It must be nice to rearrange twenty schedules around your own.

Okay. I tried not to complain too much when Dr. Bigshot cancelled class for two weeks in the middle of winter quarter and made us make them up on Fridays when not everybody could be there for the entire class period. After all, I reasoned, it was probably some weird and unavoidable aberration.

But now I am taking a spring quarter class with him. Not only did he cancel one of this week’s classes and reschedule it on Friday at a time when not everybody can make it, but he’s going to be missing two weeks of class in the middle of the quarter again. I’m guessing that once again we’re not going to find a time to make those up when all of the students can be there.

It so happens that I’ll probably be able to get to the make-up classes as long as my new work schedule doesn’t interfere, but this sucks so bad for the students who can’t. And when they object, you act as if they are the ones in the wrong, as if they are the ones being unreasonable. God dammit, man, when students register for classes, they are careful to make sure that their schedules will work so that they can always be there. If at all possible, they avoid making travel plans that are going to take them away. They make, in other words, a commitment.

But here’s the other side of the coin: when you agree to teach those classes, at those times, for the entire quarter, you make the same commitment. We have other obligations–other classes, work, meetings, you name it. To expect everyone to either shove their responsibilities to the side to fit your schedule is so incredibly arrogant and inconsiderate that I just don’t have the words.

Obviously, as a professor (and a respected researcher), you are in a safe position. Technically we could complain, but the university wouldn’t do anything about it. I suppose this wouldn’t be so bad if you just canceled the classes outright, but to decide to teach material outside of scheduled class times when people cannot be there (and really should not have to be) is taking it a bit too far. It could possibly damage grades.

Jesus. I wish I could go through life just scheduling things around my plans after entering into an agreement to do something different. "No, Professor, I don’t believe I’ll be able to make class during the first two weeks of May after all. I’m not going to tell you where I’m going, because it would make you jealous.* How about we make up those classes on odd Fridays from 1:22 to 2:42? Greeeeaat.
*He actually said this to us, pretty much verbatim, last quarter.

One of Hamish’s professors rescheduled a class, for his convenience, for … Easter Monday.

Do you routinely not have class the day after Easter? :confused:

Anyway, I think pasunejen really ought to complain to the university. That’s just completely ridiculous; I can’t imagine any of my professors doing that, but that’s because by now I know which professors are incompetent assholes and which ones aren’t.

One of my law professors called in sick one day. The following day, other students discovered his name in the paper as a participant in a local golf tournament.

Ask for a pro-rated refund on your tuition.

Complain to the head of his department, or to the Dean. Rescheduling a class or two because of some unexpected emergency or unavoidable absence is one thing; it’s quite another to make a habit of it.

Anyone who’s been to college knows how hard it can be to work out a schedule to fit all your classes, and if professors are going to fuck things up by random rescheduling, it makes life terribly difficult for the students.

In countries other than the US, it’s quite common to have the Monday after Easter included as part of the long weekend. I know it was the case in Australia when i was growing up. The Easter weekend usually consisted of Friday through Tuesday.

Now that’s funny. I hope someone gave him shit about it in class.

That’s just ridiculous.

It’s expected that professors will occasionally not be able to teach class: they fall ill, they have a family emergency, their car breaks down, they have to travel to a conference or research, etc. But you either cancel class or you get a colleague to cover for you. For a small class, you could maybe arrange a makeup session that most students could attend, but to dictate that the makeup session will be such and such a day, and such and such a time, and tough titties for anyone who can’t make it? That’s ludicrous.

You’re absolutely right about this:

I think you should share your concerns with the department chair. It would be perfectly reasonable to ask that your comments be kept anonymous. Also, you should suggest that other students who are having trouble with this policy should complain also. One student bitching about a professor’s behavior can be dismissed as a whiner. If several are complaining, it’s much more likely that you’ll be taken seriously. Check your student handbook for procedures for complaining about professors, and if the chair tries to blow you off, be sure that he knows that you know what the next level of escalation is.

I’m surprised that the professor didn’t find a substitute or simply cancel the class for that day. Make up classes? Sorry, no. I worked my day-to-day schedule around some things (like school) with the expectation that they would be consistent for the next 16 weeks.

I had enough aggrivation with the play I’m in when I found out at the last minute I would have to come in earlier even though the schedule made no mention of this. Since I have to schedule my work availability a month in advance, it meant I had to have several co-workers cover for me/trade shifts just to make sure I could still do everything I was supposed to. :mad:

Easter Monday is a civic holiday. The rest of the university was closed; the professor had to have the door specially unlocked.

Ahh. Thank you for relieving me of a certain amount of ignorance. :slight_smile: Is that true all over Canada, or is that a Québec thing (it’s mostly Catholic, right?)

For that matter, Anglicanism is “mostly Catholic.” rimshot

Last semester I took a linguistics course. My poor professor was having probably one of the worst times of her life (her cancer came out of remission, she was undergoing lots of chemo, she broke her hand, her father fell ill…) and my TA was having terrible back problems and also had to fly all around the country to speak at conferences. Class was cancelled every other day, pretty much. When the end of the semester came near, the prof scheduled a make-up class for a weekday evening, and promised to provide audio tapes of the lecture for anyone who couldn’t make it. Four of us (out of a class of about 50) showed up. We sat in the room for about 15 minutes, and then the TA showed up to tell us that the make-up class was cancelled.