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Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/2/2008 1:02:39 PM
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solomonsprayer
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Have you ever had a college prof. who assigned a really dense and voluminous book that nobody seemed to really want to or actually read, but instead would buy Cliff or Sparkk Notes to summarize/cheat the reading.....Worst, some of these arcane books are so obscure that there are no summaries and then people have to make a choice of how they will get through the book - usually with no one ever really reading it.
The worst cases were usually Philosophy.....big big books with outdated writing style and dense thoughts that sometimes wandered onto annoying tangents.....
Ahhh, college life....how did peole survive it?
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention....that's like 500+ pages in one week! ..for graduate level....undergrad is probably 100 pages per week/per class on average.
How do people survive the super long books in super short time period? Can you really digest all that stuff and master it?
< Message edited by solomonsprayer -- 9/3/2008 8:26:56 AM >
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/2/2008 7:58:30 PM
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blueshadow
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I've had those professors.
I read the book. And survived, amazingly enough - though I'm sure I didn't fully understand the book.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 8:27:21 AM
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solomonsprayer
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SEE my OP edit. 
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 1:45:46 PM
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creationtalk
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I have NEVER assigned 500 pages to anyone. I'm the wicked physics/chemistry professor who assigns 20 problems a week...
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 5:36:35 PM
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Auben
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I took 2 lit. courses simultaneously and don't remember having too much problem.
The only one I got behind with was The Ancient World. The Greek textbook was a bit dry. I caught up 200 pages on Mycenae I got behind on when I was reading The Pelopponesian War and trudging through the deadly boring Communications Theory text. Ugh.
I can read quickly though; 200 pages of fiction an hour or 50 pages of textbook.
We never had papers that long though. I think I had one 10+ page paper during a post term and the Senior Thesis was 30-50 pages. Anything else was 5 pages or less.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 6:16:47 PM
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solomonsprayer
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quote:
ORIGINAL: creationtalk
I have NEVER assigned 500 pages to anyone. I'm the wicked physics/chemistry professor who assigns 20 problems a week...
Is that considered a lot? How many hours of work per week would you give?
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 10:57:46 PM
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creationtalk
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quote:
ORIGINAL: solomonsprayer
quote:
ORIGINAL: creationtalk
I have NEVER assigned 500 pages to anyone. I'm the wicked physics/chemistry professor who assigns 20 problems a week...
Is that considered a lot? How many hours of work per week would you give?
I don't really know if it's "a lot," though I'm pretty sure some of the students think it is. I'm teaching freshman physics for non-majors this semester. We cover approximately 2 chapters a week ( 18 chapters in the semester), and I assign around 10 problems per chapter. I'd like to assign more, since the only way to learn this stuff is by working problems, but I'm trying to balance the work against the fact that the students have other classes, many have full-time jobs...and I have another job. I'm reasonably certain that I spend more time preparing for the class than any of the students spend on it--I have to prepare lecture notes, work all the assigned problems (plus ones for class examples and the ones I thought I would assign, but when I worked them decided they would not work), then grade all the homework, make study guides, tests, grade the tests... I'm spending 12-15 hours per chapter...and hoping I can cut it down some.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/3/2008 11:06:37 PM
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solo_soprano22
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That's not a lot, to be a science class. I'm sitting here right now up to my eyeballs in chemistry spectra problems...then we have problems out of the book and all kinds of things. 20-30 problems/wk in chemistry at this university is actually showing mercy. Lol. But it takes me so long to figure out some things... I need to devote entire days just to spectra/problems. Ugh. I hate spectra..esp. NMRs and GS/Mass Specs.... I'd rather do physics.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/4/2008 11:30:19 AM
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solomonsprayer
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On a full-load of classes, how many hours per week do you think it takes for you to complete all work (for all classs)?
I wonder if most professors assign work with any thoughts to whether their students must work to pay bills, rest, spend time with family, etc.? That's good that creationtalk does.
It must be a tough balance to get students to do enough work to mster material, yet not overkill them.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/6/2008 9:10:40 PM
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karlie
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quote:
On a full-load of classes, how many hours per week do you think it takes for you to complete all work (for all classs)?
I have 18 units, and four of my five classes are heavy classes. I'm not even at the peak of my homework load yet and am already spending easily 25 hours a week doing reading, study notes and assignments. That will make a pretty big increase in the next few weeks as exams begin, projects and bigger papers begin coming due. But, I'm in my final year, and am one of those neurotic students who read every word and can't settle for less than A's so, some of the time I spend is my own standard.
Good thing I like what I'm learning!
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/8/2008 12:17:21 PM
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solomonsprayer
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25 hours a week isn't so bad I suppose....Though with a student who's working, it could get tough. But I was thinking like 60+ hours would be bad!
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/8/2008 12:21:05 PM
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karlie
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I don't think most universities allow enough units to need 60 hours of homework. Most have a cap on how many you can take in one semester. I think 24 is my university's cap.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/8/2008 12:42:59 PM
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sue244
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Yeah well as a history major I'm just resinged to the fact that I will be reading alot in the next few years. I am taking 3 history classes have 12 books I have to read that come out to be about 5000 pages total. Really it comes down to learning how to read just the material you need to understand the book and skip the fluff. One book I'm reading for my History of American west all I really need to do is read the first 3 or 4 pages of a chapter to get the point becaus the rest is just illistrations to back up his point.
I think though that you get the sylibus on the first day of class so youi know what is expected of you then you just have to decide if you can live up to that with your current scheduel. If not changes some of your classes.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/9/2008 12:34:25 PM
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solomonsprayer
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sue244
Yeah well as a history major I'm just resinged to the fact that I will be reading alot in the next few years. I am taking 3 history classes have 12 books I have to read that come out to be about 5000 pages total. Really it comes down to learning how to read just the material you need to understand the book and skip the fluff. One book I'm reading for my History of American west all I really need to do is read the first 3 or 4 pages of a chapter to get the point becaus the rest is just illistrations to back up his point.
I think though that you get the sylibus on the first day of class so youi know what is expected of you then you just have to decide if you can live up to that with your current scheduel. If not changes some of your classes.
I've always wondered about the skim and strategic reading approaches. Do you ever fear you may skip some important material if you read too fast or selectively read and discard certain passages?
I know in math and sciences courses you cannot do well without doing problems every day with practice. It takes time, but it's necessar. I wonder about humanities ...can you still master the material without literally reading and dwelling upon every word of large and dense texts?
Also with history, I found it was hard to follow along sometimes with so many dates and people's names and locations and facts.
I wish they had a freshmen class on "How To Study"...because I certainly learned the hard way my first year. After that, though, I figured out how much time I'd have to put into it and how much effort. I still feel to this day, we are assigned too much in college to really digest.
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RE: Professors Who Assign Those 500+ Page Books - 9/9/2008 5:19:53 PM
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creationtalk
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quote:
ORIGINAL: karlie
I don't think most universities allow enough units to need 60 hours of homework. Most have a cap on how many you can take in one semester. I think 24 is my university's cap.
Most universities have the standard that you should expect to do 3 hours of out of class work for every semester hour taken. So if you can take 24 semester hours, this will require 70+ hours of out of class study. There is a reason why 12 semester hours is considered "full-time" (12 X 3 =36; 36 + 12 (in class time) = 48 hours...full time) Of course, some classes require more work, others maybe a little less. I had one physics class that routinely took 20+ hours for the homework...and that was only one class.
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I agree... why do they do this to us??
