The Barometer Online

This was a great article. I have felt this way for a while too. 100 level classes, ESPECIALLY intro classes, should basically be basic info for the major. It should also be interesting, unlike Anthro 110.

ben weintraub

Sounds like a lot of whining from a student who should be thankful to have been *challenged* in a class for once. Instead of blaming the professor (who, by the way, has been a finalist for a teaching award in the College of Science) how about rising to the occasion? And if you are a senior in **Philosophy** the Eratosthenes question should have been a gimme. Suck it up dude!

Davey Jones

What a whiny editorial...

First off, if you get a specific question that's not directly related to the topic like "where was Eratosthenese from?" it's probably straight out of the reading material. i.e. "Eratosthenes, the Greek philosopher, was the first to accurately measure the circumference of the earth."

Moreover, the class average is a "c". I wouldn't really expect a huge difference given that it's a freshman level course and many freshmen are still developing their studying skills. A fifth year student should expect to do much better then the freshman, frankly.

And for that matter, a fifth year philosophy student should be ashamed for not knowing who Eratosthenes was. It's even a Greek name. He was originally from Cyrene (modern day Libya), studied in Athens (that's in Greece, btw) and spent his later years at the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. (which, in case you didn't know, was conquered by Alexander the Great (a Greek) and ruled by Ptolemy (a Greek).

Geez, I'm a chemistry student and I knew that much.

Nick Kesinger, chem student
OSu
kesingen@onid.orst.edu

Well cry me a river - you actually got a college-level course for your college tuition. You owe this Professor an apology, and you owe yourself a kick in the pants for submitting this sort of diatribe and considering it to be suitable for public consumption.

And griping about the average in the course being a "C"?! Look at how the letter grades are defined, fella! A grade of "C" is earned for an "average" performance.

Get the chip off of your shoulder and crack the books for the final. If you're REALLY, REALLY diligent (and not a little bit fortunate), maybe you can study yourself out of the corner you partied yourself into.

Pat Vanyo

I am currently also in this Geology 102 class and I completely agree. I am an eighteen year old freshman who has not much experience with world history, Greek, or philosophers due to my crappy public education. I looked up in my notes AND in the book and they both don't say a single thing about Eratosthenes being from Greece. All they state is that he lived in Alexandria, Egypt and that he was the first one to figure out the circumference of the earth. And it sounds like to me that most of you writing in against this article are science majors. Of course this all sounds easy to you because you obviously have some talent or natural gift towards science. I certainly do not, considering my major up until now has been fine arts. And sure I don't know a lot about what is expected with classes, but I have spent more time on this class than almost any other class. (If you know anything about art classes they require an extreme amount of work time, up to double the time spent in class which is on average 3 hours.) Even my brother, who is a 5th year senior comments on how much I work for this class. It's usually along the lines of, "What is your problem, it's only a 100 level course. Stop working so much" And I'm only going to probably get a B in the class. So if you guys who disagree think that this class is easy why don't you take it next year with Prof. Haggerty and see how it turns out for you.

K. Holcomb
holcomke@onid.orst.edu