A History Major's Journey

[Westerner]

My second semester at TESC (October-December 2013).

Introduction to Photography
Professor Paul Light
Grade: A- (91)

Part 1:
"Photography 101" was a TESC class I'd been eyeing, but wasn't sure I'd get to do, until I got the Pell Grant that paid for a year of classes there. So I'm getting to do it, praise God! I'm about a month into it.

There are 6 2-week modules.

There is 1 required book, "Photography" by London, Stone & Upton. I got a pretty recent version, costing $65, but you might be able to make do with an even older one. I'll just have to see when I get to the stuff about darkroom vs. digital—you'll need to be up to date on that. In the course, you're provided with links to websites (like Kodak's) that have photo-taking tips. Quite a bit of it was review for me, of things I'd heard before, from friends and through independent research.

The main thing you'll be doing is reading a chapter of the book, then getting your camera out and practicing 1 or 2 of the techniques. It really forces you to learn about your camera, practice with the controls and take different kinds of pictures, which is great! Also, the other types of assignment is "personal," like showing what types if photography you like or are drawn to, what you like to photograph, things that help you "get in touch with your artsy side" I guess

My professor is Paul Light. He didn't have good reviews on ratemyprofessor.com, and he's living up to the mostly unsatisfactory reviews he does have. He doesn't grade fast, or give particularly good grades. I know photography is subjective, but when I had to write papers in other classes giving my opinion, the professors were happy to hear it and I got As. Here, I haven't gotten one 100 on a photo assignment yet.

Module 1—learning about your camera. Taking pictures from different distances.
Module 2—aperture and shutter speed. Taking pictures while changing these settings.

That's as far as I've gotten. I'll post again later.

Part 2:
In week 10 of the course now.

Module 3—metering and bracketing. Experimenting and getting the best picture. Practicing with ISO.
Module 4—no photo exercise. Discussing the history of photography: wet dark rooms vs. digital workspace.
Module 5—lighting. Taking photos in different lighting conditions and times of the day. Also, in this module, the class looks at famous portrait photographers; every student picks one. DO NOT pick Annie Lebowitz. Her famous photos are quite obscene. Yousef Karoush, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange are good options.
Module 6—up until now, you've only been required to post 4 photos/week. In this module, you collect 16 photos that demonstrate techniques you've been learning throughout the course.

And, I hope you don't have to take this course with Paul Light, but if you do, his main thing is to take creative pictures. I have been getting Bs on the photo exercises (except on 1, which I got A-) and on the corresponding discussion forums. On the creative exercise forums (in which you write about your personal inspirations and such), I get 100s. But since those don't count nearly as much as the photo exercises and DFs, I asked him about how to improve my photography so I could get As, but all he wrote in his return email was a copy-past from the instructions and his original post with his expectations (namely, to be creative). I could've gathered that much and would've liked a more personal response (after all, what's a professor for if not to help his students?) but I guess I'm not getting that from him. I agree with other students of his who say that he expects too much from people taking an "Introduction to Photography" class.

Part 3:
Well, I finished "Introduction to Photography." The basic information about the course is in my previous posts. For the Final Project, you create a (unified!) portfolio of 20 photos. Your 2 strongest images should be first and last.

Here are my photo exercises from the course, along with notes on what we were practicing each module.
Photo Exercise 1: Photographic Exercise 1 - a set on Flickr
Photo Exercise 2: Photographic Exercise 2 - a set on Flickr
Photo Exercise 3: Photographic Exercise 3 - a set on Flickr
Photo Exercise 4: Photographic Exercise 4 - a set on Flickr
Photo Exercise 5: Photographic Exercise 5 - a set on Flickr
Final Project: Final Project - a set on Flickr

Now, I have to say something about my course mentor.

I took this course with Professor Paul Light. He was not available for questions and did not seem to want to help his students learn. He was a very slow grader. He gave poor grades and did not explain AT ALL why I was marked down. Nor did he give adequate feedback about the photos I took for assignments—what he liked or did not like. Once I emailed him to ask for suggestions on how to improve my photography in order to get As, and all he sent back was a copy-past of his grading policy! That was not helpful. What is a mentor for, if not to coach and help students? I tried to take more creative photos as he suggested but he never gave feedback on how I was doing. Grades were late, and then he finally surfaced to comment on my final project. I really was left to navigate this course on my own.

Professor Light never actually helped me learn to take better pictures. All he did was critique my photos ONCE, and sometimes gave links to other photos to show "what our photos should look like." I expected critiques of every photo I took, and tips on how to improve photography, but I did not get any. He said late assignments would not get critiqued; by extension, doesn't that sound like on-time assignments WILL be critiqued? That's what I thought, but my on-time assignments weren't critiqued... Professor Light sent us to other websites for info; he never gave personal, customized tips. All the unexplained Bs he gave my photo assignments dragged my final grade down to a barely-A-. I am EXTREMELY disappointed in his nonexistent "mentoring."

He also gave 100s for participation in the Creative Forums (which counted for less overall) but Bs in the Photographic Exercise Forums (which were weighted more heavily). I seriously don't understand that. I participated fully in both. Why grade down for full participation? In other courses, in every Discussion Board I participated fully in (responding to 2 or more people, as the course syllabus instructs) I got 100. Why not here? As a matter of fact, he said responding to 1 person would get a maximum of 50. So, then, why wouldn't responding to 2 or more people, which is what I did every time, warrant a 100??

I would NOT recommend Paul Light as a mentor. Others got mentors in this course who gave 100s without critique or comments. I would take a professor like that over one who gives 85s without critique or comments, any day. Mr. Light might be a good photographer, and he has a blog where he teaches about the subject, but he completely fails as a college professor.

I love photography, so I was so excited for this class, and I really thought I would enjoy it, learn a lot, and better my photography. Well, after finishing, I can say that this course was not as enjoyable, and it was all because of my particular professor. The best things about this course were...

—I was happy I got to interact with other budding photographers. My fellow students and I had a GREAT time seeing each other's photos, discussing, sharing our likes and dislikes, and practicing with our cameras.
—The textbook was helpful and I'm glad I got to learn about and practice with my camera and learn more about what it can do.

That was really all I got from this course, but I was expecting to get more. I was expecting professional critiques and coaching from the mentor (Paul Light) and I DID NOT receive that at all.

In the end, this class wasn't really worth it. Order the $60 textbook, join an online photo community, and have at it. Much cheaper!

[Westerner]

October-December 2013 semester, continued.

Games People Play
Professor Ramzi Salloum
Grade: A (98)

Part 1:
Well. I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into when I signed up for "Games People Play." I needed to fill some elective spots with TESC classes and this one looked interesting. I'm not a real mathy person so I had to kinda struggle to get past the math in the first couple modules, but now it's looking more fun—real life situations, social stuff, and all that.

There are 8 modules to be done in 12 weeks. Most modules are 1 week but for a couple you get 2 weeks. I try to catch up/get ahead when I can.

The books you'll be using are "Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction" by Morton Davis and "The Game's Afoot!" by Alexander Mehlman. In each module, you'll have video lectures to watch. They're about 30 minutes long and you get a link to where they're posted on YouTube. Professor Stevens, who does those, is really fun and engaging.

My professor for this course is Ramzi Salloum. He's not involved in the Discussion Forums, but if you have a question, just email him and he'll promptly send back a helpful reply. The lectures seem to do the main teaching for this course. The books are a little less important so far.

So, that's the basics about this course. I'm about a month into it and I'll post again soon.

Part 2:
So, the basic info about this course is in my previous post. Of the 2 books, the "Nontechnical Introduction" is, as its name implies, nontechnical and easy to understand. "The Game's Afoot" is more technical and mathy, so I didn't enjoy it as much.

My professor, Ramzi Salloum, didn't get on the discussion forums but was really good about replying to questions I emailed him (except sometimes he was traveling and couldn't answer; that's where forums come in ) For the first time, I had questions about the course content (due to the math) and when I emailed, he sent back helpful tips; I also emailed him about my final paper because I was concerned about doing it right. If I didn't understand concepts and so got something wrong in my essays, he would grade down some but always explained why. If you were learning and showed it in your writing, he appreciated it. He was always encouraging and nice I highly recommend him!

I liked the premise of this course—I didn't know anything much about game theory and it was interesting to learn about it. Really, game theory surrounds us every day, and we use its principles all the time. There are a lot of social observations and implications which were fun to identify, study and analyze. What I didn't really enjoy was the math; sometimes the weekly essay questions dealt with more mathy concepts and solving problems. But thankfully Professor Stevens, who did the video lectures which you'll mostly be learning from, doesn't go into too much math and explains things 2 ways: mathy and non-mathy. Pretty much the only math that's presented is algebra (even though you can go into calculus, thankfully we don't in the course!). Professor Stevens puts up some calculations involving long strings of numbers and letters, like in algebra, and to understand the concept, you'll need to (sort of) understand the math. If I re-watched it a few times I usually got it In the written assignments, there are occasionally things like finding probabilities, using decimals, and equations (involving formulas you're given) that you have to work with. Oh, and sometimes the course seemed to be less-than-ideally laid out, because essays you wrote one week would have been less confusing if you'd known about concepts introduced the next week So, if you want to, read ahead some.

But overall, a really good course. You get lots of chances to study human behavior and concepts, and can additionally learn how to mathematically figure out the best options in a scenario. I must say I never knew before that there was a mathematical solution to the "problem" of which way to go when 2 people meet going opposite directions in the hallway

I got 100s on most of my written assignments (90s on some) 100s on the discussion postings, and a 100 on my final paper (10-12 pages, but I went over) for a final grade of 98, or A.

[Westerner]

My final semester at TESC (January-March 2014).

International Relations I
Dr. Ethan Joella
Grade: A- (90)

After the midterm:
This course is 10 modules in 12 weeks. That's about a module a week. Each module, you'll read 1 (occasionally 2) rather long chapters of "International Relations" and an short (~10 page) article from "International Politics." A discussion post is due every week. Besides that, there are a midterm and final, and a final paper due.

There are 2 required books. I got older versions of these books for around $5 each and they work well.

• "International Relations" by Goldstein & Pevehouse. Just be careful on this one that you get a fairly recent version, only a couple years behind the current year. I got the 2011-2012 version and it's working great for this class I'm taking in 2014. It's an engaging book. You'll read this whole book in the class.
• "International Politics" by Art & Jervis. You only read a few articles from this one.

"International Relations" has an online companion (at MyPoliSciKit.com). GET IT. Even if you don't want to shell out $100 for a new book with the access code, that's ok. Get an older book and buy the access code (you can get it for about $35). I was blessed to able to get a free code from a fellow classmate who thought she didn't have one, and bought an extra, which she generously gave me when she realized she already had one. I thought I would be ok on the tests by just rereading the books. Nope. Once I got the online companion and went through the quizzes, I found out how much deeper I needed to go and what to study. They are great practice for the midterm, at least. There's a lot on the online site but the quizzes are what I'm using most, and they are super helpful.

I've taken the midterm. It's made up of 50 multiple choice questions.
-The questions come primarily from the IR book.
-I don't remember any Qs directly from the IP book; the articles there mainly focused on a concept or 2 from the IR book readings and helped in understanding that more. So the concept may have been tested on, but not info in the IP book itself.
-There were a lot of definition/identification type questions, and some application/scenario type ones.
-PAY ATTENTION TO EXAMPLES given in the book—you will be tested on some specific instances/incidents/happenings on history and/or current events.
-There were some tricky questions. When I tested, I was confident I would get a passing score because I was sure of the right answer on most of the definitions and identifications, but I also wanted to score as high as possible and those trick Qs really threw me.
-I ended up with 82% on the midterm.

My professor is Ethan Joella, and he's really nice. He's been posting a welcoming, upbeat message at the start of every module. He appreciates good discussions and gives some thoughts or questions every module. If you email him, he'll promptly get back to you.

The main thing I have about this course is that it's so busy! You have lots of reading and postings every week, plus 2 tests, plus a final 10-page paper. But that's because it is UL. Glad I'm only taking it with a much less busy LL class.

After the final:
Finished this course today.

Best part: the Final Paper you can write on any topic of IR you want, and which counts for 30% of your grade. I wrote about "how the Olympics relate to IR," which was super fun! The 10 online Discussion Forum posts (which count for 20% of your grade) were pretty fun too. My class was small (4 other students besides me) so we got to discuss concepts in depth.

Worst part: the 2 exams (midterm & final) which each count for 25% of your grade. The tests are mostly made up of terms, definitions, and such, but some Qs are tricky. You don't have much slack because each question counts for 2 points; missing 3 questions can drop you a whole letter grade on the test. I felt the final was easier than the midterm, but I scored about the same on it (B).

There was a lot about the UN, international integration, and globalization on the Final. For the tests, know basic things like Gandhi's leading India to independence through nonviolence and China's "one child" policy. But also, don't just know the facts and definitions—know several causes & effects, what happened before/after, and other related info (countries, laws, concepts... anything else in the same group).

*And the last 2 or 3 weeks of this course will get very busy because you'll have a DF post due every week, plus studying for the final, plus writing the final paper.

---> And hey! I just found the $35 companion site for the textbook online: for FREE. Just searched "international relations practice test" and up it came! Here: International Relations, 10/e That. Is super cool. YOU WILL NEED THIS site for the practice quizzes, so take note! The only thing it's missing that the paid site has is flashcards, but there are other sites where you can find those. If at some point this site doesn't work, you might need to buy an access code for $35 and go to http://www.MyPoliSciKit.com for the practice quizzes and other material. This site could very easily mean the difference between a pass and fail on the tests, so it is not a bad deal.

Amanda_Vinh on Quizlet has created flashcards for definitions and important things from each chapter of the textbook here: amanda_vinh | Quizlet

A couple more flashcard sets that might be helpful (I didn't get to use these much):
International Relations Midterm Flashcards - Cram.com --528
International Relations Final Exam Flashcards - Cram.com --312

I did well on the posts (all 100s) and the final paper (97%) but the tricky tests dragged my grade down to an A-. Oh well, it was a fun course

Mass Communications I
Dr. Casey Maugh
Grade: A (93)

>The course is 6 modules. (Less modules = less work.) There are like 5 Discussion Forum posts and 4 Written Assignments (each consulting of 2 or 3 essay questions) for the whole course. Quite laid-back.

>The textbook is pretty interesting. It covers the basics about communications (this IS an intro course) but it has sidebars, articles, fun facts and more that makes the subject fun.

>There is a midterm. It consists of 20 or so multiple-choice and true-false questions, and I think 3 essay questions. One note: one of the first chapters in the textbook is an overview of the history of media. Some Qs on the midterm will cover industries covered in the overview but not yet covered in depth in your readings to date. (Like, I got asked a question on the radio industry even though we hadn't gotten to the chapter on that yet, but it'd been covered in the overview.)

--->This is the companion website. Very helpful, especially in prep for the midterm.

>My professor was Casey Maugh. She graded slowly but was nice and cheerful. She rarely got on the discussion boards. Put thought, examples, and personal experiences into your papers, and you'll do well.

>Also, use the textbook and at least 1 other source (more is better) in each of your papers. My professor appreciated when I did that—enough that she told me so.

>The Final Paper is 5-7 pages long, and you need 8 or more sources—this wasn't a problem for me. Your topic will be something about how some aspect of the digital age has affected an area of communication (books, radio, music industry, movies...). I wrote on how the Internet affects new movies. I got a B+ on my final paper. Pay attention to this in the directions for the final paper: "Part of your paper must include an assessment of how you gained information about your topic. For example, you need to assess the importance of your sources in terms of actual information that contributed to your learning about your topic. Also, assess how accessible each of your sources was—what did you have to do to actually get the material? You will probably want to discuss the Internet and its role as a new mass medium, especially if you used the Internet for your research."

>I got 100s on my written assignments, a B (86) on the midterm and with this final grade, am up to an A in the course (93).

>Pay attention to the syllabus (it's easy to overlook directions) but have fun—this is a relaxed, easy course.

[Westerner]

Well, I logged in to my Online Student Services and went to review my transcript to see if they added my last 2 courses...and had a major scare. They'd put me under the new catalog with all the new Gen Ed reqs! :ack: I frantically called TESC up and explained the situation. After 1/2 an hour on the phone with the Registrar, the lady couldn't find any reason why the catalog was switched and just changed it back. Thank God!

[KayV]

Whew! Crisis averted! Congratulations!

[HorseManiac]

Wow, that's scary!! Thank goodness they were able to fix it for you!

[Westerner]

Thanks, guys! Yes, sure glad it turned out as well as it did :eek:

And today... I got a letter from TESC approving me for the June graduation!!! :hurray:

[corpsole2]

Great! I am so happy for you! It is such a great feeling knowing you have accomplished this! I'll bet you will take out your diploma at least once a day for a while just to look at it, sort of as a reassurance that you did it.

And thanks so much for your help in getting my history degree, especially for letting me use your thesis as a template!

Good luck!

[topdog98]

Congratulations! It has been fun (and inspiring!) watching your progress.

[AkBunti]

Congrats, hoping mine gets here soon. :o

Thanks, guys! Yes, sure glad it turned out as well as it did :eek:

And today... I got a letter from TESC approving me for the June graduation!!! :hurray: