Dear Selim,
I am deeply concerned about the volume of work involved in this second-year Arabic class you are currently teaching at McGill. While I understand that the class is an intensive, 6-credit course jammed into eight weeks, I believe that the amount of work you expect your students to do is completely unreasonable.
Derek attends class every morning, from 9 am to noon. Then he is expected to do about five hours of homework per day. This, I will allow, is an acceptable amount of work, assuming the students have no employment and are dedicating their entire day-time schedule to the class. Derek has gracefully done so. However, he is finding that he has upwards of six to eight hours of homework per night (this, thanks to the extra work assigned, not to mention the final oral presentation and 1000-word essay he has to prepare–in Arabic!!).
I am fortunate that I have a husband and co-parent who refuses to give up his time with his girls. Unfortunately, this has led to severe and acute sleep-deprivation. This lack of sleep, for its part, has caused Derek's cough to remain for the past four weeks, since it is rather difficult to shake a cold when one hasn't rested.
The lack of time and sleep has not only affected Derek. Besides the time we spend together while taking care of the children, I have barely spent any time with Derek since he has started this class on May 1. I fear our marriage is... well, stagnant, for the moment. Furthermore, I have had to pick up the slack by doing all the housework, including meals, dishes, house-cleaning, laundry, groceries, ironing, watering the plants, paying the bills, shuttling the children to activities, taking out the recycling, and knitting (okay, this last one is for my own enjoyment, but still). Now I am tired. Soon, I will have to enlist the children to do the work. Then they will be tired, too.
I entreat you, Selim, to ease up a bit. I miss my husband. If not for us, do it for our children (child labour is illegal, no?).
Yours, very sincerely,
Cristina
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2 comments:
are you going to send it? you should these professors act like it's a competition ... how much homework can we give them?
(grumble grumble)
I've run across this problem a few times as well. Either this professor has never actually taught or taken a Second Language course (which, I fear, is possible if he publishes quite a bit), or he suffers from mono-class-self-centrism (look, I've coined a new term), where the lecturer is under the delusion that their class is the only one in existence, therefore negating the need for them to consider any other factors which could impede their students' work (other classes, families, having a LIFE). The good news is that this will indeed come to an end soon, and you can have your husband back. Please send my encouragement to Derek.
Catherine
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