Good afternoon, all! Thought I’d bring my week of physics trauma to you for a little laugh… I’m sure I’ll laugh some day. SOME day. 
So my physics instructor, who is hands down the worst teacher I’ve ever encountered in all my days, gave us 2 pages of kinematics practice problems this week.
I am self-teaching myself due to the “teaching” we aren’t receiving in class, so I was eager to get the practice, as we have our first exam next Monday.
At 2:30 this morning, I finally went to bed after only having successfully completed 3 problems. THREE. (out of 10.)
After scraping and clawing my way through, using online references, and figuring things out, I had notes all over the last 7 problems… because he also gave us the solutions, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with answers that matched his. I saw the equations, saw the variables, plugged the latter into the former, and just kept coming up wrong.
After being frustrated to the point of tears because I couldn’t figure it out? I emailed him today with my questions, and he sent me a message saying that his solutions were just wrong. “I think my calculator must have been in radians or something. Huh. Sorry about that.”
WTH??? Oh, Lord, help me… I may not survive this semester.
Bonus note: I actually do have a decent grasp on kinematic equations now, because I had to pick them apart to figure out why in the world my answers weren’t matching his. Ooooh, yeah…because mine were RIGHT. Ugh.
(And no, he didn’t give wrong answers on purpose so we’d figure it out. Trust me.)
Are we having fun yet???
Appropriate Joke:
One day our professor was discussing a particularly complicated concept.
A pre-med student rudely interrupted to ask “Why do we have to learn this stuff?”
“To save lives,” the professor responded quickly and continued the lecture.
A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again.
“So how does physics save lives?” he persisted.
“It keeps the ignoramuses out of medical school,” replied the professor.
Kind of makes it hard to know what info to trust coming from a prof like that…how do you know when you are actually wrong vs when the prof is wrong? But at least you’re going to KNOW the info at a deeper level than you might if the prof just spoon-fed you.
Good luck! My physics doesn’t start till next Tuesday, and I’m a bit worried about my very rusty math skills. No syllabus yet to get a jumpstart…
Annette
Years ago, my physics prof. used to scrawl across 4 chalkboards each lecture. I never noticed that there was always a different number circled at the top right of the boards until the second to last lecture, when someone raised their hand to ask what it was for.
“Oh, that’s the number of innacuracies I put into each lecture to see who’s paying attention.”
D’oh! 