evaluation

Today, we finished finals. Which means the conclusion of CLASSES for the whole semester! We have four weeks of Directed Research, and then this part of my lives, my friends, will be over. Pretty unreal, huh?

Well, as I compose my thoughts about my solo trip to Santa Teresa, I thought maybe you would be interested in reading my midsemester evaluation of this lovely program. (Then again, most of you probably won't because it's boring and doesn't have pretty pictures or really talk about any events. Honestly, I thought my mom might like to read it.) It's mostly critical, but I thought maybe you would get a better idea of how it works around here, if I haven't given a well enough impression.

I thought of this because today we had a house meeting and it was just really frustrating and awful. People in the house butting heads. And THEN my pandilla was assigned girl's bathroom duty (which is by FAR the worst job, we have to scrub all the mold off all the shower curtains, clean hair out of the drains, bleach the toilets, change the toilet paper waste baskets [in case you didn't know, you don't flush toilet paper here, you throw it in the trash]) for the THIRD TIME out of the five house cleanings that we've done, and the other two times we were the boy's bathrooms and the other bathrooms. Why don't we get the porch where all you have to do is sweep? I just don't understand. This made me grumpy and reminded me of all the things I dislike about being here. Here are some more things.

1. 1. What do you think about the overall level of difficulty and content of the academic program?

The program material is definitely challenging and interesting. I think the professors could present the information in more dynamic ways. I understand that lectures are an efficient and effective way of transferring information. However, it is extremely difficult to not fall asleep, let alone focus, in the hot humid weather. Sergio is the only professor who attempted doing other activities to help us gain knowledge about his material. (These, I think also could be executed a little better.) Dynamic activities like this really help us think about the topics in different ways, as opposed to just memorizing slides. Some of the discussions in the outdoor classroom went really well also because a lot of group participation was enforced (I saw this mostly with Sergio’s classes as well).

I think it would be effective for people to do small presentations on different topics, similar to the style we had to do for crops. The problems with the crop presentations were there were too many people for each crop and the amount of information we needed to know about the crop. This made it so there was a lot of extraneous information in the presentations, and I didn’t really gather the important facts. If we did presentations where each person got a topic throughout any of the courses, for instance someone could have coffee, another person could have wind energy, another person could have bananas… etc and then actually make it a noticeable percentage of our grade, I think we would work a lot harder on the projects and pay a lot more attention because they would be included on the exams. In general, it is difficult that we basically only have 4 things contributing to our grades, and, like in the case of NRM, when we receive our FLAB, FEX, and midterm back all right away, we have no way to improve our grade if the only thing we have left is our final.

In general, I really love what I am learning here and I think it’s a great place to learn it. It is challenging, but mostly only because of the way information is presented.

2. 2. What do you think about the contribution of faculty and staff to the program?

This is obviously a very intensive program for the staff that work here. I have never had a problem with professors being unavailable for help with assignments, or unprepared for class. The staff is extremely attentive. Especially Dayla. She is a godsend to this program and we are so lucky to have her. I cannot say enough good things about Dayla. It is great that there is a position like that in this program; it is a great resource for students when we are having any sort of problems. I can tell that everyone here works really hard and is great at what they do.

I think there are some problems with the intern position, however. It is really difficult to have someone who is pretty much our age, yet takes such a condescending stance over all of us. I also have seen that the intern maintains preferential treatment towards the males of the group. I think that this position could be fulfilled a lot better if the person acted more as a liason between the students and the staff, as opposed to taking a higher authoritative stance over all of us. It is very isolating, and in many cases just plain rude.

3. 3. What do you think about the community opportunities organized by the Center?

I have loved community outreach. I have learned the most through my close interactions with the people and community here. It would be nice to do projects that we get to continue throughout the entire semester, especially with children, so we could create bonds with them and actually get to know them. Spending time with kids is also a great way to improve our Spanish.

Homestay was AMAZING. This should be extended to be longer than one weekend, definitely.

I think we garden too much. Most of the times I’ve gardened, I haven’t felt like I’ve really accomplished anything. I am just being put to work for the sake of being put to work. If this isn’t the case, then I think we should be explained to about why we need to rake unseen areas of the property and the bare lawn, or machete the edge of the fence, so at least we understand our purpose. Gardening might also work better if we weren’t all doing it at once so we could have a little more direction and oversight. I genuinely love gardening and I would do it everyday if I actually thought there was a purpose to it.

I think the staff are very willing to listen to the students. I just wish that we didn’t have so many problems to begin with. I think a lot of things are poorly organized and our time isn’t managed wisely. For instance, we should not be given study time for exams BEFORE we have the review from the professors.

4. 4. Overall satisfaction with program: 3 Why?

I am frustrated that things are getting stolen from the dorm. In the future, I think the risk of not locking your room and locking up all valuables needs to be emphasized more in the future years.

It is frustrating that we have so many rules and restrictions and responsibilities, and yet people do not get penalized when they disobey them. I feel like there are a LOT of people who don’t carry their weight in pandillas, but nothing happens about it. Like during house cleanings, a lot of people don’t consider cleanliness one of their main priorities and half-ass their jobs and then the house just stays dirty and nothing happens about it. If people don’t show up for breakfast set up, while some people show up on time everyday, nothing happens. I know that this is a huge problem with community living, but there should be a way to regulate it better. It is unfair for the people who carry their weight.

The internet needs to work when we have projects requiring in depth research due. Either change the requirements of the assignments, or provide us the resources to complete them well.

Things should be planned better. For the Nicaragua trip, we were told to go pick up our passports after RAP. Then, we were told we needed to return to Yendry’s office with them to give her our passport number. Then, on the bus, we just handed our passports back to Victor. We really didn’t need to get them in the first place. Little mishaps like this happen a lot and it’s frustrating. It’s a double standard if we are expected to abide to a strict rigorous schedule, and then are forced to wait while people actually figure out what is going on.

I love our field trips. It’s awesome that we get to go to so many amazing places and learn about them really thoroughly. Field trips and outreach definitely form the most lasting impressions in my mind, and what I have learned from them has stayed with me so vividly. This kind of learning is the point of going abroad. You could never go wrong with more outreach and more field trips.

5. 5. Overall satisfaction with trip to Nicaragua: 4

6. 6. What might we change or improve about the trip?

Lots of driving for not that much activity. It would be nice to have a few more educational opportunities and excursions to natural areas. Or museums.

7. 7. What do you like the most about the trip?

Free time, really amazing hostel and hotel, hikes, experiencing Nicaraguan culture in comparison to Costa Rica.

8. 8. Additional comments:

More environmentally friendly lifestyles should be encouraged. We should at least talk about at the beginning of the program how we should consider the environment when shopping at the store (bottled water, individually wrapped items, buying bulk, bringing our own shopping bags, etc), packing our lunches (We have Tupperware! We don’t need baggies and tinfoil!), water conservation (taking shorter showers, turning off the faucet when washing our dish), NOT bleaching the sidewalk (?????), turning off lights when we don’t use them, minimizing driving as much as possible… etc. I am shocked at how inconsiderate people are about environmental lifestyle changes like this on an environmental science program, including the staff. I feel like we are learning about it at a broader scale, which is great, but in a community living situation like this, we could learn a LOT about working together to make a difference in our daily lives.

We either ALL get to run on tico time, or we all need to adhere to the schedule. For days that are as tightly packed as ours, it’s important to be respectful.

Communication needs to be improved. Announcements need to be made when everyone can hear them. People need to LISTEN to announcements so they don’t need to be repeated over and over. I think it would help a lot if there was a large go-to bulletin board or white board where people could write important announcements and it could be referred to throughout the day. Gerardo has a tendency to repeat the EXACT same thing someone will have just said, which can be exhausting especially because we have such a tight schedule.

Our break should not be the day after we return from Nicaragua. This travel time should be more spread out.

In general, for how planned out everything is, I think a lot of things could be planned a lot better. Field trips are perfect and really well organized. From a day to day basis, it seems our schedule never really runs according to plan. Organization and flexibility are yet to be in a friendly balance.

Questions? Comments? Talk soon, about real stuff, I promise.