Is this normal?

[OBplease]

I posted last week about feeling weak...it's way worse this week. I completed my essay questions yesterday and it took me most of the day. It was 5 pages long and I didn't answer one question because I had been doing it the majority of the day and the one I didn't answer was worth 1 point for a page of written work. I haven't read the chapter yet because I had to spend the weekend on my other two classes since I had been neglecting them for this course.

Anyway, I have been testing and reading today for the other two courses again, which leaves me to do my lab and a quiz tomorrow. My lab is 11 pages long and that is just the answers, not the list of vessels we are also supposed to learn for lab or the 10 or so slides and animations. Here is the thing though, 11 pages isn't even the most. Two chapters from now, I have one that 18 pages. Then there is a quiz tomorrow and one the next day.

I wrote the instructor (who I also had last semester for AP1) and asked her for some advice on how to handle the work load and to ask if maybe I was providing too much info in my essay questions because it was taking so long to get done. She just said that she was having trouble keeping up with all the extra work too and that she was going to cut some of it off but it won't be done until next semester. She also said she is planning on going back to the CD we used last semester for the other book.

I have no idea what I should do. I don't feel like I can keep up with it. I feel like I could probably do it all day

everyday and not be able to do it all. I got an A in AP1 but this is about 80-90 pages a week, the 5-10 page essay questions times two, 11-18 page labs plus learning structures times two, two quizzes and I have no time for anything else let alone actually catch up on PSYC. I don't know if I should drop? The thing is if I am having this much trouble now and not being able to do much in my other classes, it doesn't appear it would do me much good to only take this next semester. I would feel awesome if I could get a B at this point. I just don't see how I can keep up with the work load.

[kwheeler83]

I have noticed that most schools allow the professors to design the class however they would like to. My AP1 class was just like that and I look a semester off from the course because I couldnt take the stress. Looking back, the decision I should've made was withdraw from the class and take it next semester. I'm not saying thats what you should do. But if you think you are not going to get the grade you want, it might be a good idea.

In my AP class their was no essays. Wow thats amazing!

[OBplease]

I think I'm going to drop tomorrow. I had my mind made last night that I would just do it and accept whatever grade I got and go ahead and try to apply in Jan. and if I got in, I got in. However, after doing my lab today....3/4 of the day and not ever getting to the slides I needed to study for tomorrow's quiz, I decided it's not worth it. I feel sick. Literally, I feel sick and my neck is a mess. This seems to just be a cycle for each chapter.

I emailed my instructor and told her. I'm waiting back to hear if I can go ahead and work through the chapters and reviews to see if they will be good for next semester. They are straight out of the book. I'm just going to take my time and really try to understand it so that I can spend next semester doing the work.

I hope I am making the right decision. This is really upsetting to me.

[JROregon, ASN, BSN, RN]

WOW, all I can say is that your instructor has assigned way too much work. My instructors gave us lab homework assignments that amounted to about an hour of homework and we had another hour of work while we were in our 3 hour lab class. For lectures, we had about an hour or 2 per week of papers to turn in. Any write-in questions were brief and to the point. It's not a writing class. We had a ton of reading but I eventually learned better ways to understand the information. You just happened to get an instructor who gives the class way too much busy work. Try to catch your instructor during office hours and have her look over your work to see if you are putting too much into it. If that's how much work she wants, she's being completely unrealistic and I would drop the class and take it with a different instructor. Look at teacher rating sites.

[OBplease]

She said the problem is the new book (more pages= more written and more labs). She said she is going to cut off some of the written work for next semester.....but that's not until next semester. It's on online class so everything that is due is already issued. I still think she could go through and cut some of it out or issue an email that says dont do such and such this week but I'm not an instructor so what do I know. She said is struggling to get all the Qs plugged in for the quizzes herself. She said the school said they weren't being hard enough of the students going into nursing but

I tell you I honestly feel like this is way more in depth that it should be. She is the same one I had for last semester and all was well. I am pretty bummed but I already feel a lot better, physically. I just pray this doesn't reflect on how I will do with nursing school.

[JROregon, ASN, BSN, RN]

I can understand the new text but she should be able to tell which items are critical and which are just over work. We have an instructor at our school who likes to assign a couple of short research papers along with all the other A&P homework and classwork. Great instructor. Thankfully I only had him for one term and only for the lab so I didn't write any papers for him. He did allow his students to research what interested them and he also cut back on the lab work if he saw it was taking too long. He would do it right on the spot.

[lifelearningrn, BSN, RN]

I'm curious.. how do you do labs online?

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. I'm taking four classes this semester and I've been neglecting my one online class (lifespan) because the in person classes are getting so time consuming. I know how you feel!

It sounds like this class has way too much work.. maybe they want to make online science harder to make sure you absorb it?

[OBplease]

AP1s labs were matching and short answers. They were usually a couple of pages and then there would be lists of structures we had to memorize using a lab CD with dissected cadavers, we had lab quizzes and exams that were labeling and the cadaver pictures were straight from the CD. We also had to test from the CD on animations (which were physiology animations) and on structures just as part of our lab assignment. There were usually several to be turned in with the lab assignment.

AP2 was more fill in the blank but instead of matching, it's more reading physiology sentences and inserting the correct term in blanks (as apposed to inserting a letter from a list), some listing of things, and lists of structures to learn from two different CDs and an atlas. There were also some slides and animations but I never really got to them (and that was part of why I did go ahead and drop today). I liked the old CD we used better, just the way it was laid out and the testing functions. That really helped me to learn structures the best. The instructor is hoping to go back to that CD next semester.