I am not a mind reader!

So, I am writing this post because I really need to vent. Otherwise, I might scare my office mates, since I am about ready to start screaming and pulling my hair out.

This whole frustrating situation started about a week ago. One of my classes doesn't have a textbook because the professor teaching it is in the middle of writing the book. So every week he is going to give us chapters from the book and our homework is to proofread the material and come up with one example problem. The example problem statement and solution has to be given to him in LaTeX. He told us that we could write everything up in Word and then just copy and paste the work into the proper places on the LaTeX template he gave us.

So last week I read the chapters that we were given and came up with two example problems. The chapters were pretty straight forward, just going over topics like the Ideal Gas Law and the difference between perfect and imperfect gases. We also talked about mean free path of gas molecules. Since the material was so basic, I figured the best examples to do would just be an application of the Ideal Gas Law and calculation of the mean free path. I tried to incorporate Avogadro's number and molar calculations so that the problems wouldn't be too straight forward.

When I went to put my text into the LaTeX template, nothing would work. I was troubleshooting the homework all morning up until class. When I tried to print out what I had, I found that the only printer I have access to on my side of campus was out of paper. So I ran over to class with just my corrected notes. I explained that I had come up with my problems, but the code wasn't working on my computer and so I didn't have the final copy of them with me. The professor said that wasn't a problem and just to get them to him as soon as I could.

Michael had been helping me with the code, so when I got out of class the code was finally working. I saved a PDF of the code output and sent it to the professor so that he would have my homework and I sent my copy of the code to the TA.

The next day, I get an email from the professor saying that he doesn't want to receive any electronic copies of anything. I know he had asked for a hard copy, but I figured that he would rather I make an effort to get him my homework in a timely fashion since I had been unable to print and the nearest printer is at least a 20 min walk from my office. I also had made sure not to send him the code which he had very explicitly said he didn't want. He also starts into how the pressure I calculated in one of my example problems has to be wrong, since the partial pressure of oxygen at STP is close to 21 kPa and my answer is way below that. However, nowhere in my problem did I say that there were other gases in the room. I simply had a box with so many molecules of oxygen at a certain temperature and the problem showed how to calculate pressure from that. My example wasn't supposed to equal something physical, but he wanted it to. So I redid the problem the way he wanted and gave it back.

Then at the next class he starts complaining about how people didn't do the assignment correctly. First, he complained how the graduate students hadn't bothered to come up with some interesting examples and the one undergraduate did. As an example of what not to do, he cited my problem in which you had to calculate the mean free path of oxygen in a box. The chapter was over PV=nRT and mean free path! If those two things are the only tools I have to work with, how complex of a problem can I make?!

At this point, he begins to give us a whole new set of requirements for the homework. For example, we are supposed to create an example problem over something that confuses us in the chapter. We are also supposed to bring some sort of in depth analysis to the problem like examine the sensitivity of a variable in the equations we use. He also gave us a handout with rules of how to format our units and answers. I would have appreciated knowing all of this before, but I am still not sure how far you can dig into something as straightforward as PV=nRT! He also uses my second problem as an example of no proofreading because my answer wasn't what your would expect at ground level, and I am sitting there in class thinking to myself that there wasn't any mistake other than the professor assuming the solution should have been related to normal atmospheric pressure. So now I know he wants something based of actual physical parameters so you can compare your answer to reality- another requirement I would have appreciated knowing ahead of time.

Two days later, the class gets another email, this time telling us that if homework is late it is an automatic 50% deduction of points, which I feel is a bit harsh especially for a graduate class. He also states that the LaTeX code cannot have any errors in it or it will be returned to us for correction. He claims that if we use the template he gave us that we shouldn't have any errors. However, the template has errors inherent in it, so even if my portion was entirely correct, his stuff wouldn't be. The email also contained about 7 more items about how he wants us to format things.

I can't guess everything he wants. I am a busy student. I have other classes and research I need to get done. I need to know what is expected of me so that I can do the work correctly and in a timely manner. I can't spend all my time trying to search for the magic formula that will make him happy. I also don't like it when professors say that they will be happy with A when really they want A+B. I don't have the time to spend doing things not required of me for class when I have all my research duties that are weighing heavily on me. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you, but I don't have the extra time to do work that isn't required of me for a class that is only loosely associated with my research.

So that is basically it. I get tired of professors assuming that we can read their minds and then also assuming that we are going to go home and spend all of our time (extra or not) working on the material for fun. He actually wanted us to go home and write a program for fun that would determine if you got wetter running or walking in the rain. I don't have time to write a stupid program to calculate something I don't care about that isn't going to be graded.

The Start of Year Two

It is now two weeks into classes of the fall semester, marking the beginning of my second year as a Notre Dame graduate student. This semester, I am taking Microparticle Dynamics and Numerical Analysis. So far, both of my classes seem like they won't be too crazy.

The house is also starting to come together especially now that I have finished buying appliances. This past weekend, I finally purchased my washer and dryer. The pair was delivered on Sunday and I wore the last of my clean clothes on Saturday. I picked a Samsung set that has steam in the dryer, which will be great since there have been many times where I've steamed up my bathroom trying to release wrinkles. The washer also has a special sanitize cycle which is supposed to remove 99% of the bacteria commonly found in fabrics.