I have had this sort of problem on two seperate occasions from two different instructors recently.
In the first case; the instructor often had deblitating migrain headachs. If he tried to work through them, such as answering student e-mails during this time he often would lose his temper and reply with a tirade similar to what you experienced. However, once after I had recieved one of these e-mails, he sought me out in person to apologize. He was an older, crabby, close to retirement old goat, but was one of the best instructors I ever had.
The other instructor was a different story. This one actually tried to flush me out of my program. I ended up seeing the school guidance counselor. She was skeptical that an instructor of this sort of caliber would behave in such a manner, but I had all kinds of proof with e-mails and my evaluation. I told that professor that all communication, other than directly in the classroom would be going through the couselors office. That brought the demon up short. She tried to intimidate me once or twice more, but once I knew that I was not the one with the problem, her efforts looked ridiculous and she knew it.
Professors are not infallible. For some reason people want to believe that somebody in such a position is above certain kinds of behavior, but in actuality, that sort of abuse is very prevalent because of that very reason. They have power, you have none. They have a reputation, you are ‘just a student’. If you make a complaint, its dissmissed as a poor student who can’t perform to standard; which makes you look awful.
Go to the counselor. Its private, they can’t do or say anything to anybody, but they can check it out. At least it creates a record that can be used in the future if he does this again. Who knows? Maybe he already has a record of complaints like this.
A lot of departments (at least at my Uni) have a rather strict “24 hour response” policy, an instructor is supposed to give a response (not necessarily an answer, but at least an acknowledgement that they’re working at it) within 24 hours of email receipt. If this is the case, answering your emails may be hectic. I personally advise asking your questions immediately before or after class, if possible. I’m a question asker, sometimes it gets pretty bad (I’ve been known to stump the teacher), and sometimes I will ask questions I’m relatively sure of, but I try not to. Either way, I think dealing with you for 5 minutes after class while he packs up will be a lot more tolerable than drafting a complete email to answer a question every other night. Email should be reserved for longer, more in depth questions (except in large lecture hall courses, then it should definitely be office hours).
Language is especially tricky, some simple things like conjugation can be answered by a dictionary(… usually), but I know I definitely abuse questions too much in language classes, because whenever I ask an instructor I get an answer that’s much better. A lot of times searching you get a reference to some obscure word nobody uses, whereas if you ask a native speaker they actually have the ability to understand the CONCEPT and not just the word, and say “oh, we just say <x>.” So I definitely understand your dilemma.
Either way, I heavily recommend asking questions right after class lets out.
ETA: You may be wondering why the time after class is less hectic than emails. To be honest, I have no idea, but it certainly seems to work that way, maybe because email response time is taking up time you could spend dicking around where after class is basically a little 2 minute extension of class time.
You mean “well”.
I’m with the instructor on this one. The world does not revolve around you. Take the not so subtle cue that you are being a pain in his ass and stop pestering him.
Faculty here – I do try to answer emails in a timely fashion, but it can be time consuming when students are asking questions they could easily look up in their textbook (or would know had they done the reading assignment.)
I do make it clear to students that I may not be as quick to answer at weekends, and after 8pm, they may not get an answer until the next day – emphasised especially the night before an exam!
It’s the ease (and anonymity) of the internet, I think – it’s easy to pose questions on email when they might be intimidated or whatever face to face (rarely do I get visitors to my office). The other problem I encounter are students who assume that because they’re pulling an all-nighter, I’m up all hours, too. I check out the time-stamps on these emails for a rueful chuckle; one semester, the day a paper was due, I had the same student email me three times:
3am – ‘I really need help with the paper, etc etc, long complicated question, etc blah blah’
3.10am – I really need this answer NOW!!!1111
3.15am – WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?! BAD TEACHER BLARGH
Seems like I’ve stirred up a lot of emotion… It’s a junior college, I’m 17 years old. Yes, it’s not high school. Example of my questions: 1. Does “mille” get a plural “s” when it’s more than “one million?” 2. Two words for “IN” are dans & en, can you let us know in class what might be the difference? 3. Toi and tu both mean “to” - <in our video & text>, is it important to distinguish at this time? These questions asked by me 3 days prior to our next class meeting and 5 days prior to our mid-term. On this particular week, it was my only email to him. I’m very specific with my emails pertaining to the subject matter and I write questions globally (can you mention in class…) I learned in high school from a science teacher, if I have a question, other students might have this/these same questions.
You’ve given me some good ideas, and I’ll pick and choose from the advice. I’m not sure why some of you are being rude, it’s not easy to be in college for the first time, no one in my family has ever been to college. No, I’m not whining, I just don’t know how things work.
I just want to chime in with the others who have said that him saying you have good questions doesn’t really mean anything. I work with high school students and because I like to be positive and reinforce how important it is for them to think on their own, I always say, “Wow, that’s a really good question!” (or something like that)— no matter how inane or stupid what they are asking is. Same thing goes for if they make some point that is totally wrong, “Wow, that’s a really interesting point! Well, blah blah. {Correction and redirection of discussion}”
Also, it looks like all the questions you asked him were the type that you could have also Googled. Just sayin’.
Funny, I assumed the language you were studying was English. As a teacher, I can tell you that a student who asked me basic in-the-textbook questions, especially if I were a head of department with way more important things to do, as well as dozens or even hundreds of other students, would get very short shrift. As it is, I teach roughly 150 students a week. If each of them sent me three emails, or even one email with three questions as you’re now saying, I wouldn’t actually have time to prepare or deliver my classes, or to set or assess their work; never mind eat, sleep, spend time with my family, have a life. You are not his only student or his number one priority. Look some stuff up for yourself.
Also, your questions sound critical, as if you think you know more about what he should be teaching than he does. Saying, “Can you tell me this?” implies that *you *don’t understand. Saying, “Can you tell the class this?” implies that you think he’s a poor teacher who doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he feels he needs to mention it in class, he probably will, but that won’t include everything. It’s an 8 week course. There just isn’t time. Wind your neck in and do your own research, if you’re such a great student.
(BTW I’m not a French teacher but “mille” means thousand. Just to save you another question to your professor.)
Here are some questions you want to e-mail your professor about:
I’m completely lost. Can you clarify this or can I come into office hours to work thorugh this with you?
I’m interested in pursuing subject X as my thesis. Is this a viable area and what books might you recommend for me to start my research?
It sounds to me as if you’re strumming along with your homework, a question pops into your head, and the first thing you think to do is e-mail your professor asking him about it. That shouldn’t be your first instinct. You’re not going to get a pat on the head for being smart and inquisitive. You’re going to get dismissed because you can’t think to take the time to do a cursory search through your notes/textbook/Google to see if the answer is available there. And yes, that even includes finding typos in your textbook. It’s great you want to point that out. That can still wait until classtime.
Not to mention that two of the emails were to point out errors you had found.
Finding errors is great and shows that you are paying attention. Asking questions is great and can show that you are not only paying attention, but also thinking for yourself and trying to delve deeper into the subject. Doing it repeatedly or in a fashion that the person being asked (here, the teacher) doesn’t appreciate will not endear you.
I don’t think people here are trying to be rude or hard on you. Sometimes tone is difficult to convey in a written medium - you know, much like emails to a teacher.
Seriously, I think you are asking too many questions for this class in this situation. It’s not just the number, it’s the type, tone, content, etc… The teacher probably should have been more suave in letting you know to knock it off but you probably hit him/her at a bad moment of “OMG WTF can I just have dinner with my cats like a normal person???”
Congratulations on being in college at 17, and being the first in your family to go! You are probably feeling a lot of pressure and it is coming through your emails. It must be especially difficult to have a teacher that is not so receptive to questions. One of the things you will learn at college is when to keep your head down, learn the material and not make waves when it isn’t necessary. This is probably one of those time.
You guys are pretty funny now, you don’t even like my questions. Anyone 17 years old in the audience making these comments? This is French 1 not a PhD. And yes, mille translates to 1,000. Does it get an “s” at the end when it’s 2 million? That was my question. Cent for numbers above 100 does get an “s”. <BTW, mille does not>. Yes, I did google the tu/toi & “mille.” Maybe you are all better googlers, but the information did not come up for me. For “Mille” I got some restaurants, and then one page with numbers not going higher than exactly 1,000. What’s funny for tu & toi, those words appeared in 3 videos via the website and both were translated as “you.” The text does not have answers for the differences even if I look ahead at the final chapter 14. One thing I didn’t do was look up “tu” separately from “toi.” I googled … the difference between tu and toi. Guess I could re-think that. Shuffling or “strumming” through miscellaneous pages to get questions, no – I read my text book and review class notes, when something does not make sense I write it on my “?” page which is a 5 x 7 card with a purple question mark at the top. I look again at the text to see if I can weed out the answer. Sometimes I’ll ask another student in the class & I’ll google around for answers. Usually no one in class knows the answers. Sometimes I get answers with google, sometimes I don’t; “google translate” is often wrong so I have to be careful there. If I type in with English, “How are you?”, I get the wrong verb position.
For high school teachers encouraging students by giving applause for dumb questions - I can’t really respond to that since I’m not a high school teacher. My high school teachers didn’t do that - at least not in Physics, Chemistry, Calculus…
Text errors: He told us at the beginning of class, the text, copyright 2010 was new to him, also a new website (a text/web combination) - he’d pass on errors to his contact, Valerie, if errors were found. So that’s not in an idiot category.
Before and after class for him… he teaches French 2 before our class, he leaves and gets coffee during the 10 minute transition… in his office. After our class, he leaves for his car, it seems, because he does not go into the offices area but walks briskly towards the parking lot. Class gets out at noon, so maybe he’s going to lunch. He’s already said he works via emailing rather than office hours, I wrote that above.
“Can you tell the class?” You’ve got a point about how he might look at that… so thanks on that one; though as I said above, students like me are talking around and asking questions of each other and we’re all pretty puzzled over the same things. The class started with standing room only, about 50 students; after 8 weeks the class is down to 19. Only one other teacher teaches French 1, and she teaches a night class. I can’t take a class at that time because I work.
Well, you can’t know the whole picture because you’re not sitting in the classroom. That’s ok. I’ve learned a lot here from you. What makes him a good teacher is that he uses visuals and writes on the chalk board. What makes him a less good teacher, is that when a student has a question and raises their hand, he tells him or her to send an email. No one raises their hands anymore. He pushes information “out there.” Do I know why he doesn’t take class questions? No, I’ve never asked him. When I came to America at age 12, my previous education was pretty limited, so now I’m experiencing college for the first time. In my old country I would not have been able to attend school past the age of 13. I guess I’m pretty lucky.
We’ve all had that difficult college professor who made our class less than perfect. Everyone of us. I had a chem prof who would ask tough questions, ridicule every answer and then announce that the answer hadn’t been discovered yet. He was a douche. We all go through it. You learn what you need to do to get through a class. Some you muddle on through, some you hate and some you adore. And the irony is that is different for each member of the class! I have had members of the same class tell me I go too fast and others too slow. You will have bosses you will have adapt to and colleagues you will have to work with when you get out of school. Adapting you style and doing what needs to get done is part of what you are learning in college.
Don’t sweat it too much and unless he is abusing you or actively impairing your ability to get your work done, let it go. We’ve all been there with difficult profs. You will get through this semester and move on.
Sending the quantity of emails you do is apparently annoying him. He is letting you know in a multitude of ways that student interaction, beyond the minimum is not his thing. It’s not going to change. You can adapt, change your expectations and get through the class.
And perhaps pull back on the number of emails in future classes. It may not seem like a lot from your side, but it is a lot more than most profs teaching not-online classes expect.
He’s the only teacher using emails. I understand all of my other classes so I haven’t even had an office visit with any other teachers. Good advice for my future classes, and I thank you for that.
In junior college it’s hard for me to think of exactly what my major will be, I’m just starting out… but I’m pretty open to Geology at this time. I will need a scholarship so I’m wondering about the University of Nevada in Reno, they have a School of Mining, or something like that. My father was killed, he was an Anthropologist. I always enjoyed looking at his works. My mother is a musician. I like music, but only to listen to. She is very good and gives piano lessons. She plays many instruments. Thank you for asking, very nice of you.
Wow! One of my colleagues (we’re both in science) earned his geology undergrad degree there! PM me if you have any questions and I can pass them along to him.
Sorry about your dad. I’m sure he’d be very proud to see you pursuing your degree.
He worked in 2 museums. He assisted in the restoration or fixing of items. Many of the items were never on display. I got to see them sometimes. He had many journals in our house because he loved what he did. He could not go to college, his family did not have money but he was very fortunate and lucky to find work he loved so much. Thank you for asking.
