Let me explain: I'm taking Ch121 (General Chemistry) over here at UAH along with my biology class. And, of course, I'm taking summer courses, which is a shorter semester than the regular-length semester, and necessitates a bit of compression in order to fit in all the material. All of which is understood -- the class meets from 10:15 to 12:15 Mondays and Wednesdays, with lab from 2:00 to 5:00 on those days, and what's called a "recitation" (basically Q&A with the TA of the professor teaching the course) one day a week.
The semester runs from May 30 to August 2, or about ten weeks. During that period, two of our class periods will be missed (for Memorial Day and Independence Day) meaning that we have a total of 18 class sessions. And we're covering 12 chapters in that time, which adds up (if my math is correct) to about two-thirds of a chapter per class session, or about one-third of a chapter per hour of class time.
Okay, so it's meant to be a whirlwind course, and is demanding precisely because it's so compressed. All well and good. Except that the homework assignments for the chapters apparently haven't been decreased at all due to the shortened schedule, which means that in the online OWL System, for the first two days of class time we are required to complete forty-three miniature assignments. I've currently spent about five hours or so working on them, and have one more that I just can't seem to get the numbers to agree on.
So I decided to take some time to write this blog entry to complain about it.
What's more, my home computer is Linux based, and the OWL system requires Authorware, which doesn't come in a Linux version, so I'm doing all of this in a public computer lab instead of drinking beer in my comfy chair.
Not to bitch too much -- I'm liking the instructor and the course overall, and it's an interesting class that's required for my major, but this eternity spent doing homework is for the birds.
Going to try to finish the last of these assignments (working the quadratic equation with numbers in scientific notation just asks for arithmetic errors) and try to go home to my lovely. More tomorrow, but I'm not planning to complete the "first week of classes" bit -- I've just got too much to do.
(I think there's some Stone at home calling my name.)
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