Bristol Community College

Date: Oct 01 2021
Major: Biology (This Major's Salary over time)
NIGHTMARE. Whatever you do, just choose a different school. I had so many issues from the very beginning. The advising office immediately tried to persuade me to switch to a liberal arts degree. Should have been my first warning sign. They suggested I only sign up for 2 classes for my first semester due to my schedule, telling me the general guideline of time I could expect to spend was 9 hours per course per week, so 18 hours total for both courses. The course content was not challenging at all but it was plagued by the incompetence of the professors (I'll touch on that last), busywork, multiple time consuming essays per week, plus a few more formal papers spread throughout the semester. I immediately found myself spending 6-8 hours per day, even on weekends, on my coursework for just these TWO CLASSES - coming from being an A student and taking multiple accelerated and AP classes in high school. The course load is WAY too much for the material being covered. It's a LOT of writing about simple concepts that I've already learned, but these were required courses! Imagine spending the hours of a full time job being forced to read and write about elementary concepts. About the professors. It's very obvious by their choice of assigned reading what their political stances are and the "tone" the students are expected to respond with. The assigned reading is abstract critical race theory presented in the form of personal essays. The entire book reeks of resentment and woe is me. I don't believe in teaching black victimhood. Now on to the ACTUAL problems. One of the professors on multiple occasions decided it was appropriate for students to be assessed or given assignments on information that WAS NOT COVERED IN THE COURSE MATERIALS OR LECTURE. Information that we were not told to research either. The very first quiz contained a question/answer found NOWHERE in any of the course material and not covered in the lecture (and therefore would not have been able to be answered correctly). Once the quiz was graded and released I copied and pasted that question into Google and the FIRST RESULT was the question and answer from the quiz, worded VERBATIM how it was presented on the quiz. I will reiterate - this particular question was UNABLE TO BE ANSWERED from the lecture, reading, videos, etc. Nowhere. It looked to me like the professor was encouraging us to Google and cheat on assessments considering there's no way anyone could have gotten the question right without guessing. I messaged the professor about this immediately and NEVER received an answer, while 2 weeks later it happened again! Students were assigned a short essay on a topic that had not been presented or covered in any manner by either the professor or the course material. The EIGHT HOURS I spent taking notes the day before were useless in preparing me for that week's assignments! I then had to spend an additional few hours researching and taking notes on the new concept the professor neglected to tell us to research, present to us, or provide any information/reading about. Not everyone has unlimited time to correct other people's mistakes that seem to be forming a pattern. The last straw for me was when a larger essay had its due date changed suddenly, the day before it was due! I had already spent 6-8 hours a day for the last few days working on it to ensure it would meet standards for the assignment and be submitted ON TIME. The essay required me to cram multiple chapters of textbook reading and notes, read the assigned reading related to the textbook chapters, annotate the text of the assigned reading, pull out around 20 supporting quotes from the assigned reading, piece together all the concepts and parts of my essay, write the rough draft, finalize my ideas, type the essay, then edit and revise the essay correcting any mistakes in just 3 days. In what world do of those time consuming type of assignments per week only take 18 hours? I spent 20 hours in 3 days to complete that essay on time. Putting aside whatever other responsibilities I could. Only for the professor to decide right before I was about to submit the essay to extend the deadline. The content was SO SIMPLE but the assignment required us to cover SO MUCH OF IT. In the other class the professor told us she would assign and upload our peer review partners online. For this assignment we had to provide feedback to our partner before a certain date. The peer review pairings were never uploaded and I missed the deadline because I was unaware of whose work I was intended to be reviewing. These types of issues are flat out UNACCEPTABLE. What type of institution is this?! A clown school? Exasperated and desperate I tried to make an appointment with advising to discuss these problems. There were no appointments available with ANY of the advisors for over a month. I'm all set with this nightmare of a college. I see why BCC only has a 20% graduation rate. I withdrew from classes and I'll go elsewhere. This school is a joke.