xander wrote:It could be argued that any student who expects anything else is being rather naive.
College isn't a 9 to 5, and I wouldn't expect it to be treated as a 9 to 5. The problem isn't the amount of work, it's how it's handled.
For what is worth, I've held actual jobs in the past, and I've never found them to be nearly as intensive or as stressful.
xander wrote: There are students who must commute, but they are largely outliers in a university setting.
I intentionally left out commute, though I forgot to mention it (though in portugal, that's the norm, not the outliers).
I have/had multiple classes that are scheduled in such a way that prevent any significant amount of productive work either before or immediately after them. This is not to say it can't be done, but generally that time is litlle more than dead weight.
xander wrote:I don't mean this in a disparaging manner at all, but have you considered the possibility that you have a learning disability? Yeah, taking several different topics in a term requires shifting gears quite a lot, and it can be a problem, but the amount of hardship that you are claiming is unusual.
I'm generally top of the class, when I said I'm not learning I didn't mean in the sense that I can't handle it, I meant in the sense that I'm not given the possibilty to really grok a subject beyond the required to do the class. Which frustrates me immensely because I feel like I'm working for a grade, not learning anything I would deem useful - this is aggravated by the fact that many of the courses I'm required to take are of little to no interest to me.
Of course, it does not help I've had/have several courses that require you to do work
before covering the topic, or doing so with the smallest amount of detail.
xander wrote:In a more general context, I might advise that you take fewer courses each term and/or move to an institution on a trimester or quarter calendar rather than a semester calendar. The classes go by faster, so the workload is more intensely focused into fewer topics.
Due to carrying over several courses from my previous degree, I never had a full semester, though those were mostly maths and physics which generally have fewer ongoing works.
xander wrote:I don't mean to sound cruel, but I have little sympathy (except in the case of group work, which I never assign).
Which, like I mentioned, is most of the work I have (not counting tests and exams). The only exceptions I can think off was optional stuff worth about 10% of the final grade
Curiously, the one course where I could do it be myself, ended up being the only one I gave up on, mostly because it was far more work than it was worth. It was giving me more work than all the other courses combined (and those were group work that I pretty much had to do by myself), I was bound to have a far lower grade than any of my other courses, and had a real possibility of being voided if I failed the exam - which was fairly likely to happen on account of being a very dense course that even the teacher admitted to being overly demanding.
xander wrote: University students are expected to learn primarily on their own, with some guidance from faculty.
Thing is, this wasn't quite true for my first degree, but due to some European treaties this become more "expected" for my second one, and I don't think the transition was as smooth as it needed to be. To all effects now just feels like I have more to do, in less time, with less support and minimal adaptation of the program and resources.
Essentially this killed whatever made college worthwhile for me. But I would still like to graduate, and I would particularly like to take some of master level courses.
Ultimately though, I'm just frustrated with it because I simply cannot tell if it is worth it. I am not getting the skill to do what I want to do, and as long as I stay in college I do not have the time to figure it out on my own. Right now I just a want a way out, and I am not seeing any.