Trees can't take tests

I couldn't stop thinking, "Was the answer to number 38 'B: the Battle of Midway,' 'D: B and C but not A,' or 'E: all of the above?'"\nIt was shameful self-torture, but I was soon to be put at ease when a stunning sight soothed my savage soul. \nNo sooner had I rounded Ballantine's southwest corner when I saw one of nature's great displays: A volley of autumn leaves in a languid sashay drifting above an upheaved auburn floor, the late afternoon light washing through the trees like an ethereal tide. It was the kind of beauty you wish you could bottle up and keep in the cellar just in case Armageddon happens in your lifetime.\nAfter that the rest of the day was test-be-damned bliss. Bloomington in early fall can have that effect. The beauty of our campus is rivaled by few others. \nMy parents still make days of walking around Bloomington, taking in the scenery and remembering their days at IU. When they are done they usually feel nostalgic, recalling youthful memories of afternoons spent reading in Dunn Meadow in the early '70s, of parties long wasted and intimate class settings taught by the best professors ready to stimulate eager minds.\nThe experience is similar today -- the campus has hardly changed and the parties, though most are kept on the down-low, are as abundant as ever. However the last thing -- those intimate classes and exciting professors -- is something many of today's Hoosiers cannot relate to.\nIn two and a half years on this campus, I can only recall two courses in which I was taught by a real University professor in a class of fewer than 100 students. Most core courses are taught in large lectures by professors who have little to no contact with most of their students. Instead they have assistants take over the task of dealing with the barrage of questions not clarified during the lecture period. If students are lucky, the course might even have a discussion section in which these same AIs give their points of view on the material the professor already presented.\nFew of us came here knowing the more subtle intricacies of lecture courses, but I'll bet most of us were taken by the beauty of the campus after our first visits -- by the vibrant vista of the Memorial Union dynamically radiant in the late afternoon sun or the winding streams criss-crossed in the backdrop of Woodburn Meadow -- beauty so vivid one might just overlook a few misbegotten educational practices while enjoying the scenery.\nStill, unless you are majoring in horticulture, the aesthetics of the campus probably won't improve your grades. Smaller classes are not the answer, however. \n Those of us in small classes do not have it any better, often finding ourselves being talked to by a green-faced graduate student who is trying to gain a better understanding of the material by teaching it to others.\n Where have all the teachers gone? Would it cost too much to hire a few more, or is all the money going into landscaping?\nAs lucky as I feel to be learning on a college campus that offers as many vibrant panoramas as an Ansel Adams calendar, I would have felt better after my test last week had I understood the material better, and I would gladly trade a bottle full of beauty for a better education that will last the rest of my life.