Help. To drop with a 'w' or tough it out?

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Hello everyone,

Firstly, sorry for the long post.

I am done with all of my pre reqs for nursing and apply in January. However, I have 3 more gen ed classes to take. Currently, I am taking an online Political Science course. This professor has a bad reputation as far as being straight forward and grading goes. I have taken another class of his in the past on campus and received at A (he has extremely high drop/F rates) so I know I am capable of a good grade. However, this was two years ago.

Two weeks ago the class started and myself as well as other classmates noticed there were no exam dates, exams, due dates for our paper, etc. There were only reading assignments. Many of us contacted the professor with no response on his end. There were no dates on the syllabus either.

Finally, a week later he informed me that the first exam is in a week and that the exams are on the website. He also said I am the only one that has complained (not true, many students have and even did so on our public discussion board that the prof can see). He told other students the same thing. We asked what the exam will be on and he did not respond.

It seemed as if he was insinuating that we were just not seeing things properly and that we were lazy by his responses to others. Nearly another week went by and still no exams/due dates posted. Nor did we know what chapters the exam will be on. I had classmates contacting me at 3 am freaking out over this not knowing what to do. Over these past two weeks I have been in constant contact with my counselor. My counselor got a hold of the head of the online education dept. today and it was fixed literally within minutes. However, my prof. did not notify students of this update so I took it upon myself contact my classmates.

The exam is 4 days from now. My counselor didn't seem to think it was too much of a big deal but I think it is. To have no contact with students for that long and to not fix a huge problem is not ok in my opinion. This is a 10 week course as apposed to the normal 16 week course.

Am I overreacting and being a baby? Several others students are angry and some will be dropping. We only have exams and a paper (which we didn't know until now either) so there is no room for a bad exam grade.

I have a high GPA and I do not want this class to ruin that but I will have a W as my college does not allow no notations during the summer. I already have two W's on my transcript (none of these W's are for pre nursing classes though, just gen eds). But I still think a W looks bad.

There are many other professors that teach the class and teach it well with a great reviews and gpa and I can always take it in the Fall.

Should I complain to the vice president? I don't want to be "that" person but it has been a long two weeks of stress, constant emailing, being ignored, studying far more chapters than I should have been etc. I don't think this type of behavior is ok. Many students have complained about this specific prof. in the past and nothing has ever been fixed. Is it even worth trying?

Thanks everyone for listening to my ranting! :)

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Specializes in Cardiac, CVICU.

I had a similar situation with my American History class. The professor loved to fail students, so I took the CLEP test and passed. The registrar just dropped the class for me took the whole class off my record (so no withdraw mark). They put the history credit on the previous semester, so I wasn't charged extra for the credits.

See if you can take a competency test (like the CLEP) or switch to another class. A "W" looks better than a "Fail" in my opinon. Although, talk with your academic advisor and registrar first before anything!

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Cardiology..

Wow. My bf is currently in grad school to be a political science professor. Are you really behind in this class? Perhaps you can catch up and avoid that 'W' on your transcript.

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Thank you for your response. I am not behind as there are zero assignments, just the exams and the papers and I have been keeping up on my reading. However, this is the second week of class and the prof. has been non existent since the first day and had no timeline. Two weeks have gone by of myself and classmates attempting to contact him with no response. So we did not know we were to have an exam on Sunday until today. To be honest, he just contacted several of us and he was very rude about it saying we were confused. Not the case. I had my counselor log onto my account to prove what I was seeing.

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Thank you for your advice! I will look into that! Hopefully they will allow me to drop the class. I'll be driving up to the school tomorrow (it's an hour away). I'll more than likely speak with the Vice President as well. He is still not admitting to his mistake and saying several of us were "confused" when in reality the exams were never listed nor was there a timeline and he's insinuating they were the whole time. About ten students complained. Never experienced this before. So strange.

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That is bull. I can't stand when teachers dick around like that. Honestly I think if I was in your shoes I would drop just because I think a W you could explain versus an F. I have just dropped two courses last semester and receive W's for both simply because I couldn't balance work with them. Even though W's aren't good on your transcript they can be explained but just don't make a habit of recurring. I think you will be fine :)

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