lydy | Well, I did my best

I took my first polysom course this semester. It was called Intro to Sleep and Rest. I didn't like the course. The material was a book by William C. Dement called The Promise of Sleep. It is a popular science book. It's an ok book to read. It gets a little repetitive about the risks of driving drowsy. (Something like a third of all car accidents are in part or in whole due to drowsy driving. I've nearly been a part of that statistic, I'm convinced already.) I found the material very difficult to absorb for tests and quizzes. With a text book, it is easy to winkle out what they want you to know. They're also pretty turgid, so one doesn't tend to float along, reading as if for pleasure. Dement's book is well enough written (although just barely) to make that possible for me. So I haven't done well on the quizzes and exams. It's not like I didn't study. I read the material. I highlighted. I reviewed the material. But it's no good. The way the professor asks questions, and the material he asks them on, didn't click for me. So it looks like I'm going to get a high B. I was so hoping to be a 4.0 student. It bothers me that this is a polysomnographic course, as well. Am I not cut out to absorb the necessary material? I mean, B is passing and all that, but it's well below what I expect of myself. This is my major. We'll see about the next three courses next semester, which are all polysom courses.

This class has had it's mysteries, too. The first test was to be twenty-five questions, but only 19 showed up on the computer. (It's a web course.) The automatic result showed that I'd gotten 21 out of 25 questions right. I didn't answer 21 questions, so that was simply bizarre. I queried the professor, and he said that he'd deal with it. The score was changed to show some slightly higher number of questions out of 30 questions, and the percent right remained the same as it had been from the first, mis-scored test.

Here's another one. In the grades web page, it shows that there are four dream diaries that will be scored. We were only instructed to submit one and two. I looked on the grades page to see if everything was there (I found that I hadn't submitted a paper that I thought I had submitted on a previous occasion). On the page, large as life, are the points for dream diaries three and four, although I never turned them in. Now I did keep them, so I can still turn them in, and I think I will, 'cause, what's the harm? But why did this happen? Did he simply forget to assign the dream diaries, and so figured he'd just credit everybody with three and four? That's the only sense I can make of it.

I think that this was a profoundly screwed up course. But the low points on the tests are, presumably, legitimate. I know I was having trouble with the material. One of the peculiarities of this course is that we don't get quizzes or tests back. Just the grade. So I couldn't even review what was right and what was wrong. No chance to learn from my mistakes. He had to hand-grade the quizzes because they were short answer. But he could have set up the tests, which were multiple guess, to show the answers. My Biomedical Terminology course has it set up that way, so I know that the college has that kind of web capability.

Now all I have to do is live through the Biomedical Terminology final on the 19th. It's comprehensive, and I'm apprehensive, but less so since she went over what she expects us to know in the last class period. I think I can do that. Although there are going to be 50 questions on abbreviations and acronyms and I haven't really hit those like I hit the others.

I might get a B in Biomedical Terminology, too, depending on how I do on the final. It's been a disappointing semester.