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These last two school terms have been insufferable! Like, wearing-my-shoulders-as-earrings, can’t-move-my-neck, horrid-headaches insufferable. So, we have the issues with financial aid that are still ongoing and who knows when they will be resolved. This is with Adam and me calling student financial services nearly every day and getting such varying responses that eventually culminate in us being told my case is being reviewed. The case has been reviewed since September, supposedly 🙄. The people at SNHU’s financial office are very kind and sympathetic, but they don’t know what’s going on half the time — as we say here, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing.
Neither Adam nor I get why things are not moving faster on SNHU’s financial aid department’s part because they have not been paid for my last two terms, which is around $3,000, give or take. They aren’t even getting my Pell grants and whatever else I qualify for that I don’t have to pay back. I have yet to graduate, but that is somewhat on me, but not really.
Because of the recent next-level AI emergence, professors/instructors have been on an unofficial AI witch hunt without any official regulations in place, which has made classes a nightmare not just for me, but loads of SNHU online students who post in the Facebook group. Apparently, which I have witnessed firsthand, students simply cannot sound intelligent/professional and do the work on their own, so must all be utilizing AI. The work then gets sent for review, and I have yet to see any students being found guilty, for lack of a better term that I can’t think of right now.
My work was submitted to the review board more than once last term by the instructor, who whined incessantly about AI in the announcements without providing any proof we students were using it, but that didn’t stop the instructor from failing my assignments as well as my discussion posts and bitching about vagueness and originality, like I was thinking too much and not using enough quotes, which are flagged by TurnItIn as plagiarism; a key reason I prefer to paraphrase and cite instead of quoting 🙄. These fails were after I submitted my work to the college’s writing center and received positive feedback from them, save the discussion posts, which aren’t worth much.
I am an A student except for applied statistics, which I got a C+. The only problems I have had with my grades have been issues with the instructors, like the Shakespeare bitch giving me a zero for a fully formed and thought-out PowerPoint (which should have garnered some points since I did the assignment, even if she wanted to stick me with an F).
I failed last term’s seminar class, which is a capstone, and I chose a different class (I’ve covered this in previous posts) and received the same instructor. This is my last class before graduating. I emailed my student advisor and explicitly told him I would rather not graduate than have to deal with a certain instructor again. He was of no help, told me to stick it out and do my best, blah, blah, blah, and so I started the class. I got the same instructor I spoke to my advisor about.
The first three multiparagraph discussion posts got Fs again and my first milestone (just the paper intro and thesis statement) got a C- with completely unhelpful feedback and accusatory language again. My introduction and thesis statement were checked at the writing center, and they had no problem identifying the thesis and approving it and the introduction. I am dealing with enough stress because of financial aid, unpaid bills, and just a whopping amount of stress, so I stopped participating after week 3. I don’t have the spoons to deal with this guy for another full eight weeks.
I absolutely will not take one of these classes again if I get the same instructor. My degree is for me, and I have principles and a very hard stance regarding them. Obviously, I want to graduate, but I do not handle stress well and it manifests physically, which I cannot tolerate. I am done trying to conform, especially when it is not beneficial to the situation.
Cari R Esta 