Righteous anger

I am sure anyone who has taken introductory college courses can empathize with the following situation: You are in some introductory requirement course or another, lets say English 101 for example. Everyone has to take this course so you and your friend end up signing up for it, only at different times with different instructors. As the weeks go by, you find yourself reading obscure treatises on the history of the umlaut and its effect on the present day English language and writing 15,000 word essays on dangling participles while your friend watches obscure French films and, if there is time, tosses off the occasional haiku. At the end of it all, you work your every loving ass off for a solid C+, which you are inexpressibly proud of because half the class failed while your friend sleeps through their final and makes a B+ because their aura was especially pink that day. Or, the exact opposite of this happens. It is really luck of the draw. You just have to accept it as the random event that it is.....or maybe your aura just wasn't especially pink at that time or place in your life (presuming, of course, that a pink aura is a good thing). When it pisses you off is when that same class and same instructor yields two disparate experiences. It pisses me off anyway.

To get down to brass tacks, the following situation has evolved: Our class is split up into 2 cohorts; A and B. Cohort A began in OB/Peds and is doing the med/surg rotation presently. Cohort B is my cohort. Cohort A managed to achieve an 18pt improvement over our first exam in med/surg and managed to better our averages on the first two exams in OB/Ped as well. Cohort A is over-represented at the top of our class academically, and not by sheer chance. What I found out today is that they got a much more focused study guide in MS (med/surg) detailing specific places to look for answers in the text, had questions that were used and counted against us in MS removed because they were deemed too difficult, had questions dropped from exams in OB/Peds (OP) because they didnt have MS previously and, to top it off, that the exams have been made harder for us in OP because we have had MS. This is all the more aggravating because we will be judged on a level playing field. Meanwhile my cohort is essentially running up hill. If I haven't expressed my disgust for this program lately, my apologies for being lax in that regard. It truly sucks.

Speaking of things sucking, I leave you with one final, and quite poignant example. Today there were questions brought up in regards to validity in OP. The situation that has arisen on both exams thus far is that material that is being tested on is not being covered until future readings. So, we are being asked questions on, for example, APGAR scores, without having exposure to any information about them until the readings for the next examination. A very clear problem with validity. When this was brought up the instructor said, and this is a DIRECT quote (you cannot make this shit up), "So, what you are saying is that you want me to only question you from material we have covered?" As if this was some kind of foreign concept and we were asking her to make unreasonable accommodations on our behalf. At this point, she could test us on the season premiere of Lost and not be any less valid.

And to think I get to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. My aura must the be opposite of pink lately.