Some gems from my early course feedback. We’ll start with the ugly.

Like most classes that require Matlab, the coding is always much more advanced than students are capable of. The math department does not realize the talk amongst the students is how just about all of us don’t know how to use Matlab. Students generally just copy and paste from google searches to get their assignments done and rename functions and variables to look different. When errors still remain, students just have the Matlab TA’s fix the errors for them. Matlab assignments account for most of the hours spent for this class as well as all other courses that require Matlab

I’ve seen too many students grow and learn the Matlab to believe this is true of everyone. I’ve also had students thank me later when they were looking for jobs and discovered employers want them to know Matlab. There are probably one or two using this tactic to get by. I think this student is going to hate my class or drop it; I don’t think you can get away with this in my class for the entire semester.

The teacher cares about teaching a lot but is a little intimidating and scary. She is almost like a mom in that she cares a lot and while I’m sure she is happy she always seems pissed off. My mom is scary when she is pissed off. Dr. (Jinx) expects only the best work, which is good, but at the same time she seems to favor the top students in the class. She is very involved though! She is always willing to help and is willing to give us life/career tips. She genuinely wants you to learn and puts effort into her teaching. Because of this class, I am learning LaTeX and Matlab and I can put the end of semester project on my resume.

At least there’s some good and some bad. I am not happy to hear that I always seem pissed off. Yikes. On the other hand, it is probably good to be perceived as scary when you are pissed off. More respect and all. It’s not like I feel like I get an overabundance of that from my superiors.

Yes, it is easy to favor the top students in the class who show up expecting to work, capable, and happy to learn. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time with some students who are not very strong. Unsurprisingly, many of these end up becoming top performers when they put the effort in, but some don’t. I hope I give them the help they deserve, and appreciation/admiration for the effort they put in to doing well in my class.

I think the professor means well, but does not take into consideration that not everyone in the class loves mathematics as much as she does, but rather are in the course to simply get 3 hours of credit.

Seriously? Please, please, please drop my class. No senior level science or engineering class is going to give you 3 hours of credit for just showing up. If you don’t care to learn, there’s nothing I can do for you. Go find a teacher who doesn’t care.

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There are plenty of nice comments, which get swamped out of my emotional buffer by the ones above. What’s the real picture? It is so hard to tell.

Learned more about matlab in this class than I have in the past 3 years

Honestly can say that Dr. (Jinx) is one of the best teachers I’ve encountered at this university and hope she continues to teach as well as she has been.

Encourages class participation, provides examples, effective communicator.

Instructor is very honest and humble. This is something not so easy to come by in some professors.

Finally learning how to put all the math I learned all of my life into proper use.

The student below gave me a B rating on the item “Written assignments are interesting and stimulating” with the following quote:

Lorenz equations opened my mind a little more. One of those things that keep you interested in mathematics.

So am I doing okay? Now there is the question.