Was It Something I Said?

Brr! The temperature was in the high 30’s when I left the house this morning for statistics class. Yes, it’s the same class that I dropped because it was too much to handle during the five-week summer session. And yes, the winter session is only four weeks, so this is even more intense. But this teacher is different: very pleasant and easier to understand. I had no trouble staying awake (lapsing into a wide-eyed coma was my downfall last time). It will be much to my advantage if I can do this now. It should be (I believe, I hope, I insist) the last lower-division “general ed” course I ever need to take. It will be the last math class I ever have to take. (Hallelujah!) I’ll be able to take Italian 6 in the spring without the burden of a math class to interfere with my real work (as algebra did). And, if everything goes as planned, I’ll leave Pierce College behind and enter CSUN in the fall.

Photo from clipart.com

I decided to get that pesky statistics class out of the way by taking it in the summer session. I did it last summer with history, and it worked out quite well. But this was different. For one thing, it’s a four-unit class, three and a half hours a day, four days a week, plus homework. And it’s math. Each day in summer session is the equivalent of almost two in a normal semester, and we don’t have a day in between to do the homework and absorb the material. The first day (yesterday) I found that three cups of coffee would not keep me awake for this 8am class. Today I had four cups, and that still was not enough. Although I have no trouble understanding the basic concepts, without the ability to stay awake and focused, I can’t learn the details. The homework, although not horribly difficult (once I finally figured out how to do what I couldn’t remember from the lecture) is tedious, unnecessarily repetitive, and incredibly time consuming. There isn’t any way I can do this and still accomplish even the minimum activities (like laundry and grocery shopping) of my life. So I took Steve’s advice and dropped the class. I’ll try it again some time at a more normal pace.

Photo from Clipart.com

Whenever I tell people that I am studying algebra, they ask, with big astonished eyes, “Why?” “Because it’s required to get a degree in Italian,” I explain. Their eyes get bigger and their jaws drop. “Huh?” is a common response.

The first time I went to college (in the Pleistocene Age), I was not required to take algebra because I had taken it in high school and it wasn’t part of my major. So it isn’t part of those old college credits that are being applied to the general education requirements for my current degree. Now everyone must pass an algebra class no matter what. It’s crazy.

Certainly, algebra has some practical uses. But so do cooking and house painting (and both are probably more relevant to the everyday lives of most people), yet I am not being required to study those subjects.

Algebra is hurting my Italian. It takes so much time to do the homework and study for the tests, and leaves me so tired, that I often find there isn’t enough time and energy left for Italian. I confess that I am not spending as much time studying vocabulary and grammar as I did in past semesters, because that time is no longer available. And I need that time for the weird and complex subjunctive mood. The class I care about is paying for the class that means nothing to me.

Before the algebra teacher handed back the most recent test, she said that the average score was 69, and the median was 75. There are several people to whom she has suggested dropping the class, because they are clearly failing and it’s only going to get harder. Some are stubborn; no one wants to drop, because this class is required for graduation or transfer. I got 93 on the test; the two kids who usually sit near me each got 51.

It’s not surprising that so many people are doing badly. Even though it is necessary to meet a prerequisite to get into the class, many students seem completely lost. Every class session the same questions are asked, usually by the same people. The pattern is something like this. The teacher writes something on the board, such as “3 + 5″. Someone wants to know if it would make a difference if they wrote “5 + 3″. The teacher says it doesn’t matter because it’s really the same thing. Later in the class, another student will again ask a question that follows this same pattern. And next week, someone will ask it again, just as someone asked it last week. People who don’t understand that “3 + 5″ and “5 + 3″ are interchangeable are likely to have a lot of trouble with complicated equations.

Another common problem is not doing doing the homework, or not doing it completely. In every class meeting we learn new material. The homework is there to reinforce and review what we’ve just learned. The answers are in the back of the book, so it’s easy to check our own work and try again if there’s a problem. Yet some people don’t do the homework at all, or do only part of it. Then they wonder why they don’t understand the next section (which builds on previous sections) or why they can’t pass the tests.

And the third big problem is the one that plagues every class I take here: attendance. People just don’t show up. In a difficult fast-paced class like this one, missing even one session will put someone far behind. Absences should be rare, but they are commonplace. No matter what the course, there is never a time (not even on a test day) when everyone is present. Long ago I stopped being surprised by this, but I still don’t understand it.

I haven’t written here for a while, but this does not mean I have given up. I finished the geology class (yes, I got an A). I’ve signed up for Italian 3 in the fall. It is my belief that the only “general ed” class I have left to take is algebra. I am really not looking forward to that. First, I have to take the math placement test, to see if I will even be allowed to take algebra. It’s important to do well on that test, because once you take it, you can’t try again for six months. If the test doesn’t qualify me for algebra, then I’ll probably end up taking an introductory math class first. And I really, really, really don’t want to take two math classes instead of just one.