A Painful Start to My "EXAM" Journey
Last night was my first "exam" class - figure I would stay out of trouble by not referring to it by name. Using one word to summarize: Painful. The topic was Ethics - extremely straightforward and relatively short in comparison to some of the more technical sections (like quant and accounting)..... I have taken more securities exams than I care to remember on the topic, so I didn't need to worry about this section too much.
The lecturer sounded like a used-car salesman and started the lesson by telling everyone that they didn't need to do any of the reading before the lecture on whatever that week's subject is - what the hell! I figured we would all come in having seen the material already and the class would be a chance to reinforce the material and answer any lingering questions - Nope. Instead, he plans on using it as an introduction to the material, with the individual work done afterwards.... well, I'm not doing it that way, end of story, and I find it appalling that the lecturer would say that. I think that's stupid and counterproductive.
He droned on for over 3.5 hours, when he said we'd be out early for a topic that should have taken 2 hours tops.... He already warned us that long sections could go on for 4 hours -- if this took 3.5hrs, how will we complete longer, more complex subjects in only 30min more? Not a good sign. He had one of those crazy pens that could write on the screen of his computer that we could see on the projector and totally overdid it. He wrote out word for word every note he wanted us to write in our lecture notes... which slowed down everything considerably. Then when he got about 5 pages from the end, he realized that we were close to the end of the class and suddenly picked up the pace dramatically, blatently leaving stuff out -- on the last slide he actually used the term "blah, blah, blah" to describe the material - thanks, helpful.... I spent the last hour doing work I had (thankfully) brought with me from the office.
Luckily, the class is on my way home (as if that's even possible since I live a block away!!!!!) and by 9:40pm I was in my Pjs with a glass of wine in my hands... I feel bad for all of the other students in the class that have to get home, especially those guys in the suburbs that have to come in to the city for the class.... rush hour traffic to get in on time and a drive home around 10pm afterwards - that must be awful....
It's going to be a long 5 months....