Naugatuck Valley Community College — Attraction in Waterbury

⚠️ BASIC MOTORCYCLE CLASS ⚠️

The driving practice will be a total of 10 hours with a final exam that has 5 parts; it will dictate if you pass or fail. If you have never driven a motorcycle before, you have a 30-40% chance of passing. If you have driven motorcycles before, you have a 50-60% chance of passing. 1 out of the 5 parts of the final exam is a complete curve ball that most are guaranteed to fail; it's a sharp turn that you never practice along with a u-turn. They justify this part in the exam by claiming, "but you've practiced the u-turn." Yes, the U-turn, but not the sharp turn into a u-turn with severe minimum space. If the test is 5 parts, that means each section is 20 points. When you fail this section (and most will fail), your test result will drop to 80%, leaving you with 10-20 points left before you fail. My suggestion: DON'T SPEND $240 for a safety course if you have never driven a motorcycle. Find a friend or family member who's willing to help you practice before spending your money. I believe half of my classmates failed their test (myself included). The students who passed had already been driving motorcycles illegally and wanted to finally become legal. Instructor review: You have two completely different personalities, and it feels like you have a good cop (GC) and a bad cop (BC). GC is chill, laid back, and does his job well with a sense of humor. BC is good at his job until his patience runs out and becomes frustrated. When BC becomes frustrated, he will go from giving concise and clear instructions to then repeating to you multiple times that you have a high probability of failing the class. I can understand being direct and telling it how it is, but to continue repeating to a student that their likely going to fail is NOT effective communication. BC will also have frustrated moments where he will say things like, "I'm about to send you home." It's one thing if a student is being reckless. It's another if the student is trying their hardest to do what's required. (Good Cop is the tall chubby guy that reminds everyone he's too heavy for most of the bikes, and the Bad Cop is the shorter older guy).

Overall, the curve ball sharp turn into a u-turn part of the test is complete BS. Just do the actual u-turn track that everyone practiced instead of getting creative last minute. Now, to play devils advocate, I got extremely nervous during the exam and made a bunch of mistakes. After I did the second exam part, I already knew I had failed and was a split second away from riding the motorcycle to the front of their trailer, parking it, and walking off the track, back to my car and leaving. I decided to stay until the end and at least finish all 5 parts of the test. When you receive the results, I'll give credit where it's due and say, their very discrete, as they'll call each student out of the class 1 by 1 to give them their results. GC was great from start to finish; I even shook his hand as I received a failing test result. BC was great until he became frustrated, which in turn made him a frustrating communicator. Lastly, BC, if you're reading this... Don't ever ask anyone, "Why aren't you smiling? Riding motorcycles is supposed to be fun." After you've spoken doubt about their potential test results and have threatened them with,"I'm about to send you home." That's quite...

I could write a book about what colleges do wrong.

But I'll save you my whining and talk shop instead— this is a pretty decent and friendly place. There are many passionate, cool and effective teachers who love teaching and their students, even when the system doesn't love either of them.

Online classes are a joke and suffer from "old people cannot use technology" disease, making it very easy for cheaters to prosper. They even heavily discourage you from even helping them fix the cheats, when they're absolutely instrumental for your success when the class is taught badly. I highly recommend you take history this way. Teachers for these classes usually rip tests off of specific websites, so... fair's fair, right?

It's a shame, too. I love history. I just hate rout memorization. Please just remove history as a class and suggest history resources instead. This isn't suggestion to the college, but to the entire national board who decides what knowledge is or isn't cool. Please please please just make the system better and stop overcomplicating things. You're out of touch, please hand the keys to someone wiser if you can't do it yourself.

Anyway, advisors are innocent to the perils of college sequencing. They will tell you to follow your dream, no matter the cost. Whatever you want to do, they will promise you the world. But this is a siren's song. They will not inform you of the logistics which may make you reasonably doubt your path. When I cited money as a reason I went to community college instead of a full four-year university, the admissions person chuckled and said that they got that a lot, in a really clueless way, as if she didn't know why. Yeah, expect that kind of attitude a lot. It's refreshing but dangerous.

And what happens when you go to that four year university, end up in a little debt and don't have the life you thought you were building in college? Well... too bad, sucker. We thought you knew enough about what you were doing. Don't blame us for life's rough patches. Don't blame us for not teaching you your internal biases and character flaws and imperfections in how you see the world. Blame yourself. It's not our job to teach you that.

Problem is, though, no one teaches that. Highschool sure doesn't. Where do people learn that? I had to teach myself, but not everyone can.

Ironically, I'm not speaking from experience. It's just something I've seen happen to too many people, and I think it's disgusting that the system isn't more realistic and helpful from a lifestyle perspective. But, some people would say I'm just being cynical. I sure hope so. 'Cause the way I see it, people's hope in the system is selfish naivete.

But, I'm being too dreamy. You can't grade lifestyle advice, so what's the point in...

This a review from 3 years ago that somehow got scrubbed, I am reposting it because I noticed it was gone and they don’t get to get away with removing negative reviews: The advisors, reps and faculty members don't know how to respond to emails or answer phones. Their 2 year degrees take more than two years because they barely advise you on scheduling classes. This school tried dropping surprise tuition charges on my account and they tried negating my financial aid because their financial aid rules on the website are vague or they contradict their own rules and the CSCU rules for the whole state. Their appeals process does not work. Save your money and effort and study somewhere else if you can.

Edit: My fianceé just tried to sign up for classes for the fall 2024 semester. She last attended in 2021 and decided to return to try a new program. She could not register due to a hold on her account for no reason other than being a returning student, and when she got in touch with someone by both email and phone, they said they would get back to her. Months later, flat out radio silence. She gave up and is now looking to try the program somewhere else to avoid the hassle. I knew it was bad when I was a student years ago but it was never that bad that they didn’t even help you sign up. It’s only gotten much worse. It’s like they purposely want to have as least as many students attending as possible or that they don’t want any business....