lunachick

Why would you mark them down? They are correct.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Your school has fucking class? Sign me up!

-B

Monkeybot

Honestly, after going to Japan and a) trying desperately to muddle through the language and b) hearing other people make amazing efforts to muddle through English, there's almost nothing foreign teachers can say now that severely bewilders me. Of course, I've also got to admit that the only foreign teachers I have are teaching their own native language, so maybe it would be different if I were in, say, an engineering course. (HA! That'll be the day!)

The funniest "this-guy-don't-speak-English" experience I ever had was with two girls in a statistics class I took (and later dropped for unrelated reasons). The professor was Russian and had an extremely thick accent. I personally had few problems understanding him, but two of the girls behind me were like "Oh my GOD! What is this guy even SAYING????" (Imagine the two girls from the beginning of Baby Got Back, and you've got an idea of what they sounded like). Well, the Russian professor goes to write the TA's name on the board, and the two girls breathe a sigh of relief, realizing they can just ask the TA to explain the concepts instead of the prof. Well, the TA was named Ganesh Something Something (I don't remember what, it was three years ago) -- clearly an Indian name though. The two girls resumed their chorus of "Oh my GAWD!" none too shortly thereafter.

lunachick

That sounds good, Bree.

Godless Dave

Over there they are correct. Over here they are incorrect.

I'm kind of a stickler about these things. I once wrote to the city of Saint Paul to complain about the name of our new convention center, "Rivercentre".

Bree

Godless Dave, you would hate our university, then. All our buildings are spelt in the UK fashion - Fine Arts Centre, University Centre, et cetera. Our maintenence building is spelt just like that - something I've personally never come across, but whatever.

Hey PZ - could you PM me with the name of your university? I'm thinking about getting a second degree.

What in the WORLD is a TA? Teaching Assistant? What do they do? Why don't you have a professor teaching your class? Maybe I go to too small of a university, but we don't have those here. Jekyll, as a student, teaches a supplementary class to the "Myth Of Creating" course but she is not a TA. Please explain?

Hedwig

Sometimes they do take over if the instructor is sick, out of town, etc. and they sometimes help out with the lectures in class or help the instructors mark papers but beyond that I haven't a clue what a teaching assistant does.

red robot

Yup, TA is a teaching assistant, often an upper classman or grad student. I know at my old school, the prof would teach the classes and TAs would teach recitations a couple times a week.

With several TAs for each class, students have a better chance of getting one on one interaction, help with homework, etc.

Incidentally, i think you should bring up to your prof (probably not actually a good idea, but whatever) that most of the buildings are named in english english fashion rather than american english fashion. say, maybe, that you thought that was the 'theme' of the university.

Or, whatever, drop the class. Sounds like a waste of time to me (note: i didn't read the middle of this long thread, so if you posted a reason why you're not dropping the class, i missed it. perhaps i should just keep my mouth shut).

rr

never been there

Uh-oh. Translation time. In a small arts college, you might have "markers" who are upper-year students given a couple of samples of "correct" answers and paid to correct exams. It's a scary concept, but hopefully the prof supervises everything closely. I had roommates doing this at the little college across the street and I would have just s%^# if I knew my marks came from the likes of them.

In a large university, graduate students, among other things, lead supplementary tutorial sessions where students get to interact more than in the stadium-sized lecture halls, or they supervise labs, and of course, mark assignments and exams. This means that your marks come from someone with a proper understanding of the subject, but on the other hand about 1/4 of graduate students belong in padded rooms.

And on occasion, a grad student actually lectures. My sister-in-law took over for a prof on mat. leave. I lectured 1st year chemistry because the only prof who could have been assigned the course was not, shall we say, teaching material.

Heleilu

I'd go directly to the Dean of Academic Affairs or whatever your college has. I've had a friend given an outrageou grade by a vindictive professor before because she disagreed with her. She got a B+ on her first paper, an A- on the draft of her final paper and a C- for the class, which had two papers and no tests. She appealed immediately, but the process is slow and bureaucratic. So do something ASAP.