Tired and upset...

We had our midterm in the evil stats course and it was beyond bad. The instructor, who specializes in marathon lectures to begin with, proudly announced that she completed all questions in 40 minutes and so we should have no problems doing that in 1 hour and 45 minutes (um, we lost 10 mins while she hand-delivered each test). Then she mentioned that one of her advanced students finished the test in one hour. No problem for us, "newbies," right? Then we opened the test -- several items were mentioned only briefly but now were worth a significant portion of the grade; to make matters worth, there were duplicate questions on those topics. Several questions were poorly worded so you really had to guess what was really required.

Several of us talked after class and agreed that the main cause of problems described above is instructor's delegation of duties. She relies on her TAs to create and grade assignments, thus allowing people with minimum teaching experience introduce all kinds of problems, especially since they are not the ones teaching the course. Language is another problem. For example, English is not my native language but I lived in the USA long enough to overcome the language barrier. The person who wrote the test barely functions in English. You tell me how this deficiency can affect the wording of test questions. No, I am not prejudiced against foreign students; just being realistic.

Anyway, I was tempted to just bang my head on the desk and leave. I did not. Instead, I did my best to answer the questions. I hope I passed. If not, I will think about it tomorrow. Too tired tonight.