Pilar De Olave

I had a terrible time with this professor and would not reccommend taking this class with this teacher to anyone! Things seemed okay at the beginning of the semester, but as time went on the class was increasingly difficult to succeed in. I have had great experiences with teachers at SFSU and I was highly dissappointed to have so much trouble last semester with this professor. She gives make-up exams if you get less than 70% on a test. This may sound like a good thing, but she continues to lecture the rest of the class while others take the make-up exams. This results in the same students continually being behind in class and never being able to actually listen to a lecture and keep up, let alone catch up. I suggested to her that she give the make-ups at a different time so that those who needed to take it could still hear the lesson and she thought it was a good idea, but then proceeded to completely disreguard the idea and forgot about it (and continued to be amazed that the same students were always having trouble! Hello!) I asked to speak with her outside of class about my concerns; I had class during her only office hour; and she flat out told me there was no other time, then was angry with me for telling her later that she had made herself unavailable. She also repeatedly showed up for class late, it was an 8am. She hardly ever had the copies or handouts she promised run off so she would have us do something and then spend the rest of the class making copies or would just show up late because she was making them before class. I have never said this about a teacher before and I didn't even get that bad of a grade in the class, but this professor made last semester very difficult and frustrating for me, many times I wished I had not taken the class. I think you should also consider that I took this class only because I wanted to learn spanish. I work with a lot of people who speak spanish and it's nice to be able to communicate with them in their language. I don't even need this class for credit. I was willing to work hard because I truely wanted to learn. It was a highly frustrating experience.