As melancholic as the title of this post is, do not worry. The title is only in reference to Michelle Featherstone's song of the same name, and not my inner depressed feelings.
The term has unofficially ended two days ago. This is a reflection on the past four or five months marked as the first college semester of my life. In order for me to do this in an organized way, I will begin by re-grading my professors/teachers. If you can recall (which I doubt you would since you are nonexistent), I posted shall I say 'advisory grades' for my teachers the first time I ever met them. And after five months of getting to know them, I can now make a more accurate evaluation.
Chem 1: General Chemistry, lecture
Sir Leo Yambot
The first teacher I had graded was Sir Leo. Yes, we call him Sir Leo. After five months, I must bring his grade down to a B. Perhaps that is because... that's the grade I expect I'm getting haha. But no, seriously. Teaching-wise I guess he's okay. He never deviated from the PPT road. He occasionally had 'demos' where he did some really quick chemistry experiments. His PPTs, which end up as PDFs on the Yahoo! Groups site, provide only the gist, and if there is a question on problem solving, the space is blank. That's not much of a problem, but I find it annoying that I can't check if my answer is correct or not.
The biggest flaw Sir Leo has is actually in his personality. He is still the same cool, chill teacher I labeled him as in my first post, but he just has such high expectations from us just because we're ME students. And he is somewhat sarcastic, though he had never displayed any acts of sarcasm. He has the ability to make you look really stupid haha. It never happened to me but... well, it's really annoying. Another thing I find impossible about him is his LE's or Long Exams. Problem solving is easy, it's a wuss, but when it comes to the multiple choice... it's EASY, but somehow my answers are incorrect. And the problem with that is he only gives us back our answer keys, but not the questionnaire, so I don't have the option to complain if ever there were a mistake or something.
Grade: B
For future students: He's not totally hard. You just have to study and have a background in Chem that's already good. I didn't study as hard as I'd like to have, but I had a pretty decent background in Chem from High school. If you have him at 7h30AM like I did then try not to fall asleep. Or maybe that was only me... if he feels the class isn't listening he's gonna give you a quiz or ask you a lightning-speed question that will make you feel stupid if you weren't able to answer it. He somewhat scorns the smart students (Ryan Yu especially) I have no idea why.
Chem 2: General Chemistry, laboratory
Eunice Biteng
I gave her an advisory grade of B+ the first time I met her, which I now up to an A. That's also not because I got an A, okay! There seems to be a trend but it will break in the next one.
Ma'am Eunice--actually that's not what we call her at all, I bet only about 3% of the class know her actual name without looking it up at AISIS--is awesome! I thought she'd be moody but she remained consistent all throughout. She's not an OJ teacher, but neither is she grumpy. She wears an expression on her face that makes her seem angry and unapproachable, especially since she's always fanning herself with whatever's on her hand (it's not *that* hot in the lab...). But she makes the occasional, light joke and she prefers NOT to make final exams so she tries to give everyone an A.
In Chem lab, we have a workbook thing with lab reports at the end of every experiment. So the trend goes, we do the experiment and pass the lab report the next week. Our lab report isn't, like, an essay or research paper-type thing. It's a table of data that we fill out while doing the experiment, with some short essay questions about the principles involved in the experiment. It's really hard to fail it, but you won't always get perfect. Take note, I said 'perfect'. Usually these things are out of 30-40. If you didn't get 40 (which is, if you think about it, REALLY easy to get) you'd just get like 39 or 38. You must be really dumb already if you get like, 28. No offense.
Grade: A
For future students: She's a gem. If you do the experiments correctly, submit your lab reports with substantial answers from legit resources (that are cited), you'd get an A for sure. Even if you'd get low on her midterm and reporting. I got a 28/40, bombed the reporting because of lack of research outside the book, but I still got an A. In our class, only 5 people weren't fully exempted from the midterm. Three of those five were B+, exempted with the option to take the test risk-free, and the other two really had to take it.
Math 18 a/b: Principles of Modern Mathematics I/II
Dr. Ian June L. Garces
Oh, dear Lord. I can't explain this. If you're *really* brilliant in Math, you'd find him enjoyable because he challenges you. But if you're scraping the bottom like I am, you're gonna have a hard time keeping your head above water. But this is on the academic level. As a person, Dr. Garces is an absolute delight. The fear I felt the first time I met him, and the dread I felt of meeting him again everyday, was replaced by... eagerness to see him everyday. He was never mean and he is very virtuous, you know? He's firm in his beliefs and he believes in what's good and that it doesn't matter if you're smart, as long as you do the right thing always. He also makes a lot of jokes, and when he laughs or smiles you just feel like laughing and smiling with him too.
The grade I decided to give him is a B+. And obviously, it is not my grade, it's not even close haha. I cannot give him an A because it's sometimes confusing when he discusses since he doesn't follow the book. And he's also very sensitive, so you always have to be careful of what you say and how you act because he can just threaten to walk out of your class. There isn't much I can say about him.
Grade: B+
For the future students: You've all heard it, he's a terror, he's a terror. Don't take that into heart because he's actually really nice. Just be careful of what you say. Do NOT be noisy in his class, don't hum or sing, don't EVER interrupt him unless you raise your hand to ask a question. His tests will be hard. If you love Math, you'll appreciate him because he loves it, too. He gives you a lot of fun Math trivia. If you're afraid you're not that good at Math, just... keep calm and keep swimming haha. You'll get out of the water eventually. And if by chance, you were eaten by a shark or something, you can't say you didn't try.
English 11: Communication in English I
Sir Roy Agustin
First of all, I retain my grade of an A. He is still by far the coolest teacher I've had. He reminds me of Ted Mosby Bob Saget version. He always has some interesting sings to say albeit rather repetitive. You do learn a lot from him because he knows what he's doing. The only problem is that he gives relatively low grades. He never gives an A. He gives B's if it was okay and B+'s to those who have both depth and content. But the fact that he doesn't give A's... kind of doesn't make me want to lower his grade haha. My expected grade for this subject is a B because that was my advisory grade, and he has nothing else to base our grades on besides our feature article, evaluation paper and the bonus magazine. I realize we only had like four or five papers the entire semester.
I'm happy to say he's still my teacher next sem, yes, I said happy. I may not get an A, but there's always the saying that it's not about the grades, but it's about the learning, right? And I don't know if I'd learn as much with another teacher. He has had a lot of odd jobs, that I find amusing. Of them he mentioned: working for his dad's construction company, overseeing the remodeling of fancy hotels in Manila (where he had numerous encounters with ghosts, he can't see them but there's always a construction worker that can), working for his dad's laundry company (where he got into a verbal fight with a customer who complained that the lady my teacher's dad's company sent was rude), and as an editor for a bunch of books. I guess the last one isn't that odd.
Grade: A
For future students: If you're in it for the A, avoid him if possible. If you wanna have fun in class and have your teacher sit on the teachers table and talk about interesting stories, then he's good for you. He's an alumni, so he can tell you about what's hidden under the Church of the Gesu ;)
Lit 13: Introduction to Fiction
Miss Rachelle Torreon
I also upped her grade from a B+ to an A because she's awesome. She's very nice. In our class, we're always laughing (most times though not with her). She doesn't like noise but she can take it up to a certain level, and then she'll get mad. She thinks all your ideas are good, regardless if they are incorrect haha. She's one of those teachers who communicate with their students well. She likes all students. I think partly why our class is very fun is because of her chemistry with Mark Koa hahaha. It's nothing romantic. Mark makes a comment and Miss Torreon gives him a glare and we all laugh. You had to be there. Oh, and she's also my Lit 14 teacher next sem--yay!
Grade: A
For future students: She's great. Try not to make fun of her (oh, you will find the opportunity) because she's really doing a good job. You can push her, just make sure you know where the line is. Wait, don't LITERALLY push her. You can push her to curve your grades (although this theory still needs proof, we only managed it once when she gave back our quizzes and seatworks). HAHAHA what a coincidence, she just accepted my friend request on Facebook.
Fil 11: Sining... blabla.. Pakikipagtalastasan... blabla
Dr. Michael M. Coroza
I never gave him a grade, but I'll give him a... B, I guess. He's not terrible, though. Actually my first impression (without seeing him yet) was that he was a terror prof because according to my TLC, Aldrich, he was one. He was arrogant, and he digressed from the topic a lot, which was true. But week after week of more Coroza I began to kinda like him. Sure, he did digress A LOT. We'd be talking about one thing and end up talking about Titanic. He is arrogant but in the joking way, like, "Well, I did win a Palanca award..." and stuff like that. A bad thing about him is that, compared to my other friends taking Fill 11, he has no... curriculum or something. He has a syllabus but it's just about ten pages of suggested readings and how we should write our papers. He doesn't follow any flow. The closest thing to a flow was he gave us copies of all his favorite poems and then we'd discuss them every meeting. But then he'd end up digressing again and ask us to watch Forrest Gump. True story.
Grade: B
For future students: If, like me, you're not good at Filipino, you'd have a hard time but it's manageable. You do your papers at home so there's Google Translate for that. And for the seatworks well, you're on your own. But they say that it doesn't matter how deep your words are, as long as they contain the stuff you want to say. Hopefully he will see that in my final exam... oh, and he asked us to do a play and scheduled it on the first Monday of the semester, thank you very much for that.
PE 106: Table Tennis
Dr. (?) Alex Torres
Yes, I was shocked, too because he mentioned he was a doctor on the last meeting. I'm definitely sure he didn't mean Doctor of Medicine haha. He's the best PE teacher ever! My expected grade is A, but since it doesn't affect the QPI I wouldn't mind getting a B+. But I think I deserve an A because during the tournament I only lost twice, once to Gillian... er... Yap? No, no... Tan? Er.. it's something Chinese anyway. And the other time was to Promil Kid. They call her Promil Kid because she's an amateur table tennis player, I THINK. She could be professional, but I don't know. And when I fought Promil Kid, I got up to THIRD SET. Yeah, yeah. Haha. But sir wasn't there to see me, I think :( But anyway, it was definitely worth it.
Grade: A
For future students: If you don't get him, you're weird. And not in the good way. If you totally suck at hand-eye-coordination or just table tennis in particular, don't worry because he never gives a grade lower than a B. However, my friend Cha is one of the lower players--haha no offense, Cha--so after she gets her grade, I'll get back to you.
Well, that's it for my first semester teachers. Stay tuned for my next sem teachers!
By the way, I'm supposed to be studying for my Chem finals, but ughhhhh.
