That F isn't for Fail, it's for Fuck You

So this semester I have the most insane Professor I've ever had for my Micro Theory class. We recently had the midterm for the class, so this seemed like a good time to reflect. Some of the insane things this man has done:

- The average on this midterm last year was a 29.
- For lecture, he strolls in with nothing but a marker to write with, gives his lecture and walks out, leaving zero time for questions. If you attempt to ask a question, he will question the quality of your question until you accept that it was a stupid one. If you try to debate a point he makes, he will argue with you until you admit you are wrong...this has taken up entire class periods before. When class time ended he kept arguing until kids just got up and left.
- He once gave a kid a minus infinity on a question on an exam. This negative infinity was not treated like a 0...it was treated like fucking negative infinity. He gave the kid a negative infinity on the exam because negative infinity plus anything is still negative infinity. Eventually, the kid took it up with he department because he was ready to give a kid an F for the course, all because of that negative infinity. The department had to tell him he couldn't do that.
- The midterm that we recently took covered about 1/10 of the material we have covered in class. 1/3 of the test was a sodoku...seriously.
- People say he has been married and divorced 3 times and is currently dating a graduate student. I don't know the validity of these rumors though.

I'm sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Focus: We've done insane bosses before, what about insane teachers? Who was the biggest nutcase you have taken a class with? Tell us about him/her.

 

I'll start the stakes off small since I've had some pretty normal teachers for the most part, but I had a stats professor that:

1. Required attendance which is ridiculous for non gen ed college math classes.
2. Required you bring your calculator to every class. If you forgot it, you lost points on the next exam.
3. Would have abnormally heavily weighted quizzes immediately after days people commonly skipped, the day after Thanksgiving break comes to mind.
4. Taught lessons that weren't on the syllabus but would be tested on days many kids skipped. Basically anyone who had to make travel plans to go home (and of course lazy people) were fucked over by this.

The one thing that bothered me most about her was the following exchange she had with another student.

Student: I noticed that I got this question wrong, but my answer matches the key.
Prof: No it doesn't.
Student: Uh, yeah it does.
Prof: No, you're off by exactly 10,000.
Student: Well, that's why I have E4 at the end, I'm multiplying by 10^4.
Prof: Well I know what that means, but how do I know You know what it means
Student: Are you kidding me? I used it on the test and just explained it to you
Prof: Fine, I'll give you half credit
Student: *stares for a moment in disbelief and leaves*

I hated that bitch.

 

The craziest professor I had was for an International Women Writers class. She was Greek and Australian, and fucking brilliant and because of that, a little crazy. It was the hardest class I've ever taken because everything she talked about was so completely over my head. I was terrified to participate, and I think because of this she kind of had it out for me the whole semester, which made me very sad because usually teachers love me. The worst was this exchange, where she thought I was texting, but I was just reading the book in my lap:

Teacher: "Audrey!" I can't believe you're texting RIGHT after I was JUST talking about how rude and completely unacceptable I think it is!
Me: *Lifts book off of lap onto the table* I...was just looking at the book...
Teacher: *bursts into tears* I'M SORRY! I JUST QUIT SMOKING, AND I'M A LITTLE ON EDGE! BWAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

That...was...awkward...

 

At 8AM at my first college class of my first college quarter freshman year, everybody was sitting a little uneasily as our professor hasn't arrived yet. We were all freaked out 18 year olds not sure what to expect. In walks a few minutes late a heavy set guy with pure white hair. Kind of a very primped santa claus. He's wearing a bright red shirt, red pants, red belt and matching red shoes. Prances in and says hello, introduces himself and starts into how he can be bribed with chocolate. The guy was as gay as they get. The tension immediately left the room as he was pretty funny. I don't remember too well if he was that great of a teacher or not as it was just a basic English class and a good while ago, but it was a memorable way to start college.

I was fortunate to not have any crazies in college. I had professors who were very tough because they were very intelligent and the material was difficult for me and some that weren't good at presenting material, making their courses tougher than they needed to be. All in all though, they were at least pretty reasonable in regards to expectations, etc.

This is a an anti-focus. I had one professor who has since passed away unfortunately who I'll always remember as being more influential and essential to my education than any teacher I've had. We were required to take a design studio each quarter. My school was four quarters per year where we worked as interns in our profession during quarters 1 and 3 and were in school 2 and 4 or vice versa. Well, one studio per year had to be a required and one could be elective. This one professor taught only one of the major required ones along with thesis and sometimes a very early studio. I pretty much said fuck it I want to keep learning from him. They actually allowed me to skip one of the required and take his a second time. I had him in a very early studio, two of the required studios where he actually changed it up since I was in there again and he ended up being my thesis professor for my two design quarters of thesis design. While most professors taught technical design abilities, he focused more on teaching you to tap into your pure creative sides and develop instincts and forced us out of our confort zones using all forms of art, not just architecture. I knew I could learn and did learn the technical aspects in the field. He was why I was in a classroom.

 

Professor in Introduction to Statistics and Probability that was a requirement for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science majors.

-The class started with 33 students. 15 sat for the final. More than half the class decided, despite needing the class for graduation, to drop it.
-One student, who was among the top two or three in the class, went to him three days ahead of time to ask for help on the homework. The professor told him that if he didn't understand the question he was too stupid to be an engineer, and kicked him out of his office.
-Would ask the class a question and get increasingly angry until someone had the balls to answer it. Correct answers were barely acknowledged, incorrect answers were mocked publicly.
-The department received so many formal complaints that the head of the department came to the class to ask what was going on. When he asked how things could be improved, one student said "let the TA teach the rest of the course," the department head laughed, and then became quite concerned when he realized it wasn't a joke.
-I scored a 53% on the final, yet still crushed the class average (it was in the low 30's).
-Despite doing every homework assignment, attending every lecture, and beating the class average on every exam (including the final by which time the "class" average was really the average of the 15 best students in the class who had stuck it out), I received a B- in the course.

I googled him once after the class ended, the only thing I found was an article he wrote shitting on the iPhone for being behind the curve.

 

I had one Statics (basic 1 block engineering) Professor that was awful. He would come in, start teaching and writing on the board. About 5-10 minutes later he would realize that what he put on the board was all wrong, erase it, and start over. The problem was that he never successfully correct himself. He was wrong again.

So it went something like this:

Teaching, teaching, writing on the board, teaching, writing. Thinking, then saying, "No, that's not right." Erasing, erasing, erasing.

Then teaching, teaching, writing on the board, teaching, writing...


I had to drop that class because I wasn't learning anything. Everything he taught was wrong. (thankfully I had an amazing statics teacher after).

 

I can't believe the number of professors out there that couldn't teach to save their lives, or don't even know the subject well.

I had a Calc II professor that would hold the book up to his face and talk at the chalk board. Believe it or not, I didn't learn much from him. He would always ask if we understood, the class would collectively say no, or just laugh, and then he would repeat everything he just said with out any changes. I think he was a case of eccentric and brilliant, but with no idea how to convey that knowledge to dumbass students.

A computer programing professor I have no is, as far as I'm concerned, and idiot. He has likewise hired idiot TAs to match. He routinely makes mistakes on the homework assignments, and then sends out corrections the night before it's due. Keep in mind these are usually week plus assignments. What kills me is that he's been teaching this class, and only this class, for years. How have you not gotten your shit together yet?

 

So I actually just got this midterm back this past Friday. Class average was a 24. Max score was a 38. I got a 26. Can't decide whether or not to be happy.

The TA gave us the exams back, but before he did so he put up an approximate number to letter scale. He wrote A >30 and the entire class bursts out laughing.

 

I can't quite match the looniness of dubyu's professor, but two immediately come to mind.

The first was the laziest human being I've ever met. We had class, or more accurately were supposed to have class three times a week, but he always cancelled at least one session per week. He regularly let out class early because everyone was doing such a good job, or so he claimed. A small portion of the class grade was supposed to include attendance, which is fucking retarded for a 300 level class, but he always forgot to collect it (except maybe a couple times). Almost all of the grades were based on multiple choice tests with the exception of two papers. The first one was a short 2 page group paper and he wrote the exact same thing on every paper, "You need to develop your ideas more." Each student received a B. On the final paper he gave the vaguest instructions I've ever heard. The premise was write a marketing plan for someone in some industry. That was literally the entire guidelines. I e-mailed asking him to be clearer and he only responded, "Make it as long as you want! I promise to read it!" Well, I'm thinking he didn't as they list the range of grades for the class and including every student, out of about 40, scored either a 16 or 17 out of 20 on the paper. Hmmm... He also had us go listen to a Native American lecture for one class. What does that have to do with marketing? I'm pretty sure he just didn't know what to do for the day, figured he couldn't cancel again and needed an out.

The second professor was for ethnic studies, but they should have just called the class 'Why hating white people is right." As far as I know the actual course material was only covered once all year in about half a class period. The guy was in his mid 50s, and probably stoned during most classes (my friend smoked up with him a few times). There were a few really, really stupid black kids who sat up front and absolutely loved him. At one point towards the end of the semester he asked people to come down individually to check their grades. Despite missing several classes (I wasn't going to keep listen to that shit) I had a total score of 160% for the class. This confused me since I didn't do any extra credit. It also pretty much meant I could take a dump on my final exam, hand it in and still get an A, which was nice. I don't think I'll ever meet anyone as racist as he was, towards his own ethnicity no less. "What needs to happen is we should have no white people in any form of power." Indeed sir, indeed.

 

Two professors come to mind:

1) He taught an Intro to Islam class, which I took to fulfill my Religion requirement. The class had about 250 students, and he required us to buy all 5 books that he had written (do the math on that...). They were all essentially the same and we barely used them. The kicker? He only showed up for 1 lecture the entire semester. He had some buddy of his teach all the lectures, and to that guy's credit he was actually quite knowledgeable. Too bad he spent every lecture justifying Islam-based terrorism by explaining why Islam was not as bad as Christianity. I slept through every class up until the midterm, never showed up for class until the final exam.

2) The class was U.S. History 101. This was a freshman-level class that I avoided taking until my last semester of college. The professor was tenured and made it pretty clear that he didn't give a fuck about the class. Even though this subject was history, he refused to use a chronological timeline and instead would make parallels between the Wigs, Populists, etc. to today's Democrats and Republicans. His lectures were not even remotely coherent. Again, I slept through every class until the the midterm, then never showed up again until the final.

The best part: On the final exam, I drew this maze in the middle of the blue book (spoilered below). It took me maybe 15 minutes to draw, and I was still the first person to finish in a class of 80 students. I got an A- for the class.

Spoiler

 

I never understood professors who write tests that return averages of 30s or even 50s-60s. Do you really get off that much from humiliating a lecture hall full of 19 year old undergrads? Thank god its dissipated in grad school.

One professor comes to mind in the annals of teacher failure. The summer my freshman year, my parents made the decision, based on my 2.0 freshman GPA, that I would be spending fall semester at home until I could prove that I could be a competent student. So I took continuing education classes at my dad's alma mater back home in Milwaukee. Since I couldn't enroll in the university and classes on such short notice, I was basically in classes for people looking to build up credits to transfer into the school. So basically, I was taking university classes but I wasn't a student. This is only important cause one of these classes wasn't on campus but through one of the technical/community colleges downtown.

The American History course I was taking was taught by a professor I believe was in his late 50s. He, unlike most professors I was used to, was not a PhD, and judging by the shit he would say, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even have a damn masters. And to top his excruciatingly boring lectures off, he couldn't look at the class and would look over all our heads and at the ceiling in the classroom. If he had darkened glasses, he would have looked blind no doubt. Not to mention, the class was laughably easy, so much that it was boring.

The class was graded on 4 tests. Each class he announced the high score on the MC choice section, and each test I had the high score (or maybe tied. I think I got a total of 5 MC questions wrong between the 4 tests). But the kicker was that each test also had an essay that counted for half the test score. And the next class after the test, he would read the best essay out loud to the class as an example of what he expected. And, at the risk of a humblebrag, he read my essay all 4 tests. So whats my beef since it sounds like I ran rampant over the course...I got a flat B. Not a B+, not an A-, a flat B. I had the best essay in the class every test and usually got either a 28 or 29 out of 30 on the MC section, yet I never received above an 87 on a test. I can't imagine what other kids in the course got. Needless to say, I went back to campus in the spring, pleasing my parents sufficiently in the fall, and busted my ass and appreciated every competent professor I have.

 

Ahh. I've worked in Uni's for the last 6 long, long years of my life. Academics are insane.

Prof 1: I asked him for a literature review. He sent me back a 12 page email ranting about how the Jews faked the moon landing and were in a conspiracy with white women to keep him down because they hate n*****. The guy was a lightskinned Fijian. Complaints were filed when students knocked on his door during his designated office hours and he opened it in nothing but his underwear. He got a promotion and moved to another University.

Prof 2: Wanted help in developing his device. Good news for me, that's what I'm here for. What does his device do? Probes (yes, probes) people for evidence of prior alien probing. I wish I was making this up.

Prof 3: wants us to sell her test for a disease, which is made up of a number of different markers. The problem is that Big Pharma own all the markers already. She refuses to understand the concept of 'freedom to operate' and 'patent infringement lawsuit'.

oh, Prof 4: tried to cut a student out of her share of some IP. She called in lawyers, and the Uni lawyers convinced him to sign a more equitable split. This was fine until 2 days later when he came in claiming to have signed the contract 'under duress' (hint: that phrase does not mean what he thinks it means), locked himself in the office and had a nervous breakdown. He quit the Uni that day and moved to China the next week.

and that's not even counting the number of staff members I get every week who want help with their idea but won't tell me what it is in case I steal it, despite endless NDA's etc etc.

 

One of my professors desperately tries to channel House. We spend the first half of his class making differential diagnosis with case studies. He throws a dart at a paper with all of our pictures to pick a victim, making snarky comments about the outcome. Then, he harasses the poor bastard until he makes a correct diagnosis or is taking too long. It's traumatic because he stands directly in front of you and glares like you are a total imbecile and insult to the profession. Sometimes when you answer a question correctly he'll pat you on the shoulder. I flinched the first time because I thought he was about to hit me.

It's all an act. He's a big softie inside. He's still really weird, though.

 

I really don't understand the problem with low grading scales. What is the issue that people have with them? Is it just being psychologically used to the "90 is an A, 80 is a B, etc"?

To me, a grading scale is an inherently arbitrary number. If it's a subject I know, tell me the scale you want and I can probably design a test to get that average. Hence why it tends to vary across majors/countries. In fact, I'd argue that an average closer to 50 might be better than one with an average in the 80s or 90s, as it leaves for room for variation and thus does a better job of separating out people.

The one thing that I thought was nice, though, was putting the averages/grade distributions on the board before handing back the papers. Some of my professors did this, some didn't, and it helps deal with the sticker-shock of seeing a low number.

 

I've been blessed with mostly great teachers. Some maybe too strict, but never unfair. There was an incredibly absent-minded physics prof, though. He would often deviate from the topic and randomly drift off in the middle of a sentence. I remember once he was explaining something, pointing at a formula on the blackboard and then he suddenly went quiet, stopped moving and just stared at his index finger for about 2 minutes. Sometimes the slides for his lecture contained links to interactive models or examples on some topic and that usually ended up in lengthy and public wikipedia surfing.