Your Worst Professors

[ZTAngel]

Here we can talk about those professors of ours that seemed to have come from Hell and ended up teaching at our university.

Here's my story of my awful professor.

Last spring, I took this sociology class with a new professor. This man walked around with his attitude about 10 feet in front of him. I will never forget when he told the class that we had an essay exam that Friday. Everyone came in ready to take the test. He told us that we had to write about three pages worth on the exam. Well, we arrive and he says, "I don't feel like sitting here for an hour. This is a take home test. It's due Monday. But, since it's take home, it needs to be 12 pages with cites." That was the weekend of my formal! I had no time to write this paper.
He would lecture on-and-on for a good 45 minutes and then ask for any questions or comments. You'd make a comment, he'd listen to everything you had to say, and then insult you for five minutes straight and make you feel like a piece of dirt that's at the bottom of his shoes.
I didn't do so well in that class and, unfortunately, he is the only professor that teaches it so I am pretty much stuck with the grade. Me, an A/B student, had a D in there. I thought it was just me until I talked to a few other students that took a class with them to find out that maybe 2 out of 50 students received above a C. And they still let him teach!!!!
The emotional scarring may fade away but the D on my transcript won't.

[carnation]

Did you report him to his department head? That can be really effective, especially with grades.

When I became a professor, I'd just finished 8 years of college and I swore I'd never be one of those hated professors who try to hurt students. As God is my witness, I will never purposely create a test just to "get" them and I'll never tear them down in class. The way I see it, I'm there to teach them to speak Spanish and we're a team. I test them on what we've covered, no surprises, and nobody has ever said I was either easy or hard--just fair.

That should be the aim of all professors!

[AOIIAngel]

Carnation, where were you when I was in school!!!!!

[33girl]

My "fave" was the econ prof who talked like Elmer Fudd. I will never forget hearing him talk about "equiwibbwium."

[aephi alum]

I could go on for *days* ...

I took a philosophy course once, figuring that as long as I could write a good argumentative paper (and I can) defending either side of an issue, I'd be ok. WRONG. One of the issues we discussed was abortion. We had papers due every week, and we discussed this issue for a month. It was interesting how my grades went up by a full letter grade when I argued one side of the issue vs. the other.

Then there was the prof who got hold of our student evaluations before the end of the semester, against all school policies. I'd given him a negative evaluation, because this guy couldn't teach his way out of a paper bag open at both ends. So he told me that I'd better drop his class or I *would* fail. And he tore up my evaluation form - I know this because he got a glowing write-up in the next student evaluation summary, that stated he was "unanimously popular". If I hadn't been applying for grad school there at the time, I would have gone to the department head. I just hope he didn't get tenure.

[Hootie]

Throughout my college experience I've only encountered a few really bad professors. Most of mine have been excellent and very flexable (one even let me take the final even though I missed it because I thought it was on a Thursday instead of Tuesday).
On the other hand, the ones that I would categorize as TERRIBLE are rightfully so!
I had this history professor my frosh year for World Civ 2. He was great at lecturing and made everything into a story of sorts. Well our tests would be all short answer and essay!!!! So when it came time you had five possible essay questions given to you so you could prepare and then a list of vocab words you should be able to write a paragraph on.
His essays weren't THAT hard to write about, but I soon realized after the first test that the JERK was going to be so frickin' picky that he had his own preconceived notions on what SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be included in the essay. You could basically have a notion of what happened at the Battle of Waterloo and he's still dock you if you didn't put something stupid in like what the army was wearing (something trivial).
Needless to say I got a D in his class, retook it that summer with a different professor and got a B+! GO FIGURE!

[KappaStargirl]

I once had a Music History professor who did nothing but talk about Wagner. Now that wouldn't have been so bad, except that he talked about him in Medieval and Renaissance Music History...the history of music that was written hundreds of years before Wagner was even born! This continued for four semesters, through Baroque, Classical, and Romantic Music History (thank the good Lord I got a different professor for Twentieth-Century).

On top of that, he liked to give us about eight ninety-minute tapes worth of music, including entire symphonies, for listening, and then he would play "Name that Tune" on our tests.

It was truly awful. Too bad. He was really a very nice and incredibly knowledgeable man, he just couldn't teach worth anything.

[hocnsoc81]

I have not had any yet, thank goodness!

[SigmaChiCard]

The engineering department at my school is notorious for bastard professors.

My frosh year in Physics II, we had this guy that gave us a pretty damn difficult exam. The class average was around a 70, and I actually got an 86, so I'm feeling damn good about the course, right? Well, he proceeds to tell us that he was too easy on us, so he puts 100% trick questions on the next exam. Every question had something that we'd been doing, but changed a few words that completely changed the problem, so of course we all did bad..the class average was now where he preferred it, at a 30...I got a 24! So now in 2 exams, my grand total is 100 pts, and we're all just bewildered that he did this to us, at which point he reemphasizes to us that there is no curve! He ended up doing the extra credit route, but regardless, his next tests were along the same line as the 2nd, but fortunately we anticipated it, so we did much better, but I ended up with a B, which was solid in a course like that, but damn after that first exam, I thought the course was in the bag.

A second professor for Linear Algebra last year was miserable as well. Not a single person learned one thing from him, and the only reason anyone passed is because he realized he wasn't cut out to teach this particular course, and aided us greatly. We had 12 quizes. On the 1st one, everyone but one person got a zero. On the next three, out of 20 points, the class averages were around 3 or 4. He proceeds to tell us, "Sorry, I really am the worst teacher, hopefully, that you'll ever have." Can you believe that? He said that in class! It was funny, but lord....so true.

[AlphaChiS2K]

This semester I had the worst professor EVER. Literally, this man was the devil. I would walk out of class every day breaking out in hives because he made me so mad. Anyways..

The class is Behavior Principles, a psych class. Now, I'm a psych major, straight A's, love psychology, very interested in it, etc. I am also a junior in college, and have come to expect a certain degree of professionalism from my professors. I dress respectfully for class, pay attention, and do my work. Dr. Silberberg would come to class (1) Unshowered, reeking of b.o., (2) in dirty clothes, and (3) he would take off his shoes and socks and walk around barefoot, or sit on top of the desks. It was obvious that he was extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter, but he openly said how much he hated teaching. One time we were going over some data on reproductive habits of some obscure African tribe, and it showed that the males in the tribe thought that 14-year-old girls were the prime for mating. Silberberg made several comments along the lines of "More power to them" and "That's the idea." OR IT COULD BE PEDOPHILIA, you FREAK....
He also has had dysentary this semester,a nd chooses to inform the class of his diarrhea on a DAILY BASIS...

So I went to class last week for the sole purpose of filling out the evaluation, intending the tear this man to the ground. Everyone hates him, so we were all pumped to finally get to say it. Our evaluations are two- part: one is a bubble-sheet, filling out yes/no questions about the course. The other is a free response where you can talk about strong and weak points of the professor and the class. The professor gets those in hopes that they will give him ideas about how to better structure the course. So we're filling them out, and Silberberg doesn't leave the room (BIG no-no). THEN, he says, "You can just turn them in now. They don't matter whatsoever. I have tenure, so nothing you can say will affect me. In fact, I'm getting a 2.2% raise this semester, and your evaluations won't change that. I haven't read the handwritten sheets in 20 years, and I don't intend to start now."

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! I get angry just thinking about it.

[loviest95]

The worst experience that I ever had was with a political science prof. He made N--- jokes in class. I was attendeding a very large southern (ultra conservative) university. Anyway there were about 250 students in the class and I was one of 3 African American students.
Needless to say we complained to the dean. The dean told us that it would not happen again.

The next week in class the Prof confronted us in front of the class and stated that-- This was his class and if we didn't like what he said-- then drop the class and that the he and the dean had been friends and classmates at the this same university.

I stayed in the class because I needed it to graduate. I got an A--

[Sue_XO]

Perfect topic!
My Spanish professor. I was the only student who sat in the front row and it was a huge mistake. He constantly picked on me and it the strange way of degrading me for
A. Dressing like a slob (I wore sweats to class some days but other days I wore skirts and tights
B. My hair being sloppy (uh, it was up in a banana clip)

I knew the language enough to get an A in the class but I will never forgive myself for not reporting the d_ckwad [thats French for you know what!] to anyone because now that I think about it - those remarks were totally inappropriate and I was the only one he degraded like that. Oh I hated him!

[UofIL AXO]

I haven't had any truly awful professors ... but I have had a truly crazy one.

My Spanish professor, last day of class tells us all to hold hands and get in a circle (class of 30) who taught us this song, so she made us sing the song holding hands, THEN told us to skip around in the circle (mind you she was in the circle too, putting full effort into). THEN she told tried to get us to run into the hall singing, holding hands, skipping in front of other classrooms.

She was really crazy but it was a very fun class!

[Betarulz!]

Well, even though I've only had four profs so far, I know that one is absolutely horrible.

She taught my Honors Seminar course, and the course title was "there is no place like Nebraska" and we read books from Nebraska authors. Sounds somewhat interesting right? I thought it did too being from out of state. Semester starts and the break down of the grading scale is that 50% of the grade was class participation. I'm thinking "EASY A" b/c all my AP english classes were very heavily discussion based so this should be a piece of cake.

However, no one in that class talked!!! And the professor asked the most inane questions that didn't cause any discussion at all. We didn't have to do responses to all the books that were assigned so of course I didn't read them, and yet when we "discussed" those books I contributed more to the discussion than probably 2/3 of the class combined!!!

The class was such a waste of time, and I seriously thought that when I had read the books, my insights were so far above most of the class, especially those who had come from rural school districts (whose towns were smaller than my HS). I guess the 2 years of AP English really did make me a better writer and literary analyst!!!

Yet despite this, I bet that I don't get an A in course simply b/c I missed 5 days, 2 b/c I was sick and the other 3 b/c I was "sick" (read: hungover). My pledge brother (he hated it even more than I did) and I thankfully got to rip into her on evaluation.

ARRGH, just writing that made me mad!!!

[skip101]

I think a lot of profs just plain $%#%. They are smart to the point fo being brilliant but what good is that if they can't teach.

The problem I have with most profs is that they expext every student to be as smart as they are, and they expect you to be that smart in every single subject.




They have a lot of nerve expecting me to read 100 pages a night. Thats cuts into my drinking time. I wont take it.