- Jun 8, 2016
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One issue,especially if the prof is new, is often overestimating how quickly students can solve problems. My rule of thumb is if I can solve a 50 min exam in 20 min that is the right amount of problems/degree of difficulty.
Posing the question about the purpose of playing college softball….
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- May 27, 2013
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Yeah. My friend’s dd went to UNC on scholarship for Fockey. Wanted to be a nurse. Obviously couldn’t play Fockey as a nursing major, but played the sport all 4 years of college. Now at Penn going for her nursing degree. That’s a lot of money to be spent for essentially almost another 4 years of school. I told her to just have her go to community college - but she was adamant about getting her BSN.
Haha, my story to a "T".. Physics II class was graded 100% on a curve, "sounds great" I say. Anyway, first test average was 43%. I came in slightly higher, I think 51 or so. Young me thinks, great I've got some padding.
Then drop day happened and absolutely blew out the curve. Ugh.. I remember sitting on a true D-/F going into the final. "D" for done!
I bet that professor knew what he was doing and liked it (well maybe not the last part!)
- Jun 8, 2016
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I have a colleague who went to an IIT. In some of their classes the grades were ranked eg top 10% got an A, etc. So in theory you could have an 80% and fail if you were in the bottom of the class
(I doubt it worked out that way but it sure did promote competition amongst students 
)
my dd graduated college in 2020. She said her freshman year the first semester they lost about 2/3rds of the engineering program freshmen. The second semester another big chunk disappeared.
Take a look at the CoSIDA Academic All-District Softball Team Honorees if you want to get a feel for what these student athletes are doing...this link breaks it down well and you can see the schools, majors, GPA, etc.. Some interesting observations can be made about the difference in Divisions and Majors.
academicallamerica.com
Again, everyone goes to school for their own reasons and gets different things out of it. It would be hard to write about all the nuances involved on a forum like this...someone should write a book.
2022 AAD Softball (PDF) - Academic All-America
academicallamerica.com
Again, everyone goes to school for their own reasons and gets different things out of it. It would be hard to write about all the nuances involved on a forum like this...someone should write a book.
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@pattar
I still have nightmares about about integral calculus. It was part 2 of a 3 part series. The school was transitioning from quarters to semesters...so, if you missed the class, you would have to start calculus all over again in 9 months. And, as you know, it was a pre-requisite for all the engineering courses.
The professor was a coach for the men's gymnastic team. The star gymnast...who was a shoo in for the Olympics...broke his neck on a mini trampoline and died about a month into the term. The professor was supposed to be supervising him when he fell.
The prof had a mental breakdown. He couldn't teach at all. He would come in and scribble on the blackboard for 50 minutes, and meander from topic to topic, sometimes philosophizing. He explained nothing. No homework was reviewed, nothing. He had no office hours. I made a 20/100 on the midterm, and that was a good score. He gave no other tests.
This was the first and last time I learned anything only from books. I went to the library and pulled out old text books and read them. The books from 1950s and 1960s were really good because they taught integral calculus before differential...so the explanations were much clearer. I also got a Schaums outline. I think I did every problem.
He announced 2 weeks before the end that he was throwing out the midterm, and the final grade would be determined by the final.
The math department told him he had to meet with us in person, two at a time, to tell us our grades.
I got an A, but that was the worst academic experience of my life.
I still have nightmares about about integral calculus. It was part 2 of a 3 part series. The school was transitioning from quarters to semesters...so, if you missed the class, you would have to start calculus all over again in 9 months. And, as you know, it was a pre-requisite for all the engineering courses.
The professor was a coach for the men's gymnastic team. The star gymnast...who was a shoo in for the Olympics...broke his neck on a mini trampoline and died about a month into the term. The professor was supposed to be supervising him when he fell.
The prof had a mental breakdown. He couldn't teach at all. He would come in and scribble on the blackboard for 50 minutes, and meander from topic to topic, sometimes philosophizing. He explained nothing. No homework was reviewed, nothing. He had no office hours. I made a 20/100 on the midterm, and that was a good score. He gave no other tests.
This was the first and last time I learned anything only from books. I went to the library and pulled out old text books and read them. The books from 1950s and 1960s were really good because they taught integral calculus before differential...so the explanations were much clearer. I also got a Schaums outline. I think I did every problem.
He announced 2 weeks before the end that he was throwing out the midterm, and the final grade would be determined by the final.
The math department told him he had to meet with us in person, two at a time, to tell us our grades.
I got an A, but that was the worst academic experience of my life.
- Jun 8, 2016
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The unfortunate situation with your prof aside, teaching today is different. I have been teaching for 16 years and the change in the last 5-10 years is pretty dramatic. Because of the environment they grew up in many of today’s students don’t learn the way us old fogies did. They want all the information they need to be successful to be given to them in lecture and they want it in a short, succinct form. Most would never think of doing the bolded in your comment.
These are just the facts, so we as professors need to figure out a way to meet them halfway. Give them more of what they are used to while also letting them know that sometimes sitting yourself down the library for a few hours (unplugged) is necessary as well.
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- Jul 29, 2016
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I hate to depart from this fascinating tangent on this thread about engineering classes, but I'm intrigued about the question OP asked. Why do girls play softball in college?
Only the top 0.1% will ever see a career on the fringes of softball. My daughter's hitting coach played in the ACC and has built a vibrant business doing private lessons in her own facility. The very top drawer players can play professionally, but the pay is abysmal. Who has made a good living out of softball? Jenny Finch and the top 20 college coaches. Patrick Murphy's annual salary averages out to around $300K. That's good money, especially in Tuscaloosa, but he'd be doing far better if he had gone to business school or law school or med school.
My daughter was being casually recruited by a mid-major, but extra eligibility because of Covid made it unlikely that she'd see the field (or even travel) until she was a junior. So she started looking at D3 schools, fell in love with a school, the campus, and then the coach. No athletic money, but they were generous with academic money and even squeezed a few more dollars out of the purse when we asked. But we'll still be coming out of pocket what amounts to a new car every year.
But here's the thing - we'd be thrilled for her to go to the school she chose even if she never picked up a bat. She got into every other school she applied to (the other three would cost us almost nothing), but she chose the school where she could play softball, make an immediate impact on the team, and get a world-class education. They probably won't have a shot at a conference title, but who really cares about who wins D3 conference championships?
And I think it's the same for most girls who play softball in college. Some of them play JUCO or at very small state schools because they couldn't afford college otherwise. But I think most of the girls play the sport because they love it. They pick the school where they're going to get to play, knowing that when they graduate from college they're hanging up the cleats forever. She'll get a degree from a very good school with a great graduate network, will go on the graduate school, and probably won't put on her glove again until she's teaching her own daughter how to play.
Only the top 0.1% will ever see a career on the fringes of softball. My daughter's hitting coach played in the ACC and has built a vibrant business doing private lessons in her own facility. The very top drawer players can play professionally, but the pay is abysmal. Who has made a good living out of softball? Jenny Finch and the top 20 college coaches. Patrick Murphy's annual salary averages out to around $300K. That's good money, especially in Tuscaloosa, but he'd be doing far better if he had gone to business school or law school or med school.
My daughter was being casually recruited by a mid-major, but extra eligibility because of Covid made it unlikely that she'd see the field (or even travel) until she was a junior. So she started looking at D3 schools, fell in love with a school, the campus, and then the coach. No athletic money, but they were generous with academic money and even squeezed a few more dollars out of the purse when we asked. But we'll still be coming out of pocket what amounts to a new car every year.
But here's the thing - we'd be thrilled for her to go to the school she chose even if she never picked up a bat. She got into every other school she applied to (the other three would cost us almost nothing), but she chose the school where she could play softball, make an immediate impact on the team, and get a world-class education. They probably won't have a shot at a conference title, but who really cares about who wins D3 conference championships?
And I think it's the same for most girls who play softball in college. Some of them play JUCO or at very small state schools because they couldn't afford college otherwise. But I think most of the girls play the sport because they love it. They pick the school where they're going to get to play, knowing that when they graduate from college they're hanging up the cleats forever. She'll get a degree from a very good school with a great graduate network, will go on the graduate school, and probably won't put on her glove again until she's teaching her own daughter how to play.
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- Oct 3, 2019
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I can only imagine what these players go through with these monster coaches. Just in the last 2 weeks, there are horror stories about Cynthia Cooper-Dyke and Teri McKeever, different sports, but I'm sure, it's all the same. Kids and parents need to be careful of what they wish for. Not sure there's an adequate way to vet these coaches since it seems there's every effort to bury this information and cover it up. Even the players are reluctant to spill the beans.
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