Why is crim so hard?!

iStudent

I thought crim 135 was a "gpa booster" but so far our class average is like 56%. Does anyone know if crim courses ever get scaled or curved? Or, do they always follow the mentioned grading scheme?

BeAnBeAn

cuz crim 135 is a course where you actually need to think and use your brain and not just go to lecture and memorize shit and regurgitate like most crim courses. Crim courses are never scaled or curved sry

iStudent

Damn. I guess I'll need to work my ass off for this course

crimematic

I assume if your taking it right now you have Bowbirck? In which case he is just a (sometimes unreasonably) hard prof. I found 135 quite easy when I took it with Boyd a while back but that was just my personal experience 

iStudent

I'm taking it with Neil Boyd, but through distance education.

iStudent

There's so much reading! It's just insane. Also, the papers are marked so difficult. Almost half the class is failing so far.

BeAnBeAn

Maybe because it's distant ed. I heard it's easy during lecture. This is scary though because I have yet to take it.

iStudent

Well I'm doing okay so far. But, considering the amount of work I had to put in on the last 2 assignments; I'm not happy with my grade. The marking is just so difficult, I can't believe it. Also there is just so much writing; even more than UD w courses! All I learned from this course, is that there's no such thing as a gpa booster at sfu -_-

ezc

Crim does mark unreasonably hard most of the time.  You can write a great essay and they'll probably give you an A-.

I find crim classes can often have bad TMs/TAs, which also makes a huge difference.

iStudent

Hm I guess it might be because of my TM. Since they pretty much mark everything for distance ed courses.

crimematic

Is your TM Adrienne? I had her as my 104 prof and she was really good, just tough 

iStudent

Yea. Lol, she's really helpful and answers all of the questions really well. But, she's really picky on marking.

BeAnBeAn

^why was it so easy at Langara? and why is it ridiculous at SFU besides TA's? 

ezc

I`m guessing because crim leads to pretty much nothing, so they rarely have quality TA`s ...

Most people transfer out of crim or take up something else afterwards.  

iStudent

It's not just crim, all TAs everywhere suck

crimematic

I've had some good CRIM TA's and some bad ones, just like every other department. My CRIM 103 was probably the worst, 131 the best 

BeAnBeAn

crim leads to a lot of shit. At least more than general studies, communications and education lol

BeAnBeAn

@crimematic LOL lemme guess crim 103 with the sexy jennifer wong and your TA was Meriam hahahahahaha. and 131 was Aynsley? 

iStudent

Yea, I think crim is actually pretty useful.

crimematic

Sorry that was a typo, 104 was the hardest and no my 131 TA was Steph, she was the fairest CRIM marker I've had that I can think of. I still need to take 103 but the infamous Hilary Morden is teaching it next semester 

ezc

@BeAnBeAn  of course BSG, communications, and non-PDP education are all pretty much useless. But crim does not lead to much.  I had a number of friends transfer out and a few finish as crim majors.  Even the ones that finished say it doesn't lead to much.  That's not to say they didn't enjoy doing it.  

The crim dept also has a terrible rep when it comes to scheduling classes, they pretty much screw over their own students.

BeAnBeAn

@lakerfanatic You talking about Langara or SFU?

@ezc I agree with the scheduling thing completely but crim is a really diverse degree with a variety of options. Judicial system is a wide department. And plus most crim jobs you would be employed by the national government, and there are always jobs there.

BeAnBeAn

So how is that a joke? Isn't that a good thing?

Tofu

don't people pick a class that they really want to learn? Honestly the best GPA boosters are the ones that you truly like. There's too many ppl taking a course just to raise GPA.

crimematic

@Tofu I agree. People hear a class is "easy" like ARCH 100 for example, take it even though they have absolutely zero interest in it, and it up doing poorly. I dont try to take "easy" classes, I try to take what I know I'm interested in because thats what makes them easier 

iStudent

Just for the record, everything I actually had interest in was full. So, I pretty much took whatever I could get into to get breadth requirements out of the way...