Hi aska! I’m a first year student at the Daniel’s faculty (about to be a second year and have also studied a year prior at the university of Waterloo ) and I am having difficulties with the courses assignment outlines. Throughout high-school I was given very detailed assignment outlines and would average high 80s to mid 90s. When I first entered post secondary schooling at Waterloo I was able to perform to my best capabilities and average mid 80s to low 90s due to their detailed assignment outlines. However the switch to UofT has been difficult since the assignment outlines I get are either very vague and around 2-4 sentences in length, some without rubrics to accompany them. My marks are not at the level that I know I can achieve (around high 60s to high 70s). I was wondering how I would be able to get a more concrete understanding of the assignment and perform well on them. I do constantly ask professors, TA’s, and instructors for help but I find most of their responses to be completely useless or they don’t answer the question I was asking. What should I do?
heyyo,
i love your question so so much! because I’ve asked myself the same thing.
look, i know uoft talks about independent learning and self-discovery and all that great stuff. but sometimes when, y’know, important things depend on that independent learning, you’d really appreciate some clear guidelines. can anyone spare a rubric, anyone?! rubrics, please!
obviously the first step here would be asking your ta or prof, but you already did that. so my first suggestion would be to try refining those questions. instead of asking generally “what should i do for the assignment?” or “how can i improve?” try asking about something more specific. like: “the assignment says i have to draw on x concept from the reading, could you clarify how that reading relates to the assignment material?” or “i noticed in my last assignment feedback that i could improve my sentence structure, could you give some concrete examples of sentences you felt could have used some work?”
oh, and if you haven’t been already, go to office hours to ask your questions. it’ll be way easier to get your points across and push for clarification one-on-one and in person.
if that doesn’t work… it might be time to do a little sleuthing.
sometimes the best advice you can get for assignments can come from indirect places. listen carefully in lecture to see if your prof says anything that could be applicable (did they spend five minutes ranting about run-on sentences? did they offhandedly mention that they appreciate brief introductions?) also, take a close look at past assignment feedback.
if all else fails (or even if everything does magically works out), you can take your work to a writing centre. i actually found out from your question that daniels has its own writing centre. voila! they can help with all stages of assignments and could help puzzle together what an assignment is asking for more specifically.
i really hope these tips help you and everyone else who is kinda fed up with vague assignments. i know that thinking through this for you for sure helped me a ton!
cheers,
aska