Evaluative forms

At the end of each semester, all ANU students must endure a grueling process in which every lecture and lab/tute they attend will have these Evaluation Forms. You give feedback on the lecture materials, the lecturer and the course in general.

Typically, it taxes me in every possible medium to fill these in, though I endeavour to leave insightful and useful comments. Not for this Neuroscience, though. I'm looking forward to the moment I get my hands on those forms. There are so many things wrong with this course.

I'm the sort of person who knows the difference between when I just don't get something and when something is unneccessarily difficult. It's not just a matter of instrumental value, I know I will use 5% of the knowledge acquired in this course throughought my life, that's not the point though. There's just too much to learn and all crammed into this one course.

Let's take this week. I have a 5% quiz. According to the syllabus, the readings are ... 7 chapters. Not just light frothy chapters either, densely packed, heavily jargoned readings. Fuck this. I'm hedging my bets and focussing on two chapters only.

Theoretically there's only 15% of this quiz business left. Overall not a significant amount. I'm worried and studying for what is ostensibly very minor. It's like Cap As at Grammar all over again - everyone freaking out for what would end up being 1.75% :P People pulled all nighters in the boarding house. Seriously, there's something wrong when people worry about not having done enough or knowing enough for a number of marks that I can count on one hand.