After my first year of college, pursuing two majors (Biology and Chemistry), I was dreading the new school year, where I would be joining Chemistry juniors (as only a second-year student, myself) for the particularly-difficult courses in Physical Chemistry (I and II). In case you’re less familiar, Physical Chemistry is regularly regarded as one of the hardest college topics/courses, but I was pretty sure I could handle the material.
What I dreaded was that the professor for Physical Chemistry was known to be a more than terrible teacher. He was a perfectly nice, old man whom everyone loved as a person, but he had been the only faculty member interested in teaching Physical Chemistry, for decades, and what that really meant was that he didn’t really teach the material anymore. In the first two weeks of Physical Chemistry I, he smiled politely through 20-year-old transparency sheets that had some basic Calculus (somewhat relevant) and other non-relevant simple math, but he didn’t connect any of this to the Physical Chemistry concepts in the textbook. Furthermore, this professor’s difficult weekly quizzes and unit exams were known to be on a 3-year rotating schedule, so most students had learned to make friends with older students who passed down years of graded quizzes and exams. As a result, Chemistry majors dreaded the Physical Chemistry courses and topic (which is already hard enough!), and assumed they wouldn’t actually learn much, but they had at least figured out how to get decent grades.
I, on the other hand, was in a weird position. As the only second-year (“sophomore”) student in a junior-level course, my classmates were a bit wary of me, and I hadn’t yet made many friends with people in the Chemistry major. As a result, I had none of the advantages of passed-down quiz/exam materials or the clique-like study groups the rest of the class formed, because they’d known each other longer. During the first quiz (two weeks in), I was sincerely fighting back tears. While I had read and studied hard, tried to discuss with classmates, and completed all of the indicated problems, the questions on the quiz were intentionally tricky and mostly un-tied to the chapter material or in-class topics. I discussed this with a classmate right after the quiz, who indicated that she and everyone else had been expecting an oddly constructed quiz; unfortunately, the severity of the course lecture and assessment situation was just sinking in for me.
By that afternoon, I had dropped the class and changed my Chemistry major to a minor. In my mind, I had already worked so hard the year before, and now I felt the odds were stacked too highly against me — not just for passing Physical Chemistry, but for completing the Chemistry major, and certainly for any hope of actually learning the material. I had actually found the book material interesting, but thought that I might just not be cut out for what’s expected of Chemistry majors at my school, especially if that meant essentially cheating by memorizing old quizzes and exams, without actually learning. The professor did find me a week later to give back my graded quiz, which just confirmed that I had utterly failed it.
Here’s where something WAS done that rectified my demotivated situation: I learned later in the school year that another professor had stepped up to teach Physical Chemistry for the next school year. By the following fall semester, I had rejoined the Chemistry major and enrolled again in Physical Chemistry I with the new instructor, and I had made friends with others in the class. The new instructor didn’t really make things easier: he suggested even more homework problems, and created more numerous and difficult assessments. BUT, he actually taught the material very well and sincerely cared about our understanding of it. As a class, we set records for our performance on the national standardized exams for Physical Chemistry, and I worked my butt off for an excellent grade and understanding of the material. The department had been trying to address the “Physical Chemistry situation” for years.
Here are some things I think could have been done prior/in addition to the actual fix:
— The instructor could have been switched out at a sooner time
— Other faculty could have sat in on lectures and made recommendations for lecture improvements
— The department could have made the instructor produce new quizzes and exams
— The department could have provided additional support (outside of class) for students taking Physical Chemistry
— I could have made more of an effort to connect with Chemistry major students prior to the course (not ideal as a stand-alone fix, but would have helped).
— I always thought I might have just done better by waiting to take the course until the following year,even with the existing instructor, since I was actually taking it a year ahead of schedule in my first attempt. More time for mental preparation, awareness of the challenges, and in-class social connections were what the other students had over me when I tried taking the course the first time.