After the first week of class, my fears were confirmed. He’s pretty much a huge douche. He wants us to read his books and poetry (which he also reads aloud to us during class) and write essays on them. And if the student reviews at ratemyprofessors.com are to be believed, he expects them to be positive ones if you want a good grade. Since there is no rubric, only the vaguest syllabus, and not even assigned topics for the essays (for the first essay, he gave a few optional topics but said basically write about whatever you want), I get the feeling the grading will come down to whatever he feels like at the time. And he seems to be kind of bipolar, so I don’t trust his subjective opinions much.
He also seems to be a bit of a creep, and makes occasional inappropriate comments to females in the class like pointing one out and saying “Men in the room take note of this lovely young lady” or something to that effect. I can imagine that must be kind of embarrassing for them.
What’s weirder is that a lot of the students seem to be completely going along with his big ego and sucking his cock regularly during class. They genuinely seem to be into it and think he’s a “brilliant” professor.
Oh, and he’s scatter-brained and goes off on long tangents which have nothing to do with English Comp. He seems to be confused about what he expects from students, as people ask him a lot of clarifying questions about the assignments and the answer basically comes down to “do whatever you want”.
It’s only a 5 week course, and I’ve already knocked out week 1. My plan is to buckle down, grit my teeth, and just get through this because I need this course, and I need it now.
Oh and I almost forgot. Re: the buying of his books.
On the first day of class he made it clear he had no shame about requiring his own books for the course. I believe his words were “I wrote them, that’s why they’re required”. And then at the break he was peddling them as a package and taking cash on the spot.
This constantly yanks my chain. For a very established subject with tons of publishing history to sow from, why not help out your students and find a commonly published edition available at a reasonable price? Leave it up to your students whether to shop at the campus store, or buy used, or new through Amazon, etc.
Buying his specially written books for the course? Might be defendable, but is sounds like it is not in this case.
But his own poetry? Geesus H Krist. I am sure his poetry sucks donkey balls. Even well recognized poetry is marginal at best IMO. This guy thinks his poetry is any good? Possible, but about the same odds as me getting a Nobel in Physics.
Are the folks that jumped the OP’s ass gonna come back and admit he was right?
Oh…just learn to suck the cock now so you dont get bent over and get a bad grade later.
I’d like to, but that would surely be a copyright violation. Plus on the off-chance he or someone ever Googles it, I wouldn’t want it turning up this thread!
If he’s gonna put it in a book, publish it, and then REQUIRE students to buy them, then he needs to be able to take the slings and arrows of those who may be his superiors and what they think of his work.
Well, if they go along with him, they’ll get an easy A or B. And they might genuinely think that he’s encouraging them to explore their creativity or something.
After the course is over, I suggest going above his head and registering complaints. I really don’t think that he should be able to get away with requiring his students to buy so many of his (probably way overpriced) texts, especially for a summer course.
That I’d have a big problem with as a student to such an extent that I’d call him out on it in open class. It’s totally unprofessional, but apart from professional ethics, it’s very much disrespectful to do that to anyone. And what purpose can it possibly serve, particularly inside a classroom? That kind of shit just irks me to no end. I had a history professor who always referred to the prettier ladies in class as “dear” and “sweetheart”. So, I started referring to him as sugar. You know, “sure thing, Sugar.”
Is this a freshman class? Maybe they just don’t know the difference. Or maybe you just don’t get it.
One of the most erudite men I’ve ever met was what you’d commonly call scatterbrained. My own guess is that he just had too much going on up there to get it all out in some orderly fashion. So, while he may have seemed like a blabbering idiot to people just meeting him, I can only say that he never failed to impress me with his intellectual prowess, and his very deep understanding of many things even outside of mathematics.
Yeah. That’s the downside of being a student sometimes: you need the class far more than any professor (instructor?) needs to have you in it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s his personal moneymaker; if he’s exploiting you guys (in your view) by forcing you to buy books which aren’t really useful for the class, then talk to the department chair (division chair?). I’m not sure how junior colleges are organized.
I too would be interested in seeing some of his, um, vignettes(?); I’m sure under the fair use doctrine, you can bring up some short stuff to discuss without running afoul of his copyright.
I had a poetry professor like that. He had us buy his book of poetry full of poems about things like how ugly and fat he thought his wife was when she was pregnant, and then write about them. He was also one of these pompous asses who think there is only one right way to do anything and it’s his way. For example, in his opinion, the ONLY correct way to read poetry aloud is to use a monotone voice and pause at the end of each sentence as if you’re trailing off in thought. Bleah.
Not that my opinion matters, but I think that ashman’s comments were completely out of line (and showed that he didn’t actually read/comprehend/pay attention to what you’d actually written) and I didn’t get that feel from your posts at all. You even said in the last sentence that you were allowing for the chance that you were wrong, just that your intuition was giving you a bad feeling. Which turns out to have been accurate, go figure.
Grit your teeth; it’s only 4 more weeks. I feel your pain.
Still, all else being equal, I have a lot more respect for the intellect of someone who can “get it all out in some orderly fashion” than for someone who cannot. Especially if it’s part of their job to do so, like a lecturer or writer.
I don’t know what this all else is, but assuming it’s equal, I’m glad to know you prefer polish over substance. I’m disheartened to think as to what low esteem you’d hold someone like Stephen Hawking in.
As for me and my part in the whole ordeal, I’ll always take profound intellect and scholarship over the superficial crap, even if it means I have to work just a little bit harder.
That must be in similar fashion to how you so glaringly failed to read/comprehend/pay attention to the point in my original reply in which I explicitly allowed for my being wrong. Apparently, you hold OP and me to different standards, but that’s fine. However, I suppose it’s curious that not only did you miss its mention in my first reply, but the discussion about it in my follow up. Most curious.
I was referring to the rudeness and vitriol you put into your assessment. Admitting that there was a chance you were wrong doesn’t make you any less rude.
That and the huge leap of “jumping to conclusions about your instructor based on his assignment of his own books for class might be hasty as there are legitimate reasons to do this” therefore meaning “you are too immature for college and intellectually difficult classes are beyond you” …was just out of the blue, unjustified, and uncalled for.
Yeah, because this is my classroom where I’m being paid to teach, right? By your rubric, I suppose that no one who has any professional capacity is allowed to have opinions and express them as he sees fit in his personal life because that’s somehow an indictment on this professionalism while at work.
For what it’s worth, it’s unsurprising that OP decries person he hasn’t yet met for being a bad teacher. Then he goes in and surprise, of all surprises, he finds what he already thought to be the case. This despite the fact that, even according to him, all the other students have a complete opposite opinion of this teacher. It would seem that my assessment is reasonably spot on. But most people here want to run with the idea that this student’s, admittedly singular, opinion that just so happens to reflect his preconceived notion is accurate. If it’s so bloody accurate, why I wonder is it that all of this teacher’s other students think exactly opposite of OP?
I never said “all” the other students have an opposite opinion. I said there are many who seem to like him. Maybe as another poster pointed out they have recognized that he is the kind of person who is susceptible to having his ego stroked, and they are obliging because they think it will get them a good grade. Reading his reviews from ratemyprofessors.com (and there are a bunch of them) is rather interesting, as they are incredibly divided, with about as many calling him a “great, brilliant teacher” as there are critical reviews highlighting exactly the same points that I have observed (saying things like: he’s creepy, pretentious, doesn’t know what he expects from students, goes off on tangents, grades subjectively, has emotional outbursts, etc.)