How do I regain interest in a class if I’ve lost confidence in the instructor’s depth of knowledge?

Hi Sidra. Excitedly signing up for a course and then discovering it's not what you'd hoped for is never a fun place to be. And it's particularly frustrating when it's something you paid for yourself.

Judy is correct in saying that while your money is spent, your time isn't. So the most important thing to do now is determine if you can still get something from this course that makes it worth the time you're spending on it or if it's a better use of your time to walk away and not finish it.

The course is never going to meet your initial expectations of it. That's really disappointing, but it sometimes happens. But you may still be able to get value from it—and get back just a bit of your initial excitement—if you change your expectations of the course. Clearly, your instructor isn't up for digging into audience questions or talking about content before it's come up in their lesson plans. But outside of that, are the lectures and class activities helping you at all—even if they're simply helping you think about the subject in new ways or making it easier to do those post-class Google searches to get the deeper information you need? Or are you building connections with your classmates that could help you professionally? Then attending the course might still be worth the effort, even if you have to supplement it with Google and other reading.

But if the course isn't teaching you anything you didn't already know, or it's taught in a way you find frustrating and draining, then it really is okay to stop taking it. But it doesn't have to be a complete loss. You could use the course syllabus to guide your own self-driven exploration of the topic. And since you already have time regularly set aside for attending the course, you can always just switch how you use it and study on your own during that time instead.

Regardless of what you decide to do, I'm very sorry you're going through this. It's so disappointing when a learning experience you're excited about doesn't end up being what you need. I hope you're able to find other ways to keep building your professional skills—whether it's on your own, with an online community, or even in another class that better matches what you're looking for.