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It's happening again . . .


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#1 Guest_Serena_*

Posted 25 February 2010 - 08:53 PM

So I feel the need to rant. . .

Why is it I get professors who are idiots!

I have another one; a professor who's lost an assignment and then turned around and bitched at me for it.

She's rude, intimidating.
She refuses to even tell the class how she's marking our assignments, and our assignment outlines are inaccurate, since she'll change her mind about the requirements. She quizzes us on stuff she didn't teach, and she ends the class an hour early so she can go home.

She arbitrarily failed one of the students who complained. (she just stopped marking his work). The entire class knows it but most of them are too afraid to complain lest they fail the (mandatory) class.

At least a couple people have complained about her rudeness, and I'm already talking to the Head of the department before the shit hits the fan (since right now I'm passing the course and even have some As on stuff.) The department head told me that I have one assignment I can appeal if I need to, and has called her to task twice about her behaviour. But at least in class, her behaviour hasn't changed!

What scares me the most is that the classmate who was failed out told me that she was making faces at me, apparently very disapproving ones. I wouldn't know that unless he had told me, and she knows I can't see the projector screen. . . so I have to wonder. . .

Gahhh!

I suppose I should be more grateful. All the class is -well- aware of the problem of this person, so if we all appeal/bitch about her, maybe we'll get somewhere. Hell, even the TA thinks there's a problem, so. . .

I -should- be ok, I just had to meet with this person, and I wanted to rant, because I'm really, really frustrated. I already ranted at my roommate, but. . . ranting like this will help me to calm down, I hope.

Ok, I'm going back to my movie and a cup of tea. . . maybe that will help.

*sigh*

#2 Guest_nazlan_*

Posted 25 February 2010 - 09:36 PM

College professors are strange and unfathomable creatures, (and I say this as the daughter of one) and the university environment breeds some truly bizarre behaviors.

I'm guessing you probably attend a fairly large school, Serena. The bigger the school, the more apt you are to run into profs who are extremely knowledgeable in their field but are absolutely abysmal teachers, because the personality traits that make fantastic teachers are rarely the same ones possessed by academic superstars. Couple that with the fact that university professors never have to learn how to teach in order to get hired, and you've got a lot of people running around college campuses who've spent decades of their lives learning how to explain complex concepts to each other and not to people who are starting from scratch.

(I won't go into the whole "publish or perish" mentality, or how academia frequently ends up doing little more than training its own successors, but rest assured, I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS on the matter. :))

Really, Serena, in speaking to the department head, you've really done the most you can from your position. However, I would encourage the students she flunked to press their case with an academic dean, because your department should have grading standards that she's not allowed to arbitrarily deviate from. ESPECIALLY if it's a mandatory course for your program.

Ye gods, I would not go back to college to save me from the fires of hell.

#3 Guest_Serena_*

Posted 25 February 2010 - 09:58 PM

Oh, yes, she -did- break policy in how she dealt with him. The entire class is aware of it, they're just too afraid to do anything.

*sigh*

The really sad thing is my other professor for this year is wonderful; and one of those profs who goes out of his way to help his students. It's such a weird contrast.

:)

#4 Guest_Blue-Inked_Frost_*

Posted 25 February 2010 - 10:19 PM

That's horrible behaviour! I agree with the above posters to complain as much as possible and use the means to appeal. Where I've studied, all disputes about assessment that can't be resolved are sent to an external examiner disconnected with the course to provide a neutral re-mark. It surprises me that the department head said that you have only one assignment that you can appeal; I'd expect a fairness procedure to apply to all assessment potentially impacted by professional malfeasance. (Is it oral assessment or something like that?) And if I flunked a course like that I would take the appeal to as high a level as possible. If as many people as possible go above this professor to complain, then hopefully you can achieve some justice.

Academic misconduct and professional dishonesty really bugs me. :)

#5 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 26 February 2010 - 03:17 PM

Naz pretty much hit the nail on the head here, S. Oddly enough (or not so oddly enough if you have enough experience with academia,) university professors actually don't -have- to know how to teach in order to... land a teaching job. It seems completely counterintuitive, but if you have any experience at all with how people get hired for that sort of thing, you'll see why.

My best friend teaches Philosophy at the University of Victoria and, thankfully, he actually -knows- how to teach and has the patience for it, but he's kind of rare. How did he get his job? Well, it's not like you have to get a degree in Education or anything, first. Nope. He simply did his grad work to get his doctorate, worked as a teacher's assistant while he was doing that (as part of earning his stipend from the school) and after he published his dissertation, he threw himself out on the job market, said "I did my learnin' at this program, I've published this stuff, will you hire me?"

You make or break largely based on where you went to school and what you've published. They seemingly couldn't care less whether or not you can actually -explain- what you've learned to anyone else. And even after you've landed a position, teaching isn't the only thing you do, you're expected to "help your department." So that means helping to vet new hires, that means producing new material - doing your own research and publishing new work, which adds to the university's overall prestige. For a lot of people, teaching the brats is just something they -have- to do, they really don't give a crap.

Thankfully, I got a pass on most of that garbage - the benefit of going to a small liberal arts school. Sure, the tuition was a killer for my folks, but that's part of what you pay for: professors who actually want to be there teaching the kids and don't look at spending several hours in a classroom every week as just some chore they have to get out of the way before they can go back to writing their next big paper.

#6 Guest_Serena_*

Posted 26 February 2010 - 04:33 PM

See, my first university, beyond the one stupid professor I ranted about in the other thread, was actually really decent, because, as you say, Alpha, they were small; liberal; and really based on application, not theory. Pretty much all my professors there loved their work and their teaching; and if they didn't -love- teaching they still could do it reasonably well and still tried.

I was in Music, and we got to go out and sing with 2 different city orchestras, we got to sing in the opera house, people in the instrumental program played with the city orchestra all the time. And they made a big deal about this, this was an important part of their program.

The university I'm at now is a lot bigger, and when I took a music class, people were amazed. I kept getting told "that would never happen here."

So maybe that's it. *shrug*

I'm starting to resolve it now, and I've got a bunch of people in admin, along with my disability councilor onside, so we shall see.

You know it's sad when you mention a professor's name and the admin person you're talking to just sighs. :)

The other thing working in my favour is that I only need a D- to pass the course and graduate; so I don't really care as long as I don't -fail-. :D

As for professors, yeah, I'm well aware of that idea that teaching is secondary, I've just been lucky enough to (mostly) escape it. *sigh* I know a lot of people who didn't.




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