UNC is NOT for everyone

OrchidDrop
Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:35:42 +0000

Hey -

I simply stated truthfully what I thought of my experience with UNC. I am now a transfer student at Northwestern, and i love it here. Yes, I did go from a public to a private school, from a larger student body to a much smaller one. However, that doesn’t give UNC an excuse for many of the problems I faced.

From what I can remember, these are the following classes I took that were taught only by TAs. Having TAs is not completely a bad thing - and most do a great job - but I was hoping for a professor to teach the class, especially the higher level ones. At Northwestern, for the same courses as listed below, all are taught by professors. In fact, I do not know of any classes which are led only by a TA.
Statistics 31
Comm 140 Media Criticism
Biology 11 lab
English 12
Econ 10
Psyc 10
That said, I did get to experience some great professors. I recommend:
Hist 77A - Modern Middle East - w/ Professor Shields
1st year seminar - Germ 006 - Love in the middle ages w/ Professor Starkey

In terms of my claim of “nothing to do”, again - this was my experience. There were events on campus that I attended and I joined many groups including Choice USA, Independent Defense Council, among others. However, the majority of students do party and do drink, and many weekend evening events are sparsely attended.

And finally, a major reason that led me to transfer was the Music Department. I had a music non-major scholarship (from an outside organization, not the school itself), so I auditioned and was accepted by the piano department. I took lessons from a piano profesor there both semesters. However, I felt that my professor did not genuinely care at all about her students. She is a WONDERFUL performer, but this did not translate into her teaching skills. I was supposed to have an hour long lesson every week, in addition to weekly master classes with her and other piano students. During my second semester, she left for weeks at a time for her own solo career. By week 7 of the semester, I only had 3 lessons with her because she was barely there. I’m not even a piano major, but for the piano major students that she did teach - how are they supposed to be prepared for their final juries and performances with such lacking instuction? Now, I completely understand the need to further ones own solo performance career, but she also has an obligation to her students. This was not met - and I feel that the general opinion of the UNC piano department is not a positive one. I endded up petitioning and dropping my piano instruction class second semester because I was essentially wasting my scholarship money on lessons I wasn’t receiving.