'D' is for Diploma

An open letter to my econ professor:

I realize that you are head of the economics department in the best public international business school in the nation (second best overall), but do you realize that the 120 students in your 224 class have no idea what is going on in there whatsoever? We are non-majors, just sitting in room 105 of the BA every Tuesday/Thursday to fulfill an econ elective requirement and then get our butts back across campus to the Coliseum and the J-School where we belong. Econ is not a subject that comes naturally to us so it is a lot harder for us to understand and retain. Standing in front of the class, facing the chalkboard and essentially talking to yourself for an hour and 15 minutes doesn’t help us. When you scribble a few illegible terms and graphs on the board and then peace out to go teach your advanced classes full of business majors, we get nothing out of the experience. We actually need you to teach us the material.

I have never had a class where studying didn’t get me anywhere until I took yours. I studied about 20 collective hours over a weeklong period leading up to the first test. I bought a $50 study guide that goes with the book and signed up for a $70 subscription of myeconlab (has online practice tests, quizzes, and e-text) as supplementary study materials. When I went in the day of the test I was feeling prepared. Unfortunately, when I left I had no idea what had just hit me. Your questions were worded in roundabout ways and you forced us to make connections between ideas that we hardly covered or that we hadn’t had to compare before. It almost seemed like you did it on purpose to mess with us. After our second test today I felt the exact same way. The couple concepts that I thought I really knew completely threw me for a loop on the exam. I walked out more confused than when I walked in.

When over half of the class got a 40 percent or lower on the first test, you told us that you “must be doing your job if 10 students were able to get ‘A’s.” I hate you break it to you but you didn’t teach those 10 kids anything, they’re just naturally smart (and a few have taken econ before). Besides, you still failed to teach the other 110 of us anything. To top it off, instead of trying to figure out a way that you could work with us and help us understand, you gave up on us and recommended to anyone who got a 40 percent or below to drop your class… the day after the drop period ended.

While I realize that you are probably set in your ridiculously ineffective teaching ways, I do have one plea. I am PRAYING for a passing grade in your class. While I usually strive for ‘A’s and try to keep up a solid GPA (I got a 3.8 last year), I would love nothing more than to get a ‘D’ your class and get the heck outta there. A ‘D’ would be enough to fulfill that econ elective requirement for graduation. A ‘D’ would get me my diploma. So please, give me a 60 percent and we’ll call it a day.

Respectfully,