Day 5: Syllabus Overload

"I knew I was in trouble the moment I walked into my Business Statistics lecture and saw the professor unloading a stack of booklets onto the desk.

‘Good morning, class!’ Dr. Wong greeted us with way too much enthusiasm for 8 a.m. He picked up one of the booklets and waved it like a prize. ‘This is your syllabus. Everything you need to know for the semester.’

I watched as the booklets made their way down the rows, getting heavier in my mind with every passing second. When one finally landed in front of me, I flipped it open and immediately felt my soul leave my body.

There were formulas. Charts. A detailed breakdown of assignments, quizzes, and exams. And worst of all—a week-by-week schedule of topics that might as well have been written in a foreign language. Regression analysis, hypothesis testing, standard deviation… What had I gotten myself into?

Dr. Wong was already diving into the details. ‘You’ll need to familiarise yourself with basic statistical software. If you don’t have access to SPSS, you can use Excel, but I recommend SPSS. Also, don’t forget: your first quiz is next Friday.’

Next Friday? I hadn’t even figured out where to sit permanently in this class, and now I was expected to take a quiz on… what? Mean, median, and mode? That’s where my statistical knowledge ended.

Faisal, sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, ‘What’s SPSS?’

I shrugged. ‘Some kind of software, I think. Maybe it’s like Excel?’

Dr. Wong must have superhuman hearing because he suddenly said, ‘SPSS is not like Excel. It’s far more robust and designed for advanced statistical analysis.’ Faisal and I both sat up straight, nodding like obedient students.

After class, I stared at the syllabus like it was an ancient scroll. There was a section on group projects (again!), a midterm that was worth 30% of the grade, and an individual assignment about ‘real-world data interpretation.’ I didn’t even know what that meant.

‘I think we’re doomed,’ I said as Faisal and I walked to the cafeteria.

‘Nah, it’s just numbers,’ he replied, far too casually. ‘How hard can it be?’

‘You mean the same numbers that make up your phone bill you still can’t calculate?’ I shot back.

He laughed. ‘Touché.’

When I got back to my dorm later, I decided to be productive for once. I pulled out my laptop and Googled ‘SPSS tutorial.’ Within five minutes, I was overwhelmed by terms like “ANOVA,” “chi-square test,” and “data cleaning.” I closed my laptop and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

Lesson of the day: Syllabi are designed to make you feel like you’ve already failed. And SPSS? Sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen."