Your Worst Professors

[AlphaChiGirl]

I had one professor, who I just couldn't be bothered to wake up at 9 to hear him and his bad English showing slides of Roman ruins, so I dropped the course. I transferred into a class I liked much more.

Other than that, I've had really good college professors. I've had the WORST HS teachers, though. I had one who (fundamentalist Christian who just happened to have a son in rehab) told me that I would be corrupted if I went to Brown, that I'd join a cult and dye my hair. She brought EVERY discussion we had, from Aristotle to Shakespeare, back to religion and how her church was the best. Another one REFUSED to give A's. Yet another one called my paper "bulls--t" and got mad when I called her out on it. All in all, I just had an amazing amount of work designed to cause ulcers and keep us as busy as possible! I'm so glad now because I'm in college, where the teachers just aren't like that!

[KappaStargirl]

I just thought of one more, thankful this didn't happen to me directly.

NO ONE messes with the director of the Lawrence University Symphony Orchestra. Not students, not professors, not the administration. The LSO is one of the most disciplined and respected musical ensembles on campus, and above and beyond that Symphony Orchestra is a class taken for credit towards graduation, and you do get an orchestra grade on your report card. All string majors are required to play in the orchestra for four years, and many wind and percussion students participate for ensemble credit. That being said...

There was this professor who taught Multicultural Education, a class required for all education majors. He announced to a class one day: "There will be a showing of 'Stand and Deliver' on Thursday night at 7 pm in the Media Center. All of you are required to attend and will receive a much lower grade for the class if you don't. I do not take excuses, I don't want to hear about whatever rehearsals you may have." Now this would not have ordinarily been a problem, except for the fact that the LSO rehearses from 6 to 8:45 on Thursday nights. A cellist who was a music education major found herself in quite the pickle.

She took this information to the director of the LSO, who got very upset (not at the student, obviously), and contacted not only the dean of the conservatory of music but the education dept. chair and the dean of the faculty as well. A nasty memo also ensued, and in the end the cellist was allowed to skip the movie.

That'll teach him to mess with music majors.

[XO_Princess]

I will never ever EVER forget Dr. Blair. He's very knowladgeable about what he etaches, but his people skills are in the toilet. He was my Psych Nursing clinical advisor, which means he supervised us during our Psych rotation-which was freaky enough to begin with. Anyhoo, we had this paper due for our rotation, and we had to turn it in in parts, and each part would be graded, and then added up for a final grade on the paper. When we discussed the paper, the first thing he told my clinical group, was that he wasn't going to give any of us an A b/c we aren't professionals, and we don't do A work yet. Ok, thanks-now I'm really going to try hard! Well, I tried hard anyway, and he gave me a 70 on the paper. Which dropped my grade from an A to a B. I was livid. Then, during our individual clinical evaluation-a time during which your advisor gives you feedback on your preformance-all he did for 15 minutes was tell me what was wrong with my paper and how if I didn't learn this stuff now, all my co-workers would laugh at me when I went to work. Then he started with this:

"Why didn't you make the corrections that I told you to?

"I did...right here and here..I even wrote them in a diff color ink, so you would know what was old and what was corrected."

"Well, you should have made it more obvious."

"Since I did the corrections, will that change my grade at all, since they were there and you just missed them?"

"No, it's your problem, b/c you should have made it more obvious to me"

Not one word about my clinical preformance. I was so angry. But I heard he said the same things to the other students in the group. Oh damn, I was so mad.....

[ladybug1116]

For part of my general liberal studies I had to take a literature class. I put it off until my senior year and eventually decided to take Intro to Shakespeare. This is designed to be an INTRO class (as the title implies) for all majors. I had heard great things from people who had taken it. However, I managed to get this PSYCHO professor and she was the only one teaching it that semester She had obvious favorites in the class and would belittle anyone who made a comment that wasn't one of her pets. Then she spends all of this time in discussion talking about "we as English majors need to do blah blah blah" She also seriously embarrassed anyone who walked into class even like 10 seconds late. She would stop, stare at you and talk about how rude it is to disrupt the education of those who care about learning. One time I was like a minute late and there was another guy waiting outside to go in. She had a policy that you had to get all materials out before you entered the classroom if you were late, so there we were like dumbasses unpacking our backpacks in the middle of the hallway. On another occasion my pen died in the middle of the lecture and I was QUIETLY trying to reach for any other writing utensil I might have (I really wasn't making ANY noise) and she stopped the lecture and stared at me (thus causing the rest of the class to stare) until I found my pen and then commented on how rude I was. And one last thing...her tests were ridiculous. They were in class essays that were nearly impossible to complete. She would pick RANDOM quotes out of the plays we had read from that unit and we would have to give character, play, act and scene number, where it was in relation to the plot and then discuss the symbolism/significance of this passage. We had to pick 10 out of 15 in a 50 minute class and each essay (to get decent credit) needed to be almost a page. Gosh, if you missed one tiny detail you would get seriously docked for it too. (The final essay was pyscho too but I'm not getting into that) I ended up with an A- and I have to say it was one of the hardest A's I had to work for in my life (and I graduted summa cum laude so this is saying a lot). This class---a FREAKIN LIBERAL STUDIES CLASS---took more effort than all of my other senior classes that semester (and they weren't cakewalk classes). And she never passed out that teacher evaluation form either...I was specifically looking forward to ripping her to shreds (even though she's tenured).
So to anyone who's from FSU----don't take Intro to Shakespeare with Paula Barbour.
OK, I feel better now

[Lil_G]

Stellar thread...

Okay, My worse-prof story is an accumulation of several events throughout the course. Good Ol' Deisman who was neither good nor old was the professor I had for Policing II...Like many others in the class, I had him for the prerequisite Policing I, first semester of last year. He was fine the first time around, what happened...who knows.
First Event - three weeks into the class He had to revamp the entire syllabus because what he wanted to teach was not what the faculty wanted. So, all the readings and required texts got changed and in most cases were assigned just a few days before the next class.

Second Event - we had this garbage critique essay due a week before spring break. Well, (at this point I should mention the prof loves email-interaction among the class, extra-curricular crap, feedback, etc.) apparently the class didn't fare so well on this essay in which 1/3 failed. I geuss Deisman thought those who failed would enjoy being told via email during spring break. Or maybe they would enjoy it even more being singled out in class, first day back - which he did. That same day, he kept going on and on and on about how bad the essays were and how a third year class should know how to write essays, blah blah blah....this went on for about 10-15 minutes in which case Wade was laughing the whole time....I didn't think it was that funny, but the prof did.

Third Event - we had these group projects to do, my group chose aboriginal policing. At the end of the course we had a write-up on our project with no subjected criteria...whatever happened, the message was misconstrued so that about 70% of the class believed the write-up would only be a page from the group. Last class, one week before it was due and one and a half-week before the final exam he told us that this write-up would have to be at least 30 pages...?
Where he came up with this S%*& I still don't know....anyways, there were a few browners that supported this bullS@$* and two groups out of 9 that were the most vocal in the matter.

The conclusion: some students went to the dean who gave Deisman hell but the paper length still stood the same. Side note, the groups that contradicted what he said had the 2 lowest grades in the project presentation and group paper (mine was one of these). Even though our group had by far the best presentation, and we went first....whatever.

...so there's my worse-prof story, i'll be bumping this thread up in the next few weeks because I got stuck with Wade next semester for a 3rd yr. Compulsory Sociology course...brutal.

[damasa]

Originally posted by AlphaChiS2K

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....

Maybe the way he said it, or the comments he made were very inappropriate, BUT, in all truth, girls that age are "prime for mating" in many african tribes today. If you look at the mating/marriage habits of many other cultures of today and of the past, it was also common for girls, some as young as the age of 11 or 12 to be married off to an older man, only to become a mother and a wife a short time after. BUT, since our society has so many laws that try to prevent things like this, we view it as "sick" or something similar. When you look at it, there are a lot of aspects about american culture that are much more protected than those of other countries, but you would have to travel to other places and experience these things for yourself in order to truly understand.

It's like this situation that just happened here. A circuit judge from another county in Wisconsin was having a relationship with one of his daughter's friends, a 16 year old girl. Now, the parents of the girl want him to get the book thrown at him for "deceiveing a teen" and using influence to sway her to have sex with him, after she stated that she made the initial moves. Anyway, the community is saying that she is too young and that she couldn't make such decisions for herself, which, to be honest if facking bullshit. Why? Because, when I was 16, I knew quite a bit about sex myself. I had already had beer, smoked a cigarette, and all that stuff. What I'm trying to say is that society today doesn't give these teens credit for knowing what they are doing.

Yet, it's ok to try and convict a 13 year old of murder, because "he knew what he was capable of, and he was aware of his intentions and the end result."
Yet, this 16 year old girl didn't know what she was doing, even by making the initial moves. Not that it is right, because it's not, but that's why our system is so facked up today. We will try a 13 year old as an adult for murder because he knew what he was doing, but a 16 year old girl caught in a relationship with an older man doesn't?

25 years for it? Hell, some people don't get that penalty for murder.

In all, the system sucks ass!

</end rant>
d

[lionlove]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with a bad prof story.

For my chemistry class I had the choice of taking a final exam or writing a 10 page paper on the topic of my choice. The procedure was to write a rough draft, hand it in, get it back with comments from the professor, meet with the professor to discuss the comments, then write the final paper. Well, everything was going well until I had to meet with the prof to discuss the comments. I made an appointment with him for 1pm that monday. At 12:58 I show up at his office, he isn't there. I check the classroom to make sure he wasn't there and then waited in his office for a while. At 1:15 I asked another professor if he had seen my prof and he said no so I left an extremely polite note on his desk with my email address asking me to email me to reschedule. At 1:45 he calls me and blames me for not keeping our meeting. Hello!! I was in your office for 15 min waiting for you and it's my fault you weren't there!? Well, we reschedule for 3:15 that day. I show up shortly before then to find a line waiting outside his door. Apparently he was running behind and his 2:45 and 3:00 appointments were still waiting to meet with him. But hey, at least he was actually in his office this time. Well at 4:00 he's still running behind and I haven't met with him yet and he comes out of his office to notify the (now long) line of students that we have reschedule because he has other commitments. I manage to get a 9:30 appointment with him Tuesday morning still seething over now having been stood up twice by him. Tuesday morning arrives and I show up at 9:30 to find out he's running late again. Finally at 9:50 he meets with me and our whole meeting consists of him asking me if I had any questions, which I didn't. The whole meeting took five minutes.