Most professors I’ve know are concerned with proving how smart they are to other people in their field. They generally don’t care what their students think about them (which might be part of the problem), and so I’m pretty sceptical that any significant percentage of them are using jargon to try and impress a room full of undergrads.
Generally, its more a problem of people teaching classes who have been immersed in the field for decades, and so have trouble thinking like someone who is just being exposed to it. Jargon is pretty useful when talking to other people who understand it, and if you’ve been doing it long enough, its hard not to use.
I don’t teach to show off. I teach because of the God-like power. I get to tell 18 year olds when and whether they can go empty their bladder, and if their shorts are long enough. I bet you mere mortals envy me.
The hopeless adoration and admiration of my students is more of a perk, like the fame and money.
My maths lecturer was Dr Buckley. You has Buckley’s chance of passing. On my first attempt more than 75% of the class failed. He used to walk into the class and hand out the roll an start writing on the board - hardly saying a thing.
When we complained we were told to cut him some slack because he was autistic!
High functioning sure - but teaching?
gah
If it helps, I went to a good school, so it’s not like I am retarded and incapable of understanding big words or something. I’m not talking about people who may be a bit wordy in trying to explain a difficult subject, or those who are teaching inherently tough concepts that demand lots of jargon. I’m talking about jackasses who are powertripping assholes who feel as if everyone constantly needs to know how smart and awesome they are.
I remember one time I asked a question in my math class as a freshman – I had forgotten what tan(45) was or something dumb and didn’t understand where this one particular value on the board had come from. I asked the prof and he went on this 2-minute tangent to berate me in front of the lecture hall, acting like I was totally in the wrong class and biting off more than I could chew just because I asked a clarifying question. He suggested that “people like me” should seriously consider dropping the class, etc (I went on to get rank 2 in that particular course). Answer the question in <5 seconds and move on. Don’t waste everyone’s time with your self-entitled malarkey.
Another professor of mine was a bitter old codger. I forgot why – he was up for some award or position or something and lost it to his rival colleague. Ever since then, he had earned this reputation of being a control-freak hardass. No matter how brilliant your presentation/work was, he’d find something to criticize and try to make you feel stupid. I witnessed one such presentation that was virtually flawless… the professor didn’t criticize any of the math and instead picked on the members for some completely irrelevant grammar mistake. What the hell am I paying for, again? Some people apparently don’t feel like they’re doing their job unless they constantly add in their two cents, no matter how trivial.
Another made it a habit to remind us every damn lecture that he attended three different Ivies and had a PhD. He wouldn’t shut up about his experience in the Fed and would just stare at you, unblinking, and answer your questions with this sort of “this is so obvious; you must be an idiot” sneer.
A legal studies professor I had once was one of those “I’m too cool for slides so I’m just going to sit in this chair without any course plan, and drink coffee/talk at everyone for an hour because I’m worth it” guys. He’d linger on every one of his words as if everything he uttered was gold – as if his profound mind should be setting us ablaze at every turn. He’d often go on tangents (which involved things not in our book, on the websites, in our tests, or on the final) and assign a TON of “optional” reading and still act confused when few-to-none had read it all. One kid called the prof out on this, and got accused of not being “intellectually curious” in a very passive-aggressive manner. Apparently if you don’t spend all your waking free time studying his subject and reading everything he reads on his timetable, you’re not intellectually curious enough. Life-outside-class be damned!
Why are you, an adult who (as you say) finished college successfully some time ago, presently compelled to pit this type of teacher? Leafing through your old transcripts and felt the bile rising at the memory an undeserved B minus? Recently spent time with a son, daughter, niece or nephew who complained that like, not just they but like, EVERYONE in the class is failing, cause the professor is like, SUCH an asshole/bitch, OMG, and it reopened some old wounds of yours?
Because you know what really chaps MY ass? 5th grade teachers who treat you like you’re still a baby. Like we really need to hold hands on our field trip to the museum!
Hmmm. While I sympathize with your experiences in having to deal with professors who didn’t have very good teaching or class-management skills, only one of your four examples (the third) comes across as someone who’s actually “showing off” (if, indeed, he really made a point of mentioning his own accomplishments as often as you say. The most surprising thing about that behavior is that he allegedly boasted about having…a PhD?! Really? The vast majority of college professors have PhDs; it’s hardly a striking accomplishment for a faculty member).
The rest of them sound like people whose teaching styles were simply somewhat abrasive or, in the case of your fourth example, merely didn’t appeal to you. The alleged “showing off” part seems to be just your personal interpretation of why they were like that.
It’s true that many people are not very good teachers, or are not very sensitive about preventing students from feeling embarrassed by their own ignorance. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that such people are deliberately trying to make their students feel embarrassed so that they themselves will look smarter and more knowledgeable.
As other posters here have noted, there’s really not that much prestige to be gained on the part of a professor by appearing smarter and more knowledgeable than an undergraduate, so most professors don’t deliberately aim for that. IME, it’s more likely that a touchy student will imagine that a clumsy teacher is trying to “show off” his/her superior knowledge.
Quote from an undergrad instructor (it was Legal Research & Writing):
“I’m here for my ego.” (Because as a successful litigation attorney, it clearly wasn’t about the paycheck.)
He was actually pretty awesome and cared if we ‘got it’.
Quote from another:
“You have time to sleep when you die.”
He was brilliant but had no rhyme or reason to his lectures. You couldn’t take notes in them, but we always had great conversations. He had a horrifying fail/drop rate. I did well with him because I adored him and listened intently and liked the topics in general. (He was a polisci prof and also my advisor, so I pretty much lived for him.) But other kids? I felt sorry for them. I remember he had this habit of putting a minus minus on your papers, e.g., You got a B-- and you’re lucky I didn’t give you a C.
Being a good teacher is hard. I’m in my late twenties and I can say that I’ve unfortunately seen more bad teachers than good ones. And I’m a teacher.
Oh, no real reason – I was sitting near a study group in a public food court recently and there was a group of students listening to this guy (likely a TA/etc) talking and his mannerisms just reignited all my old gripe-memories and I felt the need to vent.
See, professors like that were the making of me. They finally got it through my head that it was ok to be obsessively interested in learning, and that school was the place for that. I grew up thinking that school was a place you went to get a receipt and that it just had nothing to do with actual learning, which you did on your own. I also thought that they level of knowledge I generally had about the things I was interested in was impressive–after all, it was deeper than any of my friends, and I really didn’t compare myself to professionals.
Professors like you are talking about showed me that school wasn’t about checking off boxes and jumping through hoops, it was about obsessive learning, and that life should be there to serve the learning–“life outside of class” is there to support “class” (more specifically, to support learning). They expected me to be professional-league and refused to be impressed with anything less.
A thousand times this. If I care about it at all, I care about impressing my peers and superiors (that’s where my reputation and my pay raises/promotions come from). I care exactly zilch about showing off to the ignorant, arrogant students in the class who would much rather be sleeping than sitting in my lecture.
I use ignorant in its exact non-pejorative sense. If you are sitting in my class, you don’t know the material. Sit there and learn it. If you don’t want to learn it, why the hell are you sitting there?
Nah, my Orgo teacher was one of my favorites… even though in the first exam he gave me a zero because he was running late, started by scoring the questions most people do well in and didn’t bother score the other part if the first one was poor. Guess who was better at this second part than the teacher himself (according to him).
Kind of funny, being able to tell a Jesuit “ego te absolvo. Now please don’t do it again!”
Despite your sarcasm, I neither want nor need your permission to feel a faint irritation at said organic chem teacher! And I’ve been out of school fifteen years. He was a prick; when people bring up college, which on the whole was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life, I also remember the guy that was a mega prick.
Except in this case, he was largely just recommending a lot of books that were hundreds of pages thick. There was no way to reasonably expect someone to drop what they were doing in every other class and read through reams of optional material when you have hundreds of pages to read for every other class (and guys like me had to work on the side!). Almost everyone thought he was a class-A douchebag because of his constant attitude. The only kid he seemed to like was a guy who was there part-time and obviously had the time.
I attended an Ivy school so it is likely that my experience is different than most (I ran into a LOT of hot air during my undergrad years and I couldn’t stand it. Hated my college experience).
I suspect he’s directing this comment to the OP, whose thread he says seems out of the blue. The rest of us are bringing it up because the OP got us thinking.
This thread has actually brought out a bit of my own insecurity. I worry very much about being an egoizing blowhard in front of my class. Sometimes I don’t know if students find my communication and teaching styles to be “showing off.” I can be a little theatrical.
But today I just got a wonderful present from a student from this past semester who said I was “far and away the best TA I ever had in my entire career at <elite private university>.”
I suppose you never can tell with students. I had one evaluation last semester that said I was “inspirational” and “awesomely brilliant and a wonderful communicator” while another student in the same section said that her time in my class was “the worst 90 minutes of her life every week.” Apparently I induce some pretty strong feelings.
I think it’s hard to find a teacher who everyone loves. Some people hate certain teachers precisely because they are loved, so there’s really no way to win.
That being said, showy/arrogant pricks and intelligent/eloquent people are not the same thing. I mainly gripe about professors who spend too much time bloating their ego or powertripping or belittling others instead of actually teaching something and trying to aid understanding in a learning-conducive environment.
I think as long as you are constantly aiming for the latter, you’re good to go.
