When your class has you drowning under piles and piles of demanding homework, the last thing you want to hear is, “I’m in that class and it’s so easy.”
Being in ENGL 2000 this past semester has made me want to pull my hair out. My course has been treated as a 4000-level class rather than a prerequisite. From day one, I was flooded with assignments that are unnecessarily complex for a class where all of the students are required to take it.
You can imagine my surprise when I found out from several people that ENGL 2000 is their easiest class.
“We literally did nothing.”
“My professor was the best.”
“Why did y’all do all of that?”
I wish I knew. It’s upsetting to hear that other students enrolled in the same class had it so easy while I had to suffer through an excruciating course.
There needs to be a conversation over the fairness of how courses are administered at LSU.
All professors teach differently. They have different styles, and that’s okay. I’m not saying we need to strip educators of their free will and authority in the workspace. Making every professor teach the exact same material in the exact same way would be just as unfair as the work disparity among students taking the same course.
However, we do need some structure to how professors format their courses. We need an outline, even if it’s loose, that ensures the same students in the same class aren’t doing drastically different things.
Admittedly, LSU has tried to integrate margins. It requires each instructor’s syllabus to contain the same minimal topics, with the layout and exact content being up to the professor.
Is “minimal” precisely defined? Are there restrictions placed on the “layout and exact content” professors are allowed to include?
For ENGL 2000 specifically, we can assume these minimal topics mean the requirements every ENGL 2000 section must meet: at least three major writing projects, with standards attached to these essays; at least one oral presentation and/or technological component; and students working collaboratively on at least one project.
On paper, it reads as enough to ensure fairness among courses.
Student reality is different, and isn’t that what matters most?
I’ve heard from other ENGL 2000 students that their course was even more difficult than mine, while others say that their course expected absolutely no heavy lifting whatsoever.
Too much here is subjective. All these professors who teach differently also have different interpretations of how much effort their students should be putting in to meet their requirements.
If workload and project complexity vary this drastically in courses, then that foundation isn’t actually equal. It’s not about wanting an easy A. It’s a call for consistency.
There should be clearer guidelines tackling the scope of assignments. What constitutes a major project? How many additional assignments are reasonable? What is considered an appropriate workload for a 2000-level course?
The answers should be defined enough that students don’t feel punished for ending up in the “wrong” section of a required course.
Education is already demanding enough without adding unpredictability into the mix. If one student is describing their experience in a course as drowning, and another as nothing, then something clearly isn’t working.
Lauren Johnson is a 19-year-old mass communication major from New Orleans.
