"Professional" "Writing" class: Achieving record levels of ridiculousness (or, Warning, rant in progress!)

I'd be the first to admit that I've never been thrilled about this "Professional Writing for Veterinarians" course we freshmen are required to take this semester.

Lectures thus far have been a mixture of tedious information, irrelevant facts, and useless exercises. (Although I must admit that we've had one, maybe two guest lectures that were actually sort of interesting and relevant to the subject of the course.)

Today's class was pretty much the straw that broke the poor, beleaguered vet students' collective back.

We started with our instructor (for the sake of simplicity, let's call him Mr. Smith) reading yet more of the students' essays on our inspirations for entering the field of veterinary medicine. We wrote these essays weeks and weeks ago, and at the beginning of nearly every class since then, Mr. Smith has been reading some of the essays he really liked. No discussion of what these students did really well, or how we could take an element from the example writing and apply it to our own writing. No, Mr. Smith instead remarks to us about how reading our essays is useful in satisfying his own curiosity about veterinary medicine.

Following the reading of the essays, Mr. Smith played us a video clip about 10 minutes in length from a television show he taped. The clip told the heartwarming yet tragic story of Jerry, a German Shepherd dog who had a leg amputated due to bone cancer and now his cancer has spread, and his owners. Was it cute? Yes. Was it entertaining? Of course. Did it have any relevance to professional writing for veterinarians, or any type of writing at all? It surely didn't.

Next we were presented with a chart showing various characteristics of communication and culture in different countries, including aspects like how "authoritative" that country is or what the power balance is between men and women. Mr. Smith informed us that on our upcoming final exam, we will be required to regurgitate the United States' scores on each of these 3 or 4 characteristics. For example, on such-and-such a scale, we should say the U.S. is 91. Or 42. Or 65. Or whatever. Do we need to know what that scale means or represents? Or how the U.S. compares to other countries? No, of course we don't.

The "best" part came when Mr. Smith put up a chart listing 5 countries or regions of the world, and 5 colors. The chart showed what each color means in each country (e.g. anger, joy, royalty, etc.). Mr. Smith then stated that on our final exam, he will give us the name of a country and a particular color, and we will be required to tell him what that color means for that country. Here's MY question: does this in any way pertain to writing? What am I going to do, make a decision based on this chart about what color paper I should type my letter on if I'm sending it to China? Well, I was planning on using black print on white paper, and sadly white isn't on the chart, so I guess I'm out of luck.

I was thrilled when one of our class's most mature and analytical students raised her hand and posed the question to Mr. Smith of how any of this was relevant to the course subject. She pointed out that, as first-year vet students, we have a heavy courseload with incredible amounts of information to learn and memorize, information that will actually be applicable to our daily lives as practicing veterinarians.

Mr. Smith's response was along the lines of: Well, this is a writing class, so we should probably have a final exam that requires writing. But we can't grade 134 written final exams, so I have to ask you about things that can be answered quickly and graded quickly. I realize that you may not think some of this information is very relevant.

And that's it. He moved right along to the next topic.

I understand that writing is important, even for veterinarians. I know that Mr. Smith is not a veterinarian and does not have a veterinary background. I know that it may be difficult for him to teach a writing course to veterinary students who know the field better than he does and who at times may treat him condescendingly. I am sure it is frustrating to have to give a final exam for a writing course when you feel you cannot have a written final exam.

I also know that two of the requirements for admission to vet school are taking a college-level English class or writing class, as well as an oral communication or public speaking class. We also have to write multiple admissions essays that must be coherent, interesting, and free of grammatical and spelling errors. If we hadn't fulfilled those requirements, we would not be here.

I know that annual tuition and fees for us non-resident students is about $44,000. Let's make that $22,000 per semester. This semester's tuition is divided among 20 credits. That means we're paying roughly $1100 per academic credit.

Professional Writing is a 1-credit class, so I'm paying $1100 to take Professional Writing this semester. We have lecture once a week, with 15 weeks of lecture. That means I'm paying about $73 every week when I spend 50 minutes sitting in Professional Writing. (Disclaimer: I realize that not every dollar of tuition and fees is spent directly on classes. However, I think I'm making my point nonetheless.)

Based on my rant above, I cannot justify spending $73 a week to learn such completely irrelevant information. If we have to have a writing class, there must be some better way to spend our 50 minutes a week and our $1100. Writing IS important for veterinarians, and there are a variety of things they could be teaching us that will directly help us to be better vets. I cannot afford to spend $1100 to allow Mr. Smith to fulfill his curiosities about veterinary medicine and the inner workings of the minds of vet students, without any real gain for myself.