I just had my first Physics 2 lecture. According the schedule on the registration server, the class consists of a 2:15 hour period in the morning, a 2 hour lab in the afternoon with another 1 hour period immediately following, four days a week. I went to the first lecture this morning, and the professor spoke for 2 hours and fifteen minutes purely about physics, with almost no information about the class, and no syllabus. I had my hunches about the structure of the class from taking Physics 1 last fall, but I was hoping for some indication that those suspicions were correct. Instead all I got was a class decision that exams should be on Thursdays rather than Mondays, and a casual reference to the existence of online homework problems. He didn’t say anything about labs, or about the 1 hour period at the end of the day (which I concluded wasn’t a lecture because at the end of the class he said “see you tomorrow”, but at the very least was the time period during which the exams would be held, which I luckily figured out from another casual reference). When I took Physics 1 there was an extra hour session on the schedule for help with homework, but I was able to neglect attending it altogether with no major issues. All the exams were during the regular lecture time period.
Naturally I went up to the professor after class to ask for a syllabus, or at least some more information about how the class was going to be run. He told me that he doesn’t have a syllabus and doesn’t normally make them for summer classes, and when I asked for specific information in place of the syllabus, he refused to answer any of my questions, and told me to simply ask a classmate who had been in his Physics 1 class last month. I generally don’t socialize with the other students as much as I can help it, due to the fact that I’m several years older than most of them, and have an irrationally age-centered view of social status, so I didn’t like his suggestion all that much. However, he seemed pretty firm on that solution, so I decided to just forget it and make my best guess about everything. Evidently though, it upset me enough to motivate me to write two decently-sized paragraphs about it.
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