The Scoop
A new semester has dawned. I am already in the second week and have yet to give the scoop on my professors and their respective classes. So to that end, I submit the following, from most favorite class to least favorite:
1. CIS321: Emerging Information Technology. Wow! I am so excited to be in this class. I get to learn how to use Dreamweaver to create websites. I can’t wait to get started. As usually happens with most classes, we are still in the baby stage, and so it is a little boring at this point. But not for long! The professor is on the brink of retiring. He is fairly laid-back which is something that is quite welcome.
2. HCA346: Ambulatory Care. The practicality of this class is definitely one of the pluses. We will be doing a semester-long group project that includes designing a practice, creating a budget, etc. Fun stuff. I just wish I didn’t mind group projects so much. The professor, however, is really what makes this class number 2 on my list. She is such a bright and cheerful person. She has two biological children, plus she just adopted a little Chinese girl last year. She and her husband will be adopting another little Chinese girl next spring, and it was only by God’s mercy that it worked out for her to be able to teach this class. On top of all she has going on with those four kids, she has taken in two of her three nephews, plus her brother who is in the military. And now, as of July, she has become a self-proclaimed “medical mystery.” There’s something going on with her kidneys, and she will probably have to have surgery before too long. She’s in chronic pain, at this point, and yet she still keeps her husband, her kids, and her students going. She’s a pretty amazing woman, I think, and I’m going to just soak her in for the next three months. She is probably the most popular teacher in the department, and she had almost her entire class in tears when she announced she was going to go to part-time last semester. I heard about it in my Accounting class. At any rate, I think I lucked out to have both a class and a professor I enjoy.
::The remaining classes are on my Not So Fond Of list.
3. HCA383: Biostatistics Lab. This class is the lab that goes with the biostatistics class I just completed during the summer semester. How this made it to number three out of five is merely a reflection of how terrible the remaining two are. At any rate, it meets only once a week, although at a most inconvenient time. There are no exams in it—only labs—so that is probably its one redeeming factor. That… and the fact that it is essentially a computer class. The class wouldn’t be so bad if it just weren’t for the content.
The first time we met for this lab, I ran into my nice little friend Natalie, who is also taking it this semester. Natalie sat across the aisle from me in Community Health last semester; she’s from the same town I am from, so we’ve had some mini-bonding moments. I was still a little surprised to see her gesturing wildly to me in the hall outside the classroom. She apparently wanted to talk to me desperately, so I walked down the hall to a little out-of-the-way spot. She said, “Did you see who is in the class?!?” And then she proceeded to tell me that the girl she had been in a group project with in our last class was now in this class, much to her chagrin. “Kathy” had been nothing but trouble in that particular project, and so when she was reviewed by her peers and given a grade by the rest of the group, it reflected in the grade she was given by the professor. Apparently, she had sent their group a highly inflammatory email and had traumatized poor Natalie. After she got off her cell phone to report this disturbing development to her mother, I calmed her down and told her to just stick close to me, and I would “protect” her. This problem girl happens to be in my HCA346 class as well, and I'm hoping not to end up in her group.
4. PH384: Introduction to Epidemiology. My professor in this class is from Nigeria. He is an interesting person, but he is a little hard to understand most of the time. The content of this class, unfortunately, is what bores me to tears. Epidemiology is basically the study of the causes of diseases. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
After our first HCA383 class, we clambered into this class; some of the students were all abuzz with the fact that our groups in HCA383 were going to be assigned. The girl in front of me and the girl across from me were stating emphatically that they did not want to be with “Kathy.” I questioned them out just a little bit, and they expounded for the next five minutes on how terrible a partner this girl is. Apparently, she had performed just as poorly in their group as she had in Natalie’s. Her reputation certainly does precede her. And then I began to draw on my newly-acquired knowledge of statistics and began calculating the probability that she would end up in my group. I dislike group projects enough the way it is. Dear Lord, please at least give me some good people to work with.
5. HCA343: Healthcare Quality Management. This class is just a disaster from beginning to end. This is the second time I’ve had this professor, and I struggle every day to drag myself in there.
The good thing is that my friend Faith from Uganda sits beside me back in the corner. And we fight sleep together on a daily basis. Oh, it’s a miserable hour and twenty minutes.
We did have a good chuckle in it the other day, however. The professor is Russian, and on her Power Point presentation she had the phrase “Damps and Rail Transportation” as one of her bullets. One student finally was brave enough to ask what in the world “damps” were. “Uh, you know… when you block the water in a river…” she said.
“OHH. Dams!” he said. And everyone got it then. She was really embarrassed and apologized profusely, but it didn’t keep us from laughing. “Well, just don’t laugh at me behind my back,” she said. And so we laughed harder.
When I went into this class on Tuesday, I sat down beside Faith and said, “We really need to get us some cappuccino so we can stay awake!”
“You know what happened to me this weekend?” she asked. And she proceeded to tell me how she had burned her hand by spilling some hot cappuccino on it.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“Well, I had gone to McDonald’s to get my boyfriend some breakfast,” she said. “Then I stopped at the Shell station to get me some cappuccino. I had the largest cup they had, and it was at that point where you just can’t accept that it is full…you know?”
I laughed merrily at that. How well I know where that point is. Poor Faith. As her boyfriend so aptly put it later, “You see? You like things BIG. And that’s what you get for being so greedy!” He apparently knew good and well why she hadn’t just gotten coffee at McDonald’s. Their cups are too small, of course.
1. CIS321: Emerging Information Technology. Wow! I am so excited to be in this class. I get to learn how to use Dreamweaver to create websites. I can’t wait to get started. As usually happens with most classes, we are still in the baby stage, and so it is a little boring at this point. But not for long! The professor is on the brink of retiring. He is fairly laid-back which is something that is quite welcome.
2. HCA346: Ambulatory Care. The practicality of this class is definitely one of the pluses. We will be doing a semester-long group project that includes designing a practice, creating a budget, etc. Fun stuff. I just wish I didn’t mind group projects so much. The professor, however, is really what makes this class number 2 on my list. She is such a bright and cheerful person. She has two biological children, plus she just adopted a little Chinese girl last year. She and her husband will be adopting another little Chinese girl next spring, and it was only by God’s mercy that it worked out for her to be able to teach this class. On top of all she has going on with those four kids, she has taken in two of her three nephews, plus her brother who is in the military. And now, as of July, she has become a self-proclaimed “medical mystery.” There’s something going on with her kidneys, and she will probably have to have surgery before too long. She’s in chronic pain, at this point, and yet she still keeps her husband, her kids, and her students going. She’s a pretty amazing woman, I think, and I’m going to just soak her in for the next three months. She is probably the most popular teacher in the department, and she had almost her entire class in tears when she announced she was going to go to part-time last semester. I heard about it in my Accounting class. At any rate, I think I lucked out to have both a class and a professor I enjoy.
::The remaining classes are on my Not So Fond Of list.
3. HCA383: Biostatistics Lab. This class is the lab that goes with the biostatistics class I just completed during the summer semester. How this made it to number three out of five is merely a reflection of how terrible the remaining two are. At any rate, it meets only once a week, although at a most inconvenient time. There are no exams in it—only labs—so that is probably its one redeeming factor. That… and the fact that it is essentially a computer class. The class wouldn’t be so bad if it just weren’t for the content.
The first time we met for this lab, I ran into my nice little friend Natalie, who is also taking it this semester. Natalie sat across the aisle from me in Community Health last semester; she’s from the same town I am from, so we’ve had some mini-bonding moments. I was still a little surprised to see her gesturing wildly to me in the hall outside the classroom. She apparently wanted to talk to me desperately, so I walked down the hall to a little out-of-the-way spot. She said, “Did you see who is in the class?!?” And then she proceeded to tell me that the girl she had been in a group project with in our last class was now in this class, much to her chagrin. “Kathy” had been nothing but trouble in that particular project, and so when she was reviewed by her peers and given a grade by the rest of the group, it reflected in the grade she was given by the professor. Apparently, she had sent their group a highly inflammatory email and had traumatized poor Natalie. After she got off her cell phone to report this disturbing development to her mother, I calmed her down and told her to just stick close to me, and I would “protect” her. This problem girl happens to be in my HCA346 class as well, and I'm hoping not to end up in her group.
4. PH384: Introduction to Epidemiology. My professor in this class is from Nigeria. He is an interesting person, but he is a little hard to understand most of the time. The content of this class, unfortunately, is what bores me to tears. Epidemiology is basically the study of the causes of diseases. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
After our first HCA383 class, we clambered into this class; some of the students were all abuzz with the fact that our groups in HCA383 were going to be assigned. The girl in front of me and the girl across from me were stating emphatically that they did not want to be with “Kathy.” I questioned them out just a little bit, and they expounded for the next five minutes on how terrible a partner this girl is. Apparently, she had performed just as poorly in their group as she had in Natalie’s. Her reputation certainly does precede her. And then I began to draw on my newly-acquired knowledge of statistics and began calculating the probability that she would end up in my group. I dislike group projects enough the way it is. Dear Lord, please at least give me some good people to work with.
5. HCA343: Healthcare Quality Management. This class is just a disaster from beginning to end. This is the second time I’ve had this professor, and I struggle every day to drag myself in there.
The good thing is that my friend Faith from Uganda sits beside me back in the corner. And we fight sleep together on a daily basis. Oh, it’s a miserable hour and twenty minutes.
We did have a good chuckle in it the other day, however. The professor is Russian, and on her Power Point presentation she had the phrase “Damps and Rail Transportation” as one of her bullets. One student finally was brave enough to ask what in the world “damps” were. “Uh, you know… when you block the water in a river…” she said.
“OHH. Dams!” he said. And everyone got it then. She was really embarrassed and apologized profusely, but it didn’t keep us from laughing. “Well, just don’t laugh at me behind my back,” she said. And so we laughed harder.
When I went into this class on Tuesday, I sat down beside Faith and said, “We really need to get us some cappuccino so we can stay awake!”
“You know what happened to me this weekend?” she asked. And she proceeded to tell me how she had burned her hand by spilling some hot cappuccino on it.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“Well, I had gone to McDonald’s to get my boyfriend some breakfast,” she said. “Then I stopped at the Shell station to get me some cappuccino. I had the largest cup they had, and it was at that point where you just can’t accept that it is full…you know?”
I laughed merrily at that. How well I know where that point is. Poor Faith. As her boyfriend so aptly put it later, “You see? You like things BIG. And that’s what you get for being so greedy!” He apparently knew good and well why she hadn’t just gotten coffee at McDonald’s. Their cups are too small, of course.
posted by Kris at 9/06/2006 11:23:00 PM
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