Injustice in school

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As a current graduate student as well as college instructor, I have to say a few things.

First, that professor was completely unprofessional when he made the comment about not getting anything less than a B, and even worse, that comment about slitting wrists. That's just wrong. Put that in your final semester evaluation of the prof.

Unfortunately it is true, at least in the US, that professors sometimes don't want to be bothered with students outside of class. This would be a reason not to go to a big US university. So they have teaching assistants, who aren't necessarily helpful. When I was taking a tough class, for instance pathophysiology, I found the only way I could pass was to get together with other students to try to understand things better. If you're really stuck on the material and the book's not helping and the prof/TA won't help, your best option is other students. You'd be surprised at how many will also be struggling, and often you can put your heads together to figure things out. And also, college students are a little more mature than high school, so I never really had that hard of a time doing the social stuff necessary to organize study groups.

That being said, I just dropped a class (first class I've ever dropped) because of a group project that went sour. We got 100% on the grade but I was bullied out of the class. Oh yeah, if you think you don't like working with others now, don't assume it gets better. A lot of graduate work is discussions. With your classmates, including critiquing them.

Lastly, make sure to check in with your school's disability office. It is my experience (from the two schools I attend and teach for) that the people there know more about AS than any other professionals I've seen. Also, if something goes wrong, they can help you. But get hooked up with them BEFORE a problem happens. I'm on a first-name basis with the director of ours, and she's a saint. She has saved my school career.

I'm useless with group work. We had to do a presentation with one other person a couple of weeks ago (I didn't have to do the speaking part but for the rest of it we worked together.) The person I worked with seemed fine but she never wanted to do any work. She went home for the week before it so we could only meet up once and then the only research she'd done was printing off a website. I find it a lot easier just to work on my own really.

That's how it works here.

btw - my professors (were Aussies) but their previous teaching positions were in Ivy League Uni's in the US and they said we were getting the same course. Their expectation was that prior to the lectures we would have read up on the lecture topic. They often digresed from the topic onto other more colourful things. They said the lectures were only to expand on the subject material, not to deliever it.

Get another text book. There are a lot that cover the same or similar material. Ask your lecturer to recommend an additional title or look at the texts at other colleges. The library should have them, so you don't need to buy one.

I think he realized that was a stupid thing to say the moment right after it came out. It was intended to be a joke but it was a bad joke and I could see he wanted to take it back. In his defense, he will be helpful if I go to his office and ask for help so I'm not going to be too hard on him. So far I've gotten As on every one of those problem sets, and apparently I'm one of the only ones to do that. I think I actually wouldn't have gotten those As if I was in the study group because they wouldn't listen to me and we would all write down the same thing (the wrong thing). Now I'm laughing my ass off. When I started this thread that wasn't the case. However, it might not always work like that for me. I had to work very hard on those sets and I wasn't sure about them when I turned them in.



That is the injustice that I was trying to get across. Fortunately this particluar professor is helpful. I'm not sure this will always be the case though. I know there are certain situations where the best option is other students. This is bad for me because no one ever invites me to their groups and no one wants to come if I want to start one.

May they all get Ds.



It sounds like you know about the injustice, you've experienced it yourself. I hope you don't have to go through that again. I've had to do peer critiquing before. It's terrible.



I have checked in with my school's disability office. I almost have weekly appointments there.