From expensive textbooks to lousy roommates, what do you hate about your school or college in general?
Kids who don’t appreciate how lucky they are to be going to college.
How schoolwork doesn’t end when you get out of class. My entire life is schoolwork – this semester I regularly worked until midnight or three AM, depending on when I had to get up the next morning. Most real jobs aren’t like that.
That it’s not that different from high school.
Trying to find parking (come from a CC with about 30K students). Oh gee thanks for finally leaving when I decide to drive away thinking that you weren’t going to leave! Let’s not forget to mention those petty people who have 10 min long honk wars because one stole the other’s parking.
I hate being in a class where I literally have no idea what my grade is, until the end of the semester. I was in a history class this semester with 2 essays and 3 exams-final exam was optional. My professor didn’t put grades online or use blackboard. By the time I took the final rolled around, he hadn’t finished grading our second essay (we turned it in a month before) because he had “other things” to attend to. This stressed a lot of people out because the essays had a heavier weight on our grade, compared to the exams.
Luckily I checked my grades today and somehow I got an A-
Needless to say, I was worried about this class all semester. I feel like some professors intentionally make situations more stressful for students, just because they can.
The work doesn’t end at 5. memorize-and-regurgitate exams, too many buildings, the parking situation. Those were my undegrad nitpicks.
Assignments being due on the weekend.
The college bubble
Fleeting/temporary people has always been a frustration of mine.
What I don’t like for my kids is that professors rely on emails a lot and send last-minute notices. And deadlines for assignments vary a lot. Midnight one time, noon another. Doesn’t seem fair.
For my kid, assignments posted after 5 pm that were due the next day, exams on the first day after break and professors that didn’t grade exams/papers until weeks after they were handed in.
Overall, I love it and am ever grateful to be there, but…
- Expensive textbooks
- Cliques formed based solely on greek life
- Never ending work
- Unhealthy and bland food
- Paying $11/meal for said food
- Not having plusses and minuses with my school's grading system
- Seniors leaving forever
- Waiting 5 weeks for physics exams to be graded
- Feeling ostracized for holding certain political beliefs
People who don’t want to be there/think they are better then the place. Because my school is a top public school, there are always people who went to private HS and complain how they didn’t get into a private school for undergrad and how they should have. Stop complaining and enjoy the school
I would say that I hate participation grades. I am a secondary education/English major, so a lot of my classes rely on participation as part of the grade. I dislike it because it’s so subjective, and it’s not always easy to chime-in during class without restating what someone has already said. I feel that if I’m paying for a class, I should be able to decide whether or not I want to participate - not be forced to do it.
I also dislike the amount of stress that the semester sometimes carries. I had one week last semester where I had three papers due, and it was really overwhelming. Better planning could have helped, but hey, none of us are perfect. Sometimes, things have to be put off until the last minute because there are so many other things to do.
Also, having multiple assignments due the same day for a class is ridiculous. My professor told us that she would have our assignments graded and final grades posted by the last day of the last week of class, but she didn’t post final grades until three weeks after that. If you’re going to assign multiple things, you should grade them in a timely fashion. If you can’t grade things in a timely fashion, then don’t assign them.
Adding on from that, it feels like every semester just HAS to have some certain level of frustration, doesn’t it? Each college semester seemingly would be incomplete without at least some weeks of total aggravation, whether it’s academic, interpersonal, or some combo of the two.
A gripe from my D: having to pay to do homework (some online thing for which she had to pay an additional $30-something that was required in order to do/turn in the assignments for a particular class). Aren’t tuition/books/supplies enough? Apparently not.
I totally agree @Undercrackers
I had to purchase $30 access to online systems for two classes for both semesters this year. What annoyed me the most was that my physics professor only assigned two assignments on it each semester, so I basically paid $15 per assignment
The quarter system
The fact that people don’t realize how much their parents are paying for them to go to school and they blow it all away by never going to class and playing videogames when they should really be studying.
The other thing is when professors just don’t upload grades so I’m stuck not knowing what my grade is for the semester. Happened in two of my classes for spring semester: one professor hated using Blackboard so he never uploaded grades and the other just didn’t know how to use it.