Janet Metcalfe

I’m not sure why Professor Metcalfe’s reviews are so low. I really enjoyed this class. The material was not difficult to grasp, especially if you skim the readings before class, which helps you understand what will be covered during lecture. I found the class fairly easy and got an A+. If you attend class and practice defining all the terms on the study guide, you’ll do very well on her exams.

Oh Janet Janet Janet, how strange and disappointing your class was. The subject area: origins of self-reflective consciousness, had so much potential, but it was immediately evident from the first few classes that Janet Metcalfe cared very little, if at all, about this class that she taught. Instead of doing any guidance herself, she assigned very vague topics for presentations every week and had the students pair up to make the presentations and select the readings for that week. She did not do the readings, never gave us feedback about our presentations, was always away. Basically, she literally had no role in the class other than to assign us a grade at the end. The discussions were only interesting due to the other students in the class, not to any knowledge she cared to share. Moreover, I realized throughout the course that she exhibited an incredible bias towards psychology majors who have done research with other psych professors. Name dropping was especially pleasing to her, as was the random allusions to obscure concepts. Also, quoting from another culpa review: "self-awareness goes a long way, folks. If your anecdote has no other purpose than to drop an obscure psych term only tangentially related to the material, maybe consider saving it for the diary, mm?" What is the most damning characteristic about her though, is that she ONLY cares about her research. She doesn…

everyone is so smart and kind. Dr. Marvin's seminar is the kind of class that I dreamt of when applying to Columbia. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2023 Course: PSYCGU4281_001_2023_3-ThePsychologyofCuriosity : PSYCGU4281_001_2023_3 - The Psychology of Curiosity Instructor: Caroline Marvin

Professor Metcalfe is clearly very knowledgeable in her field and is a lovely person. That said, her class is highly disorganized. The slides are all over the place, the review sessions feel incomplete, and the TAs themselves seem confused about how to help students. The readings are also extremely dense and account for the majority of the exam content. You really have to know the material through and through because her tests are open-ended questions where you have to describe multiple studies (experimental group, control group, variables, results), and could also be asked to define/give the importance of psych terms (roughly 80-100 that could potentially be asked per exam). Please don't cram for her exams; it won't work.

I think it was a great course, just would have preferred to not have been on zoom all semester. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2021 Course: PSYCGU4281_001_2021_3-ThePsychologyofCuriosity : PSYCGU4281_001_2021_3 - The Psychology of Curiosity Instructor: Caroline Marvin

This course has a lot of potential but honestly the style was not for me. The content was interesting and it was fascinating to get to learn from the professor who was conducting much of the research we were learning. However, the slides and recordings were not posted on canvas so if you missed a class you had to email the TAs. They were always responsive and eager to help but it also creates an atmosphere in the classroom where students are scrambling to write down everything written on the board rather than understand the concepts which makes genuinely grasping the concepts difficult. There were also times the review sheets given before the test did not cover everything that was on the exam itself which was unfortunate. In general Professor Metcalfe just seemed (to me personally) more interested in giving over the material than the students understanding it. There were times she would zip through the slides with over half the class not having had enough time to write down the content and she didn't post the slides so we would have to emailed the TAs if we wanted to fill in the gaps from the presentations. This year there was a specific unfortunate mishap with the printer that resulted in us starting an exam significantly later than planned. Though it was obviously due to a miscommunication, the students would have appreciated it if she would have taken some questions off the…

I don't understand why people are hating on Professor Metcalfe so much -- perhaps she has seen some of the feedback from earlier and adapted the class accordingly, but I have had a very positive experience in her lecture. She is a wonderful and engaging lecturer who seems to really care about the material, taking extra time after class and in office hours to answer questions people have, and being very responsive to emails with additional questions. The class is definitely difficult in that there is a lot of material to learn, but Professor Metcalfe sends out a "study guide" before each test that tells you exactly what you need to know. Again, there is quite a bit of material on these study guides and it does take a good amount of time to learn everything, but there is literally 0 unpredictability because she tells you what is going to be on the test. People in other reviews were upset about the readings being very long; this is no longer the case, and I got by without doing them at all. There were a few times where the study guide included terms from the readings, in which case she says as much and tells you what to read. All of that being said, I do think that this class is more work than its worth, and unless you are very interested in cognitive processes I personally wouldn't recommend it very highly. Because of how many tests there are it felt as if I was always studying,…

Professor Metcalfe should really take some time for introspection and decide whether teaching is really something she wants to do. Likewise, the Psych Department should take a good look at the student feedback from Metcalfe's classes because they are atrocious. I never thought I would regret taking a class at Columbia but boy oh boy, do I regret signing up for this one. There's about 100-200 pages of weekly reading of which she talks about 10% of them in class. However, 50% of the tests are on the reading material!!! The lectures are really disorganized and I'm pretty sure she's just free-styling them most of the time. The TAs are pretty much useless but I don't blame them because it seems that Metcalfe doesn't give them much to work with either. They're usually her RAs from her lab which makes sense because why else would you want to involve yourself in that mess? The tests are harshly graded (i.e. you could get none of the questions wrong but still wind up with an 85 because you didn't include "enough detail" even though you wrote 4 sentences for a single definition). The TAs grade them and I know FOR A FACT that she doesn't review the grading before handing the tests back. If you want her to look at any single question/grading, she will regrade the entire tests so you know how that goes... The review sessions for "cheat sheets" with 150+ terms are held the day before the ex…

Professor Metcalfe is a sweet and knowledgeable person, but her class is extremely disorganized. If you aren’t sitting in the first row you will not be able to hear the majority of what she is saying. The TA’s don’t offer clarity, and grade tests very harshly. Review session held by TA’s only caters to students who live on campus - it was as held at 8PM on a Monday. Prior to exams you are intstructed to respond with bullet points, not full sentences, because points will be taken off for making TA’s read too much; once the time for the test comes though, points are taken off for lack of depth. You don’t get out what you put in, in terms of this class. Even as a person who is getting a good grade in the class so far, I would suggest you not waste your time or money.

I have never written a CULPA review before, but I was just looking through reviews of professors I have had out of curiosity and I am so surprised by all of the negative reviews for Dr. Metcalfe. I'm not sure if other people have given spiteful reviews or if things have improved a lot since 2014, but I loved Dr. Metcalfe's class. In fact, I don't think I heard anyone in my class last semester (fall 2016) express that they thought anything about Memory & Stress was unfair. Study guides given out encompass everything you need to know, lectures are interesting, and Dr. Metcalfe is very sweet! I don't mean to call anyone else's reviews into question, but it is very difficult for me to picture her being condescending or rude to students. I would strongly recommend this class. It is important to be aware going into it that some material presented only in lecture (and not available in readings) will be on tests, so it is important to either consistently attend class & take detailed notes, or otherwise attend review sessions & ask TAs about concepts you missed. You will know in advance which class concepts will be on the test, since this is all outlined in study guides.