Hi out there,

As I write this, I have a pounding headache in the back of my head and behind my eyeballs. I've gotten little done today. I worked for about an hour and a half today (which is more than some days).

....

After writing that first sentence I was in so much pain that I went and took ibuprofen and laid down for a while, and then my roommate came home and let me vent to her for a while, so I'm not exactly in the same space emotionally that I was.

I have so many aspects of my grad school experience that I am struggling with right now, but I will try to focus on one for the sake of this post.

This past semester I took an incomplete in a class - I sort of used the pandemic as an excuse, and it certainly contributed to the situation, but it may have happened anyway.

I can attribute this partly to difficulty with the teaching style of the professor who led the class. He canceled classes a lot, even before the pandemic, and would let class out early as well, telling us to just work on things on our own.

I do not find his syllabus clear or precise. His grading scheme literally reads:

"Class Attendance/Participation: 40%

Assignments: 60%"

There were 5 assignments and he did not break down what percentage each one is worth.

His online platform for the class is also a mess. There isn't even a syllabus attached, and the only materials available on there are one document with key words, and a few Powerpoint presentations. I emailed him today about completing my incomplete, and asking for more specific directions on the main assignment of the class. He told me that there is a "document" on Blackboard with the directions. But there isn't, unless he means one of the Powerpoints, which has a very bare bones outline of what our assignment should include, with no explanation of each item. We did go over the items in class, but I am used to more explicit written instructions with a clear rubric of which aspects should be included.

He also said that in order to complete the class, I have to have two phone conversations about how my thinking has developed, because I "stopped attending" class - I missed two Zoom sessions, one of which was presented as entirely optional, because the format of the Zoom sessions seemed pointless and even counterproductive to me. Whenever I shared about progress I was making, I found his comments to be very discouraging and I would lose momentum I had gathered and become paralyzed, so I started feeling like I had to stay away from him and not tell him what I was working in, in order to protect my momentum from his discouraging feedback.

And I might be able to deal with all this and find a way through it, but the pandemic threw a wrench in my support system, from things like friends to be with, to having supportive study spaces at the library and cafes. I don't have a cohort either - my program is very individualized. I briefly entertained the idea today of transferring to a different program, but it would be incredibly logistically difficult, and part of me does believe that I can finish here - I just need to get past this hurdle of working with this professor, and then I think it will be easier. I already know what I'm doing for my final project, and have support in it.

What I want, I suppose, is a reality check and some validating - as much as I hate asking for validation, and I also don't want to fall outside rule 3 of just asking people to commiserate, but I do want to know if others have experienced disappointingly unclear expectations from professors, and muddled online platforms and/or syllabi....and how have you dealt with this. What helped you get through?

I ask that you phrase your experience as "I" statements, rather than telling me what I should do. I will figure it out as best I can, and maybe learning about others' experiences will help, but I do not enjoy receiving advice that comes an in "ordering" or "commanding" fashion (e.g. "You should do this" or "You gotta do this").