Contrast this thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=95628
with this thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=96019
I’ve never screamed while reading a thread before. I thought you, like, actually had to be smart to get into college. :eek:
95% of the students at my university are from the top 10% of their graduating classes. I shudder at the thought of the bottom 90.
:eek:
I don’t post in the Pit, so I’ll share my brief comments here:
Some classes, I really really feel sorry for the professor.
Some classes, I really really feel sorry for the students.
For example:
I had a professor who was a very nice guy, and once bought snacks for the whole class. Sure, it was a small class (about 8 people) but he spent a buck or two on each of us, which is damned cool. Apparantly, there’s some tennent of Islam saying to give alms to the poor, and this prof. said, with a wink, that college students are poor people and deserved a treat.
Then one day this idiot in class started making fun of the prof’s accent. In the middle of class. The professor was at first baffled, then when the student started bitching loudly about how stupid the class was, the professor got angry and kicked him out. Poor guy. I think he barely had it in him to kick a student out of class, even after the student made fun of his accent, religion, and teaching abilities.
Example two:
Professor comes to class first day, and goes over syllabus. He gets to the part listing the text we need for class, and then holds up a completely different book than the one the bookstore said was for the class. After a few moments of confusion, the professor realizes that he has made a mistake and appologizes. (Which is cool. I appreciated that.) Then he mentions that we shouldn’t worry, because we won’t be using the book anyway.
Uh … so, I paid $70+ for this book that not only wasn’t the “right” book, but even if it was the right book we wouldn’t use it anyway? And he was right: we didn’t use the book at all. Luckily I was able to return the book for a full refund.
Our first test in that class was two problems. Less than half the class finished all two problems. Some people didn’t even finish one problem. The professor said that after thinking about it, both problems were long enough that it wasn’t fair to expect us to do them in the hour provided. No problem, everyone makes mistakes, and he threw out the second question which boosted nearly everyone’s grade. But then the second test was the exact same way! I don’t mind hard tests; in fact, I like a challenge. But make sure the class had enough time to finish.
The final exam was the same way. Nearly everyone in the class ended up with a D or a C-.
The prof was a first-year teacher, so I have some sympathy, but he couldn’t teach his way out of a paper bag. Not only that, but he spoke so softly we could barely hear him. When we did hear him, it was well-nigh impossible to understand him since he had a heavy accent. He seemed completely unprepared to lecture. He also was rarely available during office hours, and when you did find him and ask him a question, his most usual response was “I don’t know”, followed by him moving away rapidly, and never answering your question at all.
(Wow, did I type all that? OK, you probably didn’t want to hear my rants, but I certainly feel better.)
I knew a kid who scored in the 1st percentile of his ACTs (that means that 99% of the kids who took the ACT did better than him) and still got into college.
But then I remind myself that, according to my scores, 60% of the kids who took the ACT, in math, were stupider than me. That’s hard to do.
Professors are chosen for what they know about their field. They don’t necessarily have any teaching experience, skill, training or talent. K-12 teachers, while getting less respect, are trained in teaching techniques.
I had the benefit of a number of incredibly intelligent professors when I was a student. I remember one fellow, David Wilkinson, an international relations professor, who was awfully bright and incredibly knowledgable. I learned a lot from his class due to the enormous reading list (13 required, 11 optional texts) and his machine gun lectures, where he basically read an unpublished manuscript. But he had little inflection and his lectures were grinding work. I hold the fellow in great respect, but I would have never recommended the class to friends.
My Greek History professor, on the other hand, the great Mortimer Chambers, was a brilliant lecturer who loved what he did so much that it rubbed off on people in the back row of a 200 person lecture hall, and just an wonderful example of a historian and a gentleman. I remember how this man treated people and follow his example. And of course his great lessons on history: sources and look for what isn’t there. Wherever you are Professor Chambers, you made a lasting impression.
I try not to be one of the students that professors hate, and so far I think I’ve succeeded. I can’t believe some of my classmates got into college, either…granted, I’m not at a terribly competitive school, but the stupidity I encountered in all my freshman and sophomore-level classes was astounding. How can you get out of high school without knowing how to write a basic five-paragraph essay, let alone a ten-page paper? Huh?
They should have been glad I wasn’t grading their papers in English 1101/1102. What the profs gave Cs to I would have flunked, while laughing evilly. I really felt bad for the profs, both semesters I had really nice profs who LOVED me because I could…gasp…WRITE!
I’d have to say my two favorite professors, Dr. Jourin and Dr. Brett have put up with a lot.
With Dr. Brett, we NEVER stop teasing the guy. He’s a huge leftist liberal, and a lot of times, he gets nasty letters about how stupid and biased he is. LMAO
I had one professor who once threw a hissyfit because it was 9:15 PM, class ended at 9:30. HE asked us a question, and no one really answered-his classes were the worst-he read STRAIGHT FROM THE BOOK!!! And when no one answered, he slammed the book shut and said, “Fine, if you don’t want to learn, I can take a hint, let’s just go.” WHAT THE FUCK?
We’ve been sitting here for three hours, the room was like a sauna, and he throws a hissy because WE’RE TIRED!!!
So many students are scared away from Dr. Brett, because they hear about his tests-all essay, you must answer VERY specifically, and he grades very strictly. But he’s a really great guy, and MOST people who take him love him. (Just don’t tell him I said so…LOL)
Did you ever have a professor, who you liked as a person, but didn’t like as a professor? That’s how I feel about Dr. Le Blanc-(if Olentzero reads this, he’ll know who I’m talking about-you read his book?) Really, really nice, funny guy. But a horrible teacher. Okay, it was History-Britain and Its Empire. He stood there, stroking his Leninesque goatee, frowning and saying things like, “Hmmm…now, How do we define communism/capitalism/economics/dogshit?” ARGH!!! The best class though was where he invited Dr. Ferguson to come to class-she does a one woman show where she plays Queen Victoria and answers questions-it was great! Oh well.
I too have seen it both ways. . .
I was an engineering major, but I had to take a business course along the way. It was a class that business majors took as freshman or sophomores, while I was taking it as a senior. Almost immediately, I was aghast at the complete lack of respect shown the professor by most of the class. The prof. was a Polish gentleman with a mild/moderate accent. This man had several degrees including a PHD. When introducing himself, he noted that his family had come over from Poland in 1939 when he was 6 years old. Now, that alone should have indicated a few things about his life experiences to the class, but I think it was totally lost on nearly everyone but myself.
This guy was not only a very good teacher, but also likeable and fair. But throughout the semester, the students made fun of him constantly. People would show up late, leave early, talk loudly, imitate his accent behind his back. It was extremely disheartening to watch all this go on. My friend and I gave him a very good evaluation however, and thankfully most of the class didn’t care enough to turn in their evaluation forms at all.
On the other hand, I had a calculus prof. who put the entire class through hell. This fellow rarely explained how to approach problems in any practical way, instead getting into lengthy theoretical discussions that did nothing to help us learn what we were doing. He relied on us doing the homework to learn how to actually solve problems. The difficulty was that we would often be lost from the very beginning of an assignment. The text book was a perfect match for him: it was poorly written and confusing and contained huge numbers of problems to solve. He would assign homework every class, and he would assign vast quantities of it. He would assign literally hundreds of problems every couple of days. There was no hope of actually completing them in time, so most people just quit doing them at all. Ah, but then the tests would roll around. The test were invariably twice as long as anyone could finish in the allotted hour. Our final even contained material he had specifically told us would not be on the test and which we had never discussed in class. We called him on it, thinking he might eliminate that question from the grading or at least grade on a curve. Instead, he told us we should have been able to do the problem anyway because it was on the syllabus. About 4/5ths of the class failed. I had to retake that course the next semester. Guess who the professor turned out to be?
I’ve had teachers that I like as people…my English teacher last year was a nice woman, but she’s utterly clueless and really can’t teach.
She assigned us a paper and told us to write a thesis statement. But she didn’t bother to explain how to write the thesis statement. Sounds simple enough, right? Write a statement of what you intend to prove in the paper. But I could not write one that made her happy. No one could. I was in an advanced class, so clearly, we weren’t too stupid. I think she ended up throwing those papers out. The last I heard of them was how disgraceful they were.
I feel really bad about badmouthing her, though. She’s a perfectly nice person who liked me a lot. She still says hello and everything, but she expresses all of her opinions like a steamroller.
I wouldn’t want to be some of my teachers. They go to all this effort to help people pass and do well, but the morons just don’t do anything and whine when they fail. Is it really that difficult to turn in a piece of basic classwork? I don’t think so.
jessica