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Nathan Schine
PHYS404 Anonymous 12/18/2025 |
Oh boy, I've been waiting to write this one for a while. This was not the hardest class I've ever taken, but it was by far the stupidest. From the very beginning, when I realized the course was graded 90% on tests and Professor Schine said "The goal of the homework is to teach; the goal of the tests is to test. So don’t expect the homework to be very similar to the tests." (his words, not mine), I knew we were in for a wild ride. Now, to be fair to Nathan, PHYS404 is one of the hardest courses in an already ridiculously difficult subject, so of course, this was going to be a challenging class. However, Nathan not only doesn't help you get out of this quicksand, he actively pushes you into the pit while simultaneously being blissfully unaware he's doing anything wrong. For starters, the lectures are awful. The entire class is spent doing random integral derivations of formulae that we're just straight-up given, and no, we are not tested on said derivations. Just read the textbook, you will get infinitely more use out of that than ANY of these rants. Indeed, Nathan seems utterly oblivious to the fact that no one can understand a word he says, and continues to chug along as if he's talking to 52 clones of himself rather than students who need to learn stuff. Then the homeworks, where questions are separated into four categories ranging from 1-4 (easy to hard). In reality, only 1s are doable, 2s are insane, 3s are impossible, and 4s have nothing to do with the subject. And at last, there are the tests. Those things that are worth literally 90% of the grade? You guessed it, they're impossible. I'm talking averages in the mid-40s, highs of mid-80s, and third quartiles of upper-20s. I wouldn't even be THIS mad if they actually had anything to do with lectures or homeworks, but of course, as admitted by him, they don't. Why even study? I say without a hint of irony or hyperbole that I would have gotten more use out of my homeworks and notes by burning them at a campfire for warmth. The only saving grace is that they're curved into oblivion because everyone face-plants on them, but then what was the point of taking them in the first place? In fact, what is the point of anything in this class? The tests have nothing to do with the homeworks, homeworks have nothing to do with the lectures, and the lectures have nothing to do with the tests, which themselves mean nothing since everyone does so badly that everyone is curved regardless. This all leads to one damning question: Why in God's name am I even taking this class in the first place? |