Tim Hammond (timothy.hammond.330@my.csun.edu) via gmail.com
6:49 PM (0 minutes ago)
to leta.chow
Subject: I hope this goes to the right person
Hello, Ms. Chow:
To explain my subject heading, I just need to vent about my experience in Psych 320 (11767) this semester, and I am unsure who to e-mail about a complaint. The Administrative Support Coordinator seemed like the right title. If I should have e-mailed this elsewhere, I beg you to forward this e-mail to them, or reply with the correct e-mail addresses of the people who should be alerted.
My name is Tim Hammond (ID# 103244490), and I took Psychology 320 with Maria Perser during the Fall 2011 semester. The reason I need to vent is because I know for a fact the grade I will be receiving is not the grade I would have deserved had some things gone differently. Most specifically, the homework/exam turn-around time. To give an example, our first homework assignment was due September 7th and we did not get it back with a grade until the end of November when we came back from Thanksgiving break.
Since the beginning of the semester we've had homework due almost each class period, be it textbook or lab homework (which I expected, I'm not complaining about that). After Thanksgiving break she gave us our chapter 1 through chapter 5 homework back graded. In that time, we underwent three of four exams. Due to the fact our homework was not returned to me in a timely manner, I had no clue as to whether or not I was doing the homework properly. Indeed, I had been doing a lot of problems incorrectly as shown by my failing grade of 28/50 for exams one and three. I got a 48/50 on the second exam because she made it a take-home exam. I also received a 43/50 on the fourth exam because she allowed us to have a "cheat-sheet": a one-sided, 8.5x11 sheet of paper filled with whatever notes we could fit.
As for the lab assignments, none of those were ever returned to us. As of today, Tuesday, December 13th, no lab grades have been posted on the Moodle website either.
Earlier in late-October when it had began raining, I decided to not attend CSUN that day because I take three freeways to get there: highway 14, the I-5, and I-405. I e-mailed her telling her of my absence, and her reply e-mail felt very condescending. She told me that I did badly on the first exam so it was important for me to attend classes every day because I needed to improve. I admit that my getting a bad grade on the very first exam should be reason enough for me to try harder, but since our exam had been a month prior to this, I wasn't expecting the exam back anyway. After that incident I went to her office hours before class time to get some homework advice. Long story short, instead of telling me the correct way to perform the equations, she would just point out what I did wrong in a very harsh tone. Much of the other students in my class agree with me when I say she is EXTREMELY unapproachable. She really does know statistics well and is very enthusiastic about teaching, but imagine taking a statistics class where you couldn't ask the teacher a question. You can't ask verification on a concept. If you did, you were talked down to.
Throughout the semester she made several things vocally clear. One of which was that her work at Pierce College had been piling up because of her teaching six other classes besides ours. Speaking of Pierce, she also made it clear that she was catching up on her work there, but not her CSUN workload. This felt very demeaning as a student; it made me feel as though so many other things were more important than grading our homework. Other points she made vocal was how much more we needed to study, how much more she knew than we did, and how if we [the class], "...think this is bad now, wait until you get to graduate statistics. It only gets harder! I'm preparing you for graduate school." While I do agree with what she said about it getting a lot harder, not every student in that class was going to continue on a path where a further statistics class was required for their career. Besides, even if we were planning to go to graduate school, couldn't we worry about that when we get to graduate school?
One last gripe before I let you go on about your day. I do know that outside studying is required to do well in any course, but it gets especially difficult when only half of each chapter is taught. The early chapters were fine; they were short reviews of terms and equations we learned in lower division statistics. As the chapters progressed however, things got really, really tough. That coupled with our inability to ask her questions made learning statistics a job. One that any one of us would have loved being laid off.
She recognized this though, and she urged us to read, read, read the textbook. Everyday was, "Read the textbook if you have questions." This is fine, I believe this is why we have textbooks in the first place. The analogy I think works best here is one of a regular person and a toolbox. It isn't logical to give a person a toolbox full of tools and expect that person to become a mechanic. If a teacher-mechanic taught the regular person all about the ratchet and how it's like a socket wrench that you don't have to remove, certainly that regular person will now know the basic uses for a ratchet. Unfortunately the teacher-mechanic failed to teach the person about extenders in case there's a bolt he couldn't reach. Or that the direction in which the socket turns could be reversed by changing the dial on the back of the tool. Or that some bolts are metric and how those bolts need special tools in which to work.
Much like a person can't be given a box of tools and expect them to become a mechanic, I can't be given a statistics textbook and be expected to get an "A" in this class. The textbook was more of a teacher than Ms. Perser was, and that's not a good thing.
I don't know if this rant will accomplish anything or not, but I just needed to vent. Either way, thank you so much for reading this far and I do apologize this took up as much of your time as it did.
Sincerely,
-Tim H.
