I got my AA degree when I was 34, and have been working toward a BS on and off ever since (19 years). I had The Hair Shirt Very Loud Vows of Poverty Professor years ago at the University of Baltimore. She was head of the Sociology Department and teaching a 101 course. I eventually got tired enough of her “poor me” whining to say in class that since she worked at a state institution her general compensation range was public information, and that from the point of view of a bunch of people who were struggling to get a degree at night she was probably doing pretty well.
I have also encountered Professor “That depends”. He answered every question with that phrase, followed by way too much information. The course was Statistics for Business, which is not really that fuzzy a subject.
Thank you, thank you! On behalf of people everywhere who hold down real jobs and pay taxes, thank you. In what other job can you actually spend work time whining about your pay? I may just haul off and tell someone that after paying taxes and tuition I really just don’t want to hear it.
Hmm…reminds me of Professor Tunnel-Vision, who taught a Materials course I had to take. She actually knew and understood her subject, and knew quite a bit about other subjects. She was just incapable of taking what she knew about one subject and applying it to something else, or recognizing what happened when someone else did so.
Typical scenario: She gives a problem on a test. You look at it and see an easy way to do it, so you work it out and move on. When you get the paper back, you see that you had the answer correct to four decimal places, but the problem is marked wrong. So, puzzled and concerned, you go see her in her office (which, comfortingly, was in a negative-pressure building in case of toxic gas leaks). You show her the problem and ask her to change the obviously erroneous marking, and she pulls out her answer key and shows you the ugly, complicated way she worked it out. Since you didn’t do it that way, you must be wrong. How does she explain the correct result? She shrugs, or maybe suggests that you were cheating. Then you walk her through your solution, and see the lights come on behind her eyes: “Oh, you used [mathematical technique X]! I’ve been trying to get my [course Y] students to understand that. I just didn’t expect to see in this class.” :smack:
This happened to me several times in her class, and at least once each to about a dozen other people. She never learned.
The professor who cannot speak english
I had two as an undergrad (one for intro to Philosophy, one in Political Science), I dropped both classes after realizing that the classes were completely lecture-oriented and I could not understand a single word that they said. One guy was Chinese, the other Kenyan. Bizarre, because I can generally understand people with accents as well as people with severe speech impairments. These dudes? No clue. For all I know, they were just mumbling for their own amusement.
Corollary to The Professor Who Cannot Speak English, the professor who knows that they cannot speak English, and compensates wonderfully
As a grad student, one of my profs was from Hong Kong via London. Her grammar and grasp of written English were fine, it was just difficult to understand her speech. Our class struggled to listen through her first lecture. At the end of class, and for every class that followed, she handed out copies of her lecture notes. Og bless her.
And I give you: The Professor Who Hates Students
As an undergrad, I only ever took four classes in my major that were actually taught by full professors. The rest were all TA’s or assistants. Dr. B was one of these. As an Honors student, I needed a prof to approve/supervise a 1-credit-hour project. As she was my singular prof that year, I asked if she could help. She considered my request for several weeks and told me that really it was too much bother and she didn’t care, she doen’t like students (!!!) Oh well, my dean stepped in and I did my hour with him. At least he actually likes students.
Lets see what I can dig up…
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DOODLING DAVE** - Opposite effect of ‘Fast Eddie’ he wrote his notes on the overheard, then basically illustrated all the points and connections he was trying to make. Brackets, arrows, circles, underline, boxes, venn-diagrams, the overhead was so full of them you couldn’t even make out the original content. Once I believe my friend and I counted 20 arrows on ONE PAGE.
I won’t submit this as another type because it pulls from many that have already been mentioned, but NEVER CRITICIZE FACULTY! We were supposed to write concert reviews for a Music Lit class I was in. I flunked one and was absolutely torn to shreds for mentioning that I thought a professor’s accompaniment of a student performance was merely “adequate.” His response was, “THIS IS AT BEST A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT!!!” Next paper I kiss the faculty’s ass “The contrast of Prof X’s more mature vocals was a interesting contrast to…etc.” Perfect score! :rolleyes:
Oh god I had this guy. Not only was he a doodler, but he taught the same class back-to-back. I was in the later class. He’d just leave his doodles up from the previous hour and then attempt to explain them to us, usually unable to figure out his own diagrams, getting lost, going on tangents, etc. Just like the Space Case though I mentioned upthread, aside from his confusing doodling I really liked him. (As an aside, I’m in the middle of the Space Case report, and I’m about to go sit in the corner and cry).
Oops, fat fingers so early in the morning. As I was saying:
My professor for Modernist British Literature is a Wilde-olatar of the worst kind. He talks about Oscar Wilde as if he had been a personal friend [“Oscar would never have said anything like that, don’t you see, because he didn’t really believe that the critic-as-artist archetype really existed.”] I swear to God, I expect him to one day tell us, “And so I said to Oscar, ‘You know, Oscar, most students nowadays think “The Importance of Being Earnest” isn’t really important a’tall!’ (Soft chuckle here) And Oscar just ate his bread and butter and sipped his tea, and said something very witty, I don’t recall just what it was …” We’ve read Conrad, Waugh, Yeats and Woolf, but all he ever talks about is Oscar-fucking-Wilde!
Two to add. I go to a non-traditional college where only a few of the professors are full time. So we have:
**Professor “I’m too caught up in my real job to teach this course.” ** It happens with professional professors as well, they are busy with their research or their grad students. But these guys are just busy with their day to day jobs. I had one that had a full time job, was working on his PhD, and teaching another class at another school - yeah, you have time to teach this.
Professor “Invisible” - I’ve had professor invisible several times now. One an independant study class where I never even got scores back for my tests - fortunately, it was a topic I knew well. Now I’m taking an internet course that might as well be an independant study course for all the “teaching” that is happening. A variation combines “invisible” with “real job” - where the instructor cancels 20%+ of the lectures because they are busy traveling for their real job. Better be someone who learns from the book.
Speaking as faculty, what you describe is the sign of a poor professor. Many of us, if not most, want to hear or read suggestions and criticism if it’s offered constructively.
Professor that spends class time repeating crazy ass stories
Haha. I took Human Sexuality last year…my prof was a sex therapist. He was older, white hair and all. He never really taught us anything. Just spend class time telling us stories. One he told a few times was how he was pulled over driving to Stanford because his girlfriend was performing oral sex on him while he was driving and he kept swerving. And he’d always give us intimiate details of past patients that had some weird ass problems. And he’d repeat all these stories over and over and over. I started sleeping during his class but it was funny to hear someone that is old enough to be my grandfather say things like ‘buttfucker’ and stuff in class. Got an A+ because it was all textbook.
Professor I’m supposed to TEACH you something?
My last French teacher spent all his time talking about racism. It was French III, a grammar/speaking class. Not French history or culture. Language. He was from Congo or something and had crazy dreadlocks. I failed almost all of his assignments and got a B somehow…worked out okay but it was way frustrating. We’d either listen to him drone on about racism or he’d show us French rap videos while he was wearing his North Face jacket and Che tshirt.
The ABD: the Ph.D. candidate from a “prestigious” university who has been given a conditional appointment as an Assistant Professor at a less prestigious university. All he has to do is finish his dissertation and he’s golden. In the meantime, he teaches “Theory” to all the first year grad students in his new department.
In my particular case, the ABD’s idea of teaching theory of anthropology was to show slides of Mark Rothko’s paintings while reading aloud an essay by Immanuel Kant. It’s 27 years later and I suspect he still doesn’t have his Ph.D.
Not a professor, but I had a teacher who was Romanian and would link anything she possibly could to Romania and especially to its political history. She despised Ceausescu (understandable) enough to talk about him as often as she could, which was surprisingly often considering she taught art.
The peak was when she asked what real events Animal Farm was an allegory of. The Russian revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union was of course the wrong answer, the correct one was the rise of Ceausescu. In other words, Orwell managed to write, in 1944, an allegory of things that wouldn’t happen for twenty-two years.
I also had a professor who had to take over a class when the professor we were supposed to have was hospitalized. He started each lecture with explaining that he didn’t have time for this; he had an encyclopedia article and a thesis to write.
The first is The Adjunct. Sort of like Dangerosa’s example, but not really. These people come in, teach their class, and leave. They don’t usually give homework because they don’t feel like grading it. Their tests are a joke for the same reason. Occasionally, they’ll bring in some of their own work for you to do, because Real World Experience is a Good Thing, dontchaknow. You can forget about office hours and e-mails go unanswered. (I’ve not had The Adjunct, at least not to this degree, but I have friends who have. Listening to them rant n’ rave about paying for the privilege of doing someone else’s work and knowing they’ll get the credit for it is not a pleasant experience.) Basically, The Adjunct is there for the extra money and doesn’t really give a shit otherwise.
The second is The Pure Academic. This one usually isn’t monomaniacal about his research, but they are all about original research. Expects all of his grad students to write a thesis, claiming that it’s the only way to get into a PhD program, but you know that at least half of your department’s other faculty either did comprehensive exams or a project. Doesn’t consider your (my, actually) qualitative research project to be on the same level as a thesis, even though you’re doing twice the work and the end result will be the same, right on down to the defense, which will happen in front of 100 alumni instead of three professors. Actually expects most of his graduate students to go into a PhD program. This guy is my advisor.