Years ago, in my preschool days, I attended Iowa State’s Child Development Laboratory School. My memory from back then is shaky at best, but I do remember shaking whipped cream, incubating chicken eggs, making pizza and a guy on a unicycle.Fifteen-or-so odd years later, I find myself eerily close to my pre-kindergarten roots. I still go to school in Ames. In fact, I can actually see the preschool from my dorm room window. Sometimes on my way to class, I look upon the playground of my former youth and wistfully recall a time when I had no responsibilities other than finding non-destructive ways to amuse myself. I would eventually progress from that tranquil, carefree period to the Ames Community school system, only to return here. How underwhelming.While my geographical situation in my nineteen years of life on this planet has been very much a static predicament, the methodology in which I have been taught has metamorphosed dramatically. I’ve found that the role of my educators is increasingly becoming more and more detached.Back in early grade school, I had only one teacher each year who knew me personally, had met my parents, and made sure I did all my homework. Each teacher was dedicated to teaching me at least enough to ensure she or he wouldn’t see me again next year. Late grade school saw the whole rotating-teacher paradigm in which each teacher in a grade specialized in teaching one subject. Middle school took that concept further and introduced extra-curricular activities, which were basically summed up as as sports and non-sports. We were given lockers, assigned homerooms, and wrote long papers on grown-up topics like Native-American oppression and Japanese incarceration camps.By the time I got to high school, I realized how a teacher’s curricula had changed from the patient, meandering freeform in my youth to a highly structured, rigid exercise in efficiency. Some teachers were inspired with their work, others were apathetic and short-tempered. A few were plain awful. Still, they more or less made a decent effort to teach me stuff, so things were OK.Then I came here.In my three semesters on this campus, I’ve had instructors that never once made sense. Instructors who spoke quietly or couldn’t even speak English at all. Instructors who seemed like they were explaining the material to a grad student and recitation TAs who regurgitated everything from class. It felt like professors were looking at the sea of faces in front of them and saw only mindless cattle they had to herd to the end of the semester.A few days ago in group-study, an engineering peer of mine recalled an interesting tidbit. He mentioned that one of his professors called him by name. The rest of us were startled. We weren’t used to this. It may have been commonplace years ago, but in college, the idea of a professor knowing a few of his students by name is actually kind of creepy. Was the prof stalking this poor kid? I had forgotten what personalized, 1:30-based teaching was like.Now that I remember, I kind of miss it. I miss the personalized approach to teaching. However, I realize it’s unrealistic to expect a professor to be able to teach 300 students as personally as 30. There are, however, a few things that I think are completely realistic to expect from my instructors.Before I get started, I really don’t expect a professor with several hundred students to know everyone’s name. I don’t except a professor to crack jokes all the time or constantly amuse me with funny anecdotes or make every lecture a home run. I don’t expect to be spoon-fed information like I’m in grade school. I do, however, expect a little something for showing up to class. Here are three things I think are completely reasonable expectations for instructors at this university:1. Communicate clearly. Talk into the mic, talk slowly, and make eye contact with students. Being able to decipher what you’re saying is the first step towards learning the material. If you use transparencies or the blackboard, write legibly.2. Coordinate your lecture with lab and recitation. I swear, some of my professors have no idea what goes on in those things. Many of my labs had no bearing on what was going on in the class. It also wouldn’t hurt to drop in on a lab from time to time to see what your students are actually doing. My Computer Engineering instructor did that once. I was impressed. Recitation should be meaningful, not just a retread of lecture and a place to hand back assignments. 3. Give relevant exams and quizzes. You should really know what goes into your exams. If you don’t write your own exams, at least review them and make sure that everything is material discussed in class and in the book. Make your quizzes reasonable. Clue students in on what your expectations are.I realize that we’re all adults here and can’t expect the same individual student dedication I was so accustomed to. Still, all students ask is that you treat us like people, make a good faith effort to teach us, administer fair exams, and honestly care about us. I’m sure we can work something out.Sam Wong is a sophomore in electrical engineering from Ames.