bad professor stories | INFJ Forum

bad professor stories

alice144

alice144

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Jun 17, 2011
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Dear infjs,

People complain about their professors all the time, some of it warranted and some of it not. I especially like that engineering professor meme, because it's like, 100% true.

My impression of professors is that:
  • they are a group of very intelligent people who are very competent within their field of study
  • they are a bunch of egotistical assholes

I can't tell whether professors are underappreciated or overappreciated. Some of my math professors have been some of the most badass people who I have ever met. And simultaneously some of the biggest pricks; although maybe that's just me pissing people off again. I can't tell if we should give professors kudos for having to deal with a bunch of moronic teenagers day in and day out, while not getting paid the big $$$ for being so highly intelligent and competent, or whether they need to just get over themselves already because they have kind of a cush job it could be so much worse.

Please tell me all your bad professor stories so that I can make up my mind.
 
I guess it depends on how you look at it.

A lot of them are egotistical, so their thinking is entirely warped.

Maybe I'll tell a horror story tomorrow.
 
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Try having an Organic Chemistry professor who's idea of teaching 250 students is making us print out Work Sheets to do in class, while she observes, has narrow office hours, and wonders why the test average is barely a C. She claims this method raised test scores, compared to her lecturing the class.


:p
 
lol. remind me never to attend whatever school/program you're at.
 
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At university, I had a friend whose history professor occasionally showed up in pajamas, bathrobe and slippers.
I'm guessing he had tenure, or was on his way out.
 
Flavus Aquila said:
At university, I had a friend whose history professor occasionally showed up in pajamas, bathrobe and slippers.
I'm guessing he had tenure, or was on his way out.
Click to expand...

i could care less if they taught well..
 
In undergrad I had a 400 level history class that had about 200 students in it. I 4.0ed every paper, exam and project. I got a 2.5 in the class because I didn't participate enough--in a 200 person lecture.

However, teaching most definitely isn't​a "cush" job.
 
Statistics professor. She was so bad that half the class dropped out after the first quarter because they were failing. Then half of the remaining dropped out before it put a dent in their record because they were also failing. I stuck it out and tried to self teach. If we were going by scores alone, I would have had a very low C in the class, quite possibly even a D. I was going to accept it b/c I wasn't taking it over. When grades came out I had an A.

She didn't teach statistics again.
 
I don't really have any bad experiences with profs. My Profs this semester are very nice too (two of them are also very funny), although yesterday I noticed my Prof in my Cognitive Science class looking at me. Towards the end of the class we've a 5-7mins discussion time where we talk about a question given by him, relating to the lecture. Being the quiet person I am and because I just get uncomfortable sitting around people and usually become mute :m192:, I don't talk, although I listen to what those around me are saying. So, yesterday I just had a feeling I was being watched and I looked up. Lo and behold, he was looking right at me :redface: :redface:. I'm sure he noticed I wasn't talking. I am trying to stop being shy and not be so afraid to speak up though. I have to change. :redface: :redface: :(
 
I should have a thread within a thread about bad student stories. You wouldn't believe the essay I received today. Here is a single sentence from it (or maybe two), even though it went on for three pages like this: "When we walk down town in Brooklyn we see a lot of gang member mainly bloods rarelys you see crips, the crips wearing blue that's they symbols and bloods wearing red that they symbol. I was disappointed in him I remember when was younger was was going to move from our area move somewhere safe couldn't believe he choice that life style like I though we we was going to be above the gang life activities like I got some family member that was in a gang but they made sure I don't have they life style so I choice not go the way of life." The whole country is degenerating. This kid at least sits still in the class. Some have their eyes popping back and forth while they sharpen "they" fingernails with a switchblade.
 
The negative memories are all a blur of laziness in the face of a pension.
 
I really like all of my professors. I'm only a tad annoyed at one--he is not very technologically literate, so he photo copies these really boring articles from like the 70's. They're typically in courier font with smudges and some of them have nothing to do with the class. The class is pretty boring because it's so slow. It kind of drives me nuts, but before I know it, the semester will be over and the class will be all behind me. :mhula:
 
I'm taking some classes at a community college, and the quality of the professors is a lot lower than what I'm used to. I am taking an intro to comp sci class and I don't think the professor has been able to answer a single question that anyone has asked in class. It's really frustrating because I have trouble wrapping my head around a lot of the topics, and could actually use the help. The class is 5 hours long and she just flips through the book and reads definitions and half of random sentences. My other professor is obsessed with us reading the syllabus. Half of the 8 page syllabus is just telling us to read the syllabus and assignments clearly, and to hand in our work 3 days before it's due or else he takes points off. Terrible.
 
The absolute worst was the time I was taking the final for my online calculus III class, and we were supposed to rewrite an integral or something like that. Unfortnately, the answer choices were presented as pictures rather than text, and because the professor hadn't bothered to check the exam before giving it to us the formatting was way off and we couldn't read them. Those were three problems we guessed the answers to.

That was a frustrating class. I remember completing a two-page problem, only to spend an hour trying to figure out whether I had made a mistake or if the answer key was wrong. Mostly it was me, but not always.
 
I took a class on Judaism in my second year. For pretty much every class, the professor came in 30 minutes to 1 hour late… or sometimes not at all. When he did show up, a lot of the time he didn't give a proper lecture and instead gave us a lot of BS about his travels or unrelated stories.

He had his teaching assistants do pretty much everything marks-wise-- to their credit, a lot of them recognized that the course was BS and sort of went easy on us… but not really. The worst part was that there were all of these Jewish kids in the class who treated him like their uncle or something, and on the rare occasion that we actually talked about something relevant to Judaism, they would unapologetically use the pronoun 'we' to talk about it. The TAs were also Jewish, and the whole course had this totally messed up 'us and them' feel to it (I was part of the 'them').

Having all of those Jewish kids in the class also meant that a lot of them already knew all about the subject matter (whereas anyone who went in oblivious had to self-teach), so the class average was much higher than it should have been-- and he didn't even come out of it looking like the incompetent entitled self-centred ass that he was. That was pretty much the worst experience of my entire university career.
 
no bad experiences , really.

to get to library i walk past mathematics faculty. and sometimes i see this maths professor with long grey beard. modest clothing. modest walk. i wonder if he drives a volvo 240. i like looking at him. seems to be such a clever man --- not just maths. but he does not care for show --- something about him speaks for itself. i like this very much.
 
In my experience they are over-appreciated by themselves. Remember, those who cant do, teach. My experience with people who subject themselves to living entirely in academia is that they cant hack it in a real profession of their chosen field. Oh sure some people like Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins taught courses, but they also had real jobs... for the professors who do nothing but teach, they have an inflated ego from dealing with moron college students the whole time and when they come across one who is brighter than they are they tend to try and shut them down or silence them. Although I did have some professors who werent really that egotistical, they genuinely loved helping the students.
 
I'm taking a professor right now who is making us learn and use R and RExcel. However bad you think your stats class is, I assure you, mine is worse.

I have had some highly intelligent and competent professors, and I have had some mediocre ones. I haven't had much in the way of egotistical professors, but that might be because all my professors in undergrad were liberal arts people who had to actually get students to like them in order to get tenure.
 
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