Firstly, I believed that Dr. Varela was going to be an alright professor for the fall semester of 2021. After the first class day, he misses 2 WEEKS worth of class time and expects us to buy the book required for the class. Personally, missing this much class removes a lot of interest about learning from it; however, I let it slide because maybe he had personal issues. 

My main issue with Varela is the fact that every other class day, he misses out on class and comes with very predictable excuses such as having a headache or having a car breakdown. Although I understand that migraines are painful and car breakdowns do happen, this pattern of missing class is inexcusable and he has the audacity to call out students if they're late or missing class. This constant nagging of missing class removes the fundamentals of what we are supposed to learn about. In class he is not bad at explaining certain points but there are times where he over explains and goes on a tangent about referencing something in his personal life, or something in a film, etc. that we students end up missing the point he wants to convey, he then expects us to write almost every single word he says and victimizes us for not taking notes. The class has no sense of direction and has no overall structure, no PowerPoints, no notes.

Mind you this class is called philosophy of art aesthetics and it is not about assumption, but from the way he teaches it, it clearly feels like we students have to assume things which should not be the case. His ways of teaching should be clearly changed. 

Another thing is Varela's attitude, if he sees a student coming in late to class, he goes on to make a whole lecture about why that student may fail. Why does he do this? Does he not understand that there is traffic? Students don't necessarily have vehicles to travel? From my understanding, Varela does have common sense but ultimately lacks a sense of understanding for his students and only does things that only line up with his schedule and not ours. 

On Friday, October 1st, Varela concludes our exam being on the 4th of October. A class mate of mine who I will not say the name of, asked Varela if we could review what we could be going over. Varela has the bright idea of attempting to make a failed humorous response which elicited the student to angry with Varela. Such student couldn't really understand what was happening in the class (even though  they attended on a regular basis) and Varela said that we could not have a review session. So to sum up everything, Varela misses a bunch of classes and has the audacity to not go over what could possibly be in the exam? This is confusing and caused everyone to question what he a professor is doing.

As I am writing this, it is currently October 4th, 2021. We have an exam today and turns out that Varela said we need to bring OUR OWN SCANTRON SHEETS. WHAT?!?! I am already paying for my education, why I am being required to pay money to take an exam, that is absolute ridiculousness. Worst part about this is the fact that he told us about the scantron sheets (us needing to buy it) 3 DAYS PRIOR TO THE EXAM. Why in the world are we given this little amount of time to get our own scantron sheets when we are clearly adults that have to do important things over the weekend. Some of us have to work and take care of ourselves, our minds cannot always be engraved in school work. If he would have told us in advance, maybe 1 to 2 weeks prior about buying the scantron sheets, it would obviously be more understandable; however, us students are in a predicament having little to none.

Overall, I would like Varela's students to sign this petition to either get him to resign or get the administration of Barry University to change his ways and methods of teaching.