This was the most god-awful week of my life. It started on Monday when we basically had a free day to work on our essays. It was this day that I started feeling sick, so since we didn’t have school I just went home and slept all day. And through dinner. And through the night. So I fell asleep at about 11AM, and I didn’t wake up until 7AM the following morning.
Tuesday morning was dedicated to presentations, and since mine was the only individual presentation (all the rest were groups), I was a little nervous and went first. It went well, everyone liked it….and then Dr. Suarez decided to comment (keep in mind he’s the grader). He said, “Though your topic was interesting, it has nothing to do with this program.” UMMM, thanks?? The theme for these presentations was “Current Health Issues in Ecuador” and I wrote about the lack of sexual education in public schools and the consequences in the public sector. How is that off topic? But the rest of the class agreed and they verbalized that, so I felt better. However, I was still a little worried about my grade in the class, so I went after to talk to him, and he basically told me that since I was so out in right field with my theme, I would be receiving a not very favorable grade, but that it was not a problem because maybe I could do better on the final. Ummm, not ok Dr. Suarez. So I sent an email explaining this to my advisor in the US, and she revealed that they have been getting nothing but complaints about CIMAS from this year, and that I just needed to keep a copy of all my work and the grades, and we could sort it out when I got back.
Also in this email, I was so frustrated that I asked what would happen if I came home early. I am so frustrated with CIMAS that even though I came here specifically for this internship, I would turn it down just to not be affiliated with this awful program anymore. Basically I found out that since I was not a full time student (because I wouldn’t complete the year) I would be on academic probation for the following year. However, this is only for financial aid purposes, and would not show on my transcripts or anything; only the finaid department would monitor my academic progress during next year. At this point, I think I will stay, but we have a 30 page paper coming up and if they pull the same bullshit with the final paper that they have with the previous three, I think I will have to leave because during my internship, I will also have to write a 30 page thesis, and I can’t have a bunch of bad grades sitting on my WSU transcripts, nor do I want to have to fight to have them changed. So we will see what happens, but I am not ruling out the option of coming home in March instead of June.
I hate this program; the only thing that is making it better is that everyone else hates it too and that WSU knows about the issues.
After this black Tuesday, Wednesday came. And it was no better. But that day the problem was Spanish, not Public Health. I have told my Spanish teacher on three separate occasions that I am in the wrong Spanish class and that I should be moved down. But she insisted that it was fine and that it was a correct placement. Well, we got a big packet of papers back (including the midterm) and she said that because my grade was so much lower than everyone else in the class, I would have to retake the midterm to try and recuperate some points, as well as redo all the other assignments that I clearly didn’t understand. She also said that I was clearly in the wrong class, but now it’s too late to change it. DUH! I told you that, and additionally I got a 25% on the placement exam we took. Who thought it was a good idea to put me in the highest level class??!? So I have been redoing assignments in hopes of a better grade…we’ll see how it turns out. But I cannot win here, so I have pretty much given up as far as CIMAS goes. I hate this program and cannot wait to evaluate it.
So after that awesome few days, Thursday afternoon finally rolled around. I was waiting for my driver, and some of the other students came out of the building talking about going to Cuenca for the weekend. I asked what they were going to do there, and they told me that they were going to go to Ingapirca, the Incan ruins in Ecuador. They also invited me to go, and considering how my week went, I decided that a little time away would be nice. So I left two hours later for Cuenca!
We got there on Friday morning after taking an overnight bus, checked into the hostel, and slept until 10. After that we got on another bus and went to Ingapirca, which was really cool. That was the one thing that I didn’t get to do last quarter that I still really wanted to see, so I’m glad we went. It was awesome and I had a good time. After that we came back to Cuenca and had dinner, and then just went to bed because everyone was tired from not sleeping the night before.
On Saturday, we just spent the day walking around the city. We ate at two really awesome restaurants and played a card game called “Presidents and Assholes” about a million times. It was again a really relaxed day and I had a lot of fun with the group I went with.
Saturday night we left and took a night bus home, arriving at about 6 this morning. I have been sleeping most of the day, and now I have a bunch of homework to do. Tomorrow we start week 9 with CIMAS, and I hope it just goes quickly. I dread going every day, so I hope that this week and the next just fly by and I won’t have to deal with Public Health anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment