Nightmare professors

[Dionysus]

I still have not heard from her....

[copacabana]

Originally posted by aephi alum
Oh yeah... I forgot about my philosophy professor.

In a philosophy class, you should be free to argue any side of an issue and be graded on the quality of your arguments, regardless of whether the professor agrees with your viewpoint. Right?

Wrong. We had to submit weekly papers, and it wasn't long before I discovered that if you wrote a paper agreeing with the professor's own views, you got a full letter grade higher than if you disagreed. So I started writing papers agreeing with him, even though I fundamentally disagreed with him, just to get through the class.

Ya know, I've found that a lot of professors are like that, philosophy or not. A lot of times they seem to think that if it's not their point of view, it can't be argued as well and doesn't make any sense, apparently.
slight hijack...I had a political science GA who absolutely refused to discuss trickle-down economics as a feasible concept. Even if you don't agree that it works, she could at least have admitted that it IS an actual concept!

[RACooper]

The worst I had is what I'd call intentionally a nightmare... it's just that well he's a little eccentric at times.

He is one of the leading scholars of the Roman Empire, and you pretty much have to read a book or article by him if you are researching the period - especially if your looking at political power structures... anyways he's what you'd call a genius. The only problem is that he is a borderline technophobe - can't stand/trust computers (other than playing Civ), email, or anyother new-fangled devices. Now as a result of this distrust of technology, he is not a fan of students using technology, thinks it makes them soft or make plagerization way too easy... so in an effort to combat this he came up with a simple solution (well for him) - all assignments and papers are to be handwritten, with his reasoning that even if you bought or copied the paper you at least had to go through the trouble of writting it out. Needless to say writting a 15000 word paper out by hand was not fun

ETA> oh yeah 20% of your mark was "penmanship".

[AGDee]

Originally posted by copacabana
Ya know, I've found that a lot of professors are like that, philosophy or not. A lot of times they seem to think that if it's not their point of view, it can't be argued as well and doesn't make any sense, apparently.
slight hijack...I had a political science GA who absolutely refused to discuss trickle-down economics as a feasible concept. Even if you don't agree that it works, she could at least have admitted that it IS an actual concept!

These types of professors are simply teaching you what it's like to have a BOSS. It's real life training I have always said that I did well in school because I was good at figuring out what the professor wanted and producing that. It's not a bad skill to have in the work place either.

[BetteDavisEyes]

I had a religious studies professor that spent the entire semester railing about what is wrong and stupid about Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism and about how Jesus was a fake and that people are mindless sheep believing stupid things to make ourselves feel better. His idea of religion was to have us watch Malcolm X and then to rail about how Malcolm X has been made into an icon when in reality he was...and on and on and on. The man was crazy as hell. The only good thing about the class was that his assistant graded all the papers so I could write whatever I wanted & not fear that I'd fail based on his prejudices. He was an ass.

I am still trying to get over the mean botny prof i had at arkansas and a math prof i had at a jc ....both can chalk it up to short man syndrome