School Websites (Opinion)

45 minutes. 45 minutes and a phone call. That's how long it took me, a guy who has been using the internet since he was 8 years old and using computers since he was even younger to register for a mandatory McGraw Hill site in order to do my homework.

I attend a community college and while it's less expensive than some schools, it is by no means cheap. Attending a school of any kind one expects certain constants. A teacher, firstly, and a curriculum that the teacher has vetted or better yet had some part in creating. Otherwise, why the hell do we even need a teacher?

I bring this up because both the college I attend and my high school seem to be under the impression that students like to use their websites. And don't me wrong. I believe emailing a teacher and forming a relationship with said teacher is vital to enjoying and doing well in the class. But WE HAVE GOT TO STOP WITH THE WEBSITES.

Angel, turnitin, McGraw Hill, Canvas, the list goes on. These are just a few of the janky-ass "required" websites I have used in my career as a student. And they all suck. Like not even a little. These are some of the most non-user friendly, sluggish, obtusely designed sites I have ever seen. It's fucking shameful that we are forcing people who are trying to get educated to use such monstrosities.

But let's get specific. I go to the website that my instructor gives me. It requires me to sign up for an account. Thanks, I totally don't already have enough accounts in my life. It's not like I get spammed up the ass with daily emails from linkedin, a site from what I can tell, nobody under the age of 45 uses seriously.

So I sign up for the crap, and now I have to buy an online textbook. For those of you who don't know, doing this save you about $200. But you don't get a book. You get a temporary access code for an ebook. So it's all a scam but I need to do it in order to access the homework in the class.

I buy the temporary ebook, and there goes another $90. Okay so now what. Where's my homework? According the site, I am "Not in any courses".

Yes I am, you rotten dumpster. I just paid $90 bucks to be part of your "I got ripped off" club.

I screw around with the tragically slow website for the next 30 minutes trying to do my godforsaken homework and make no progress. Had I an actual text book, and just read the stuff for real and then written the homework with my prehistoric quill pen instead of this futuristic scam I would've been done by now.

So I call them up, and guess what. Another machine. But that's to be expected. Garbage companies like McGraw hill make their bottom line by shoving themselves deep inside the fabric of public education and then putting as many roadblocks as possible in-between the user and the service. God forbid they actually have to answer for their sins or heck, deliver some sort of a functional product.

So TWIST, it turns out the reason my homework wasn't showing up in my brand-spankin-new account was that McGraw Hill's Connect website was programmed in backwards land by a monkey with so many chromosomes he needs to be fed through a tube.

I'm sorry, that statement was insulting to primates everywhere. This is more likely what the guy looked like.

Yeah, you need to LOG OUT OF YOUR ACCOUNT TO ACCESS YOUR CLASSES. That's like taking the keys out of your car to drive. Makes no sense.

And the scary part is it's mandatory. If it was a convenience thing like "different strokes for different folks" I wouldn't complain about it. Some people like to have their balls stepped on, so why should I judge.

But professor, don't step on my balls.

It should be illegal to require use of such a backwards, held-together-with-elmers-glue-and-saltines, website to do ANY ASSIGNMENT.

And they're all like this. Signing up for classes on the college's website is a lost cause, I just do it in person because 2 semesters ago they withheld my grades for not paying for a class I never signed up for.

Guess what. That's called extortion.

The Turnitin.com is so bad in fact it used to have a whole website devoted to warning parents, students, and teachers away from it. The site is gone now, but it's still archived here. I can only imagine the sadists who programmed these abominations had the poor rebel assassinated.

Do your part. If these websites bug you as much as they bug me, and apparently quite a lot of people, speak up. Tell your teachers and professors. There are enough disgusting failings in the American educational system that this systematic assault on common sense doesn't need to be apart of the daily life of our students. It's criminal.