact with students in and out of the classroom. </p>
<p>Even adjunct CC professors, the vast majority, take their work seriously and since they can be removed pretty easily they are very unlikely to do any of the stuff the OP is talking about. </p>
<p>So please be careful with assumptions about how bad CC profs are. You would be surprised.</p>
<p>ACCecil, I’ve taught at research 1 universities for my whole career, and chaired a department in one of them. The vast majority of professors keep their office hours, answer their email, and make themselves available for students. If they don’t, they are not doing their jobs and their department chair should hear about it. </p>
<p>Likewise, I’m sure, for CC profs.</p>
<p>Physicsmom, it’s great news that you can drop the course.</p>
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<p>Sylvan, I interpret FORMAT as being the step-by-step process explained in the textbook; in most cases, the answer will be a number and the format of that number should seldom be an issue. In any case, the point of inventing one’s own methodology is to save time, which often means part or all of the problem is done in one’s head. Visual-spatial learners like my son can often hold quite a few intermediate calculations in their head, if not the whole problem. The solution, on paper, will often include what appear to be random intermediate totals or steps written out which don’t follow the conventional process and thus must be carefully reviewed by a thoughtful teacher to be understood. </p>
<p>Let me take a mental math trick as an example. Suppose a teacher says “multiply 87 x 93” and the student writes down “8100-9=8091.” Most show-your-work teachers would consider this wildly wrong because it uses an algebraic rather than arithmetic process, (90-3) x (90+3). Another example might be “multiply 65 x 65” and the short solution is to multiply the tens digits times the next higher digit (6x7) and add the digits 25 behind that, thus 4225 (this works for any 2 or 3 digit square ending in 5). It’s easy to write down the answer alone or the calculation and the answer, but EXPLAINING why it works would defeat the point of using shortcuts in the first place!</p>
<p>Higher math is full of such shortcuts for one who really understands the process, rather than plugs and chugs based on textbook rules. Many physics problems are tedious with algebra and easy with calculus; L’Hopital’s Rule in BC calculus makes some tedious AB calculus problems simple. In the area of speciality math, there are shortcuts to determining the value of the coefficient of the 15th polynomial, without actually having to multiply out (3x^2 - 7y)^47. Multi-step problems, like those in chemistry, have even more opportunities for unique compact solutions.</p>
<p>Anyway, the trouble is that, in many cases, a less-than-exceptional instructor may not even be able to follow the logic of such an alternate solution. Fortunately, my younger son has had exceptionally understanding math and science teachers. I did, however, have a problem with one of my older son’s teachers – he started high school at age 9 and was taking honors geometry; the teacher refused to believe that such a young kid could possibly REALLY understand the material and this disbelief colored her view of any unconventional solutions he would produce. We did eventually get the vice principal to overrule her; he got his A but was sent to the Principal’s Office a couple of times for “fidgeting” in his seat.</p>
<p>“@Vladenschlutte, I took mainly STEM courses except for humanities requirements so I guess this is why collecting hw seems so strange to me.”</p>
<p>Same here actually… Did you not have engineering courses where there was homework? Or were you a science major? I actually went and checked, and the proportion of our grade coming from homework (which would include problem sets, labs, papers, and projects) in my classes are 32%, 35%, 40%, 40%, and 50%. Last semester it was 0%, 15%, 40% and 75%, and the one that was 0% was the only one of the nine which wasn’t an engineering class (Economics). </p>
<p>"A CommCollege professor is far less likely to exhibit the behaviors described in the OP and I’ll tell you why. A CC prof isn’t under the pressure to publish and do research and therefore has far more time to actually interact with students in and out of the classroom. "</p>
<p>I suspect the instructor’s other responsibilities have little influence on the quality of their teaching. I had 10 classes at a community college, and 2 of the instructors were awful. I don’t blame this on the school, just the individual. I’m sure there are plenty of equally horrible professors at my current University (thankfully I haven’t had any yet) but it simply be because they’re just bad professors, not because they’re too busy.</p>
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One would hope that college math professors would be able to follow the logic of a student’s calculus I solutions. </p>
<p>Part of the problem with your thinking is that a professor sometimes wants to see the student do the “fundamental” steps of a problem before advancing to the shortcuts. For example, S is in Calculus AB and they just recently started integration. The teacher had them calculating areas of rectangles and trapezoids for days before getting to the point where they can use the known integrals of functions in the solutions. If he wants to see rectangles, then you DO rectangles, no matter how uber smart you are or that you have independently reinvented calculus. If you are too arrogant to do as the professor asks, then you should find another class to be in.</p>
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<p>This has been true with all of my kids too (the first thing I ask is they have a gripe about a class/test is “Have you talked with the professor?”). They report that profs respond to emails, within reason, and keep their posted office hours or email the students in advance if they have to be away for some reason. The TA’s are actually slower to respond to email than the profs, but also follow university guidelines regarding office hours.</p>
<p>Imo, consistently ditching office hours and ignoring student communications are inexcusable and should be addressed. I hope that you will take the time to email the department chair even if you’re dropping the class.</p>
<p>I actually did and got this email back within hours:</p>
<p>"I hope this email finds you well.</p>
<p>I wanted to be sure to contact you immediately. If you could please let me know of a day and time we can meet, I would greatly appreciate it. I want to ensure you that I am here to listen and support you in any way I can.</p>
<p>I look forward to hearing from you soon."</p>
<p>I was very pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>Re: format, the professor means both how we do the work and how we write it out ie can’t have any next to the problem, it has to all go straight down the page very very neatly. This is I suppose reasonable but I find it hard to do that and re-wrote all my homework before deciding to withdraw from the class. She also is contradictory (if ratemyprofessor can be relied on). She tells us she she wants us to do as much as we can in out heads, but a review of her says she failed the person for not showing the work for an extremely simple part of a problem.</p>
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<p>Ah, yes, the old concept of the professor being the student’s infallible Lord and Master. It seems to me that ultimately the professor is paid by the student to teach him something new and being forced to do something LESS efficiently is not learning. It’s hardly arrogant to present one’s case or even respectfully argue against the professor’s points, rather than meekly sit and take notes as if one were transcribing the Ten Commandments.</p>
<p>I absolutely adore good teachers, but there are more than a few clunkers out there, and usually these are either control freaks (“no bathroom breaks!”) or bureaucrats obsessed with how you cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Teachers who blindly follow their own self-serving agendas rather than seek to inspire their charges are the ones who are arrogant.</p>
<p>Wow. </p>
<p>I go to the University of Autodidacticism 
So I have no real business commenting on this really. </p>
<p>But. If someone is in a pickle with mathematics, then can use the Wolfgram Alpha web site as well as the answers guide for the text. </p>
<p>As near as I can tell, though, this instructor might not even care for either one of those two options and that surely does seem a mite bit far out.</p>
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I have just said a prayer of thanksgiving that I will never have your S as a student.</p>
<p>Sylvan, you would really like having my son as a student, he’s low-key and respectful with a great dry sense of humor. It’s ME you wouldn’t want as a student!</p>