100 Most Irritating Things Professors Do in (or maybe outside of) Class.

1. Going through PowerPoints too quickly and talking really fast so that you cannot possibly get all of the information down. Especially annoying when s/he does not post them online and they are relevant for an exam.

2. Being condescending to questions about a text, or being "shocked" that students don't already know everything that s/he does.

3. Tell the cops

4. Ask questions with insultingly obvious answers or otherwise refusing to attempt any sort of intellectual engagement (W

5. Get drunk before coming to work.

Ask questions with insultingly obvious answers

wait--this is called teaching!

...

6. don't get through the material and fall way behind, so that the readings are weeks ahead of the lectures.

7. assign tons of reading that is never once alluded to in lecture or discussion. assign more reading than can possibly be even broached in class. this isn't whining about quantities of reading, just noting a basic pedagogical faux-pas.

8. post to ilx

9. shoot their co-workers when they don't get tenure

10. deny the holocaust

11. give "exam review" sheets consisting of literally everything that was in the notes+readings and then only using 1/4th of it on the exam (why fucking bother?)

hey, that's an old trick though! the whole point of the exam is to get you to review stuff, and why eliminate a big chuck of what you're supposed to have learned just because you may not put it on one exam?

review sheets are mostly b.s. in the classes i've taken and taught, anyway--just a way of getting students off your case. the wonderful notes you took during lectures are your review sheets!

Yeah, I mean I don't at all feel entitled to review sheets or anything, but if you're going to fucking post one, post one. If you want us to review EVERYTHING, do not post one.

12. peer reviewing a medium-sized/large class that's not an upper level course in a writing/writing intensive major

haha here is a new one that i just encountered 30 seconds go

13. upload a mandatory reading and scan it in so the pdf opens upside down

almost faint in class, as per today's brilliant pedagogical moment

14. not show up to your own class. repeatedly.

YES. i once took music lessons through my school and the teacher showed up only three times over the first half of the semester. i stopped going myself.

15. abdicate responsibility for moderating the class, so that one student ends up taking over completely and talks more than the professor and the rest of the class put together.

student who talks more than the rest of the class and professor could go on the other thread, too

Oh man, I've seen #15 happen a couple of times and it filled me with blind rage at the prof.

16. feign ultra high standards on the first couple days of class when they're actually teaching a blowoff

Upside down PDF's? Oh please, I get those at least semesterly. What is really aggravating is:

17. upload a mandatory reading and scan it in so the pdf is illegible/blurred at the spine, or the tops/bottoms/sides of the pages are cut off, or the odd pages are missing.

18. have content-free class sessions. as a teacher myself nothing makes me angrier than this. i have taken classes (recently) where perhaps two class sessions of nearly 30 had anything resembled a planned discussion or a prepared lecture.

resemblING

19. not take the time to find the cheapest place to have their Course Reader printed--seriously, you can't sell those, you know

20. fail to have any kind of structure to your lessons, or the whole semester, apart from 'literature of the late 16th century'

(even tho you are the head of the entire english department)

21. Having a 400-level senior "seminar" with 15 people and lecturing the entire time without at all fostering discussion or encouraging questions.

22. Making online (and open-book) quizzes in which you phrase questions by taking sentences from the book, removing a word, and putting it in a multiple choice question with some synonyms.

actually I want to post some examples

23. Beginning class with "What did everyone think about the reading?" -- works fine when everyone is already super-engaged in the class and the reading is provocative, otherwise probably the laziest way to direct a discussion. (I think profs also maybe don't realize that open-ended questions like this can be intimidating, because even though they may intend it as a jumping-off point for a freewheeling discussion, students may still think that there's a "right" answer.)

________ is responsible for the image we see on the screen.

A. The editing
B. The agent
C. The light
D. The director
E. The producer

Realistic characters are expected to do things that ________ our experiences and expectations of real people.

A. conform to
B. confront
C. confirm
D. challenge
E. change

What two categories do horror movie settings fall into?

A. familiar small town and untamed remote rural area
B. big cities and small towns
C. human world and the monster world
D. prior to and after the event
E. studio and location

Which of the following is a science fiction masterpiece that transcends conventional attitudes toward genre?

A. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
B. Star Wars (1977)
C. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
D. Alien (1979)
E. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

#23 OTFM

yeah jaymc otm -- the best discussion classes that i've had have been meticulously planned out with a bunch of topics ready in case some stuff fizzles -- trying to let students drive discussion almost never works as well as intended

Character types are ______.

A. mostly found in westerns
B. the same in all genres
C. specific to different genres
D. specific to individual genres
E. usually one dimensional

uh what is the difference btwn C and D?

almost faint in class, as per today's brilliant pedagogical moment

Wait ... you almost fainted today?

I have been in some form of Lolcollege off and on for like 10 years now, so:

Undergrad: Nothing was worse than the professors who thought they were absolutely blowing your mind with their next-level ideas. Like, I actually had my mind blown many times in college, but it was ALWAYS in a class where the professor was just teaching really interesting material in a really engaging way, and my view of the world kind of shifted a little as a result. Whenever the professor was like "Do you see how this is unlike any view of the world you have ever imagined?" I just wanted to die a little inside.

Grad (Social Sciences): Would have to go with receiving a hand-delivered copy of my final exam, then not telling me that they no longer had that copy, and then assigning me an "Incomplete" grade for the course, which stayed on my transcript even after I got it cleared up (which cost me like $10 or something!).

Med: The fact that there are course directors in med school who seem openly hostile to the idea of students doing well (throwing out gotcha exam questions on irrelevant details, refusing to let lecturers make corrections to the student notesets, lack of responsiveness to student concerns) is pretty intolerable. Med school is necessarily difficult enough to make the addition of any unnecessary difficulty incredibly irritating.

john, yes - i had an iced coffee at 1:30, was teaching at 2:30. started sweating profusely and blood sugar/pressure/whatever the fuck started crashing at 3:15. class fucking dismissed early. awful feeling, awful day.

This is kind of a crossover irritating things students do/irritating things professors do; my least favorite thing that would happen in grad school classes is a student basically taking over the class by asking endless digressive questions about some minor trivial point, and the professor not doing anything to stop this and get the class back on track.

Yeah, at some point the prof has to moderate. It's even worse in an undergrad course, when a lot of the students don't even know what the hell they're saying (which is why Feminist Grad Student I mentioned upthread surprised me).

7. assign tons of reading that is never once alluded to in lecture or discussion. assign more reading than can possibly be even broached in class. this isn't whining about quantities of reading, just noting a basic pedagogical faux-pas.

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, 15 February 2010 23:33 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This I don't mind if it is couched in the language of "If you are interested look at this"

yeah, the assigning too much reading always bugged me to, since I am an earnest mf who does all the reading. I took my first real humanities (philo) classes in grad school, while my classmates had all been philo majors and were like of *course* we don't do *all* the reading. Now, as a philo prof I teach toward earnest old me and teach a very pared-down syllabus...to the point where we can spend a whole 75 minute course talking about a single line of Plato, e.g. We'll spend 2 months of class time on a single Platonic dialogue (these days, the Symposium). It's worth it, and students can learn something about close reading this way.

that sounds great. high school was like that for me so college has been major disappoint.

18. have content-free class sessions. as a teacher myself nothing makes me angrier than this. i have taken classes (recently) where perhaps two class sessions of nearly 30 had anything resembled a planned discussion or a prepared lecture.

^^^agreed so strongly. I have had many profs I did not care for but few I actually disrespected, and the latter were because of this problem. The worst was an art prof who seriously started almost every class by saying to the students "SO what are we doing today?" He also had a tube of something labeled "retardant" once and showed it to me, saying, "Don't give this to Andrew! It'll make things worse" (Andrew was a guy in our class in hid mid-30s who seemed kind of like an acid casualty, who was not "retarded" but just kind of socially odd and took a long time explaining things.) When we turned in assignments, instead of doing critique sessions, he'd say a few superficial, menaingless pleasantries about each piece. One time he brought in a slide show of art he'd done around town, which COULD have been useful if it was a discussion about the nature of public art, or how to get grants, or really anything other than the self-congratulatory brag show it was.

On the last day we each brought in our portfolios to talk w/him one-on-one & get a final grade. He gave me a C. I'd been every day, he never had a grading policy, he never even assigned anything half the time so I had stuff in there he hadn't assigned I'd done just to fill the time. After a half hour of arguing I got him to give me an A (he made me write "A++" in the gradebook myself, as though it were some shaming ritual).

So I guess

24. Talking shit about students to their fellow students (extremely unprofessional and just plain mean)
25. Having no grading system (I don't mind more subjective/holistic grading so long as there's SOME rationale there)
26. Using class time to show off personal accomplishments for no reason

lol students want to talk shit about other students to me all the time and I'm always like "uhhh save it for your xanga"

I have a professor whose teaching style I really dislike but he's a v v v old man so the part of my brain that adopts v v v old men as "grandpa I never got to have" makes me unable to hate him. He handed out hard candies at the start of class last week!

27. Being unwilling to even hint or suggest that a student might be even partly incorrect or wrong

28. ART PROFESSORS: flat out refusing to give any actual criticism during crits, and just telling everyone the strengths of their piece.

29. Prof, clarifying feedback on a fellow student's essay: "Yes, the essay was too structured. Don't lose structure, but try to be less structured."

30. Writing illegibly, as feedback on exams/papers or on chalkboards. It strikes me as very arrogant.

31. Upping their royalties by making their own book required reading.

32. Burping in front of students.

27. Being unwilling to even hint or suggest that a student might be even partly incorrect or wrong

I was horrified when I took a class with the professor I'd been working one on one with, me thinking I'm doing real well, and then in that class even the stupidest of comments get "excellent" and "absolutely" and so on. But then I worked out that he would say "excellent" to me and mean it, whereas with other people he'd say it and talk about the area in a way indicating how very wrong the student was. A hug and then a stab in the back.

re 31, my profs are all totally neat and distribute complete PDFs of their books and such if necessary. (probably not even legal?)

33. Vote against continued funding for intercollegiate athletics

ha – in my school that would be a great thing.

I dont like it because the only way I was able to pay for/go to college was sports.`

31. Upping their royalties by making their own book required reading.

honestly, depending upon the context there are often good reasons for this.

Several of my undergrad lecturers did 31. Great in the case of the lecturer who could actually write in a fairly entertaining and snappy manner, cz then you have a textbook which pretty much exactly fits the order of the course, how you're taught things, etc, and the guy was pretty approachable so we could ask him questions.

Unfortunately one of the others was probably the worst textbook I've ever had to read, so thanks, you pompous jerk, for making us spend 35 pounds on yr impenetrable dullness, which makes your lectures no more comprehensible because it uses the same nonsensical phrasing and examples - probably any other book on this subject would be better, but you've done so little to sell the topic that none of us feel like paying for another book on it

34. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586024,00.html";>shooting sprees when denied tenure</a>

34. shooting sprees when denied tenure

35. making an out-of-print novel required reading (ie questions about it on the final exam), and assuming that 2 copies of it at the reserve desk will suffice for a 200-person class

still mad @ that

36. Tolerating graduate students asking question after question about essay lengths, without cutting them off ("You're grad students! Write as much or as little as you need to!").

Oh man. #36 is a horror to sit through. And it's not just essay length questions but due date questions, reading questions, all kinds of questions to clarify what's on the syllabus.

37. 80-yo heads of departments teaching 100- or 200-level courses because...someone had to? They like slumming? They want to mold young minds?? I'd like to re-mold an OLD MIND, you pompous, dogmatic DINOSAUR.

Oh man. #36 is a horror to sit through. And it's not just essay length questions but due date questions, reading questions, all kinds of questions to clarify what's on the syllabus.

I'm always amazed by the meekness of students. A good writer establishes the terms under which he's evaluated. Why are you infuriating us with questions like, "If we cite a text in the annotated bibliography, do we have to cite in the body of our essay too?"

38. Read aloud to the class from books not on the syllabus, so that all must gather at your feet and worship, I mean, listen grudgingly to a dragged-out recitation about adolescent masculinity. And I mean the ENTIRE BOOK, not just a highlighted passage or etc.

Wait, I don't follow.

Why are you infuriating us with questions like, "If we cite a text in the annotated bibliography, do we have to cite in the body of our essay too?"

Probably b/c they're used to dealing with a lifetime of teachers who take points off for trivial shit. "A good writer establishes the terms under which he's evaluated" may be a worthy ideal, but I certainly don't blame students for approaching the matter pragmatically.

Alfred, if that was addressed to me: I had a professor who graded on attendance and class participation and then spent our class time reading entire books to us, 5 chapters at a time, as if we were privileged to sit at his feet just because he liked the sound of his own voice.

If you think something is important reading for the class, put it on the damn reading list and I'll do it in an afternoon. Don't drag it out over 6 class periods that I'm a) paying for, and b) waking up for.

22. Making online (and open-book) quizzes in which you phrase questions by taking sentences from the book, removing a word, and putting it in a multiple choice question with some synonyms.

― Use a computer to superimpose your head over that of Bronson Pinchot (Stevie D), Tuesday, 16 February 2010 05:07 (Yesterday)

This is ridiculously infuriating, but most often these test banks are provided by the textbook publisher and the prof has never even looked at them.

Probably b/c they're used to dealing with a lifetime of teachers who take points off for trivial shit. "A good writer establishes the terms under which he's evaluated" may be a worthy ideal, but I certainly don't blame students for approaching the matter pragmatically.

Approach it pragmatically after class with the professor.

dragged-out recitation about adolescent masculinity

Gotta love Christian colleges.

Actually he was considered some kind of iconoclast, or he thought he was? A '70s holdover but folded into the bosom of the establishment. He did succeed at making me hate The Catcher in the Rye, though. I can't even remember what else he read to us.

I know it's impatience on my part, but, really, the MLA stuff should have been covered in your undergraduate years, and if not a good MLA stylebook is inexpensive. Worrying in front of the professor about how your essay might be graded is akin to looking scared in front of a barking dog you haven't met before.

For a grad student to ask, "I know the syllabus says the essay should be twelve to fifteen pages, but what if I wrote sixteen and a half?" is just argggh.

but, really, the MLA stuff should have been covered in your undergraduate years, and if not a good MLA stylebook is inexpensive.

I assume you're noting on the syllabus "MLA style required/preferred"?

Yes.

For a grad student to ask, "I know the syllabus says the essay should be twelve to fifteen pages, but what if I wrote sixteen and a half?" is just argggh.

I still can't tell whether this is argggh because a) the syllabus is perfectly clear, so there's no need to ask (and thus waste your time), or b) asking these sorts of clarifying questions is Not a Good Look.

it's arrrgh for me because it means the student doesn't know how to follow directions

39. refuses to use e-mail

Presumably jaymc would have been one of those students. Kill him.

I think jaymc brings up a good distinction though because some profs are all serious about directions and will dock you for shit like that, while others are like "it's just a guideline, as long as you're close it's ok."

"hey i know our paper was supposed to be about The Scarlet Letter but i wrote it about Young Goodman Brown, is that okay?"

Well, sure, but presumably by the time the essay's assigned you'll have a pretty good idea what kind of asshole prof you're getting.

All of my grad school profs were incredibly flexible about assignments, whether it be length, subject, etc., to the point where the most difficulty I had was some of the papers/projects being too open-ended.

Yeah, exactly.

A person who cannot cut 600 words from a 6000 word essay to comply with a prof's page limit is a cast-iron idiot.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I think it's pretty dumb to expend that effort when you could ask the prof and find out it's not necessary but hey whatevs.

good profs will let the class know on day one whether page/word limits are guidelines or strictly enforced, though. if you have to ask the prof, the prof has already dropped the ball

yeah it could be solved with a simple on the first day of class: "I won't read past page 15 of your essays, FYI."

Hahahaha I went to a college where for some, everything seemed negotiable. OTOH there are non-snotty ways for profs to elucidate rquirements and 'I won't read past' is not one of them.

Sometimes the writing process throws out more than you really need, because you're in the zone or something, or you've written sentences which are badly verbose. Knowing how to edit yourself is just as important as what you write, but it is easier to teach someone to edit than it is to teach them how to write.

And for those of you who are a page and a half short, subtle fucking with the font, size, margins and breaks is the essay equivalent of visiting a fluffer.

re: 39 I HATE IT when prof's refuse to email!! They always make some joke about how they're old and can't figure out computers but they're really just scared and/or lazy. And it's very frustrating having to call a professor on his home phone.

40. Constantly requiring the most brand-new editions of books whose basic fundamentals have not changed in decades (i.e. calculus)

41. Teaching a course/text that is already obsolete. I spent an entire semester in "Broadcast News Writing" this past fall learning how to write broadcasts for radio and television. I think we talked about blogs/the Internet maybe once or twice.

Re #40: the bookstore and the departments are sometimes in cahoots.

Also, the prof. can request a copy of the latest text if he teaches from it and sell it once done, my microeconomics professor went into great details about doing this (although didn't require latest editions which was a small mercy)

42. Demands a hard copy of your final paper. Not the worst thing here but the email post reminded me that I HATE this.

What's wrong with demanding a hard copy? I HATE printing emailed papers.

22. Making online (and open-book) quizzes in which you phrase questions by taking sentences from the book, removing a word, and putting it in a multiple choice question with some synonyms.

Stevie D., this happened to me last semester & everyone was consistently getting an F on every test. It turned out the prof had been pulling these questions from the sixth edition of the book, when he'd asked us to buy the eighth. Relations between the professor & students had been poor before this, but there was almost a mutiny the day he revealed this mistake.

Waste of paper, hastle printing it and I read 2,000 pages a semester off PDFs the professor emails/posts, they can read a digital paper (especially the professors who don't give you a notated copy back). Plus, since finals are generally due after classes end it's a hassle traveling an hour to school just to drop off a paper I could have emailed.

Oh iPhone typoes...

Weren't people complaining about the wrong answers? What did he end up doing for everyone's grades?

I ask students to include a self-addressed stamped envelope so I can return their essays. Otherwise they can wait until the next semester to physically pick them up.

Hard copies aren't going away anytime soon. I write comments all over them, even on final essays.

Setvie, everyone had been complaining repeatedly that they had no freaking way to get the answers right, but he didn't feel the need to look into it bcz they were open book tests that you had a whole weekend to do at home. He assumed that somehow everyone in the class was fucking around and circling random answers and then complaining. This is why things were so heated in class. It was a class on "leadership skills," too (required or I would defs not be there), meaning there was no way you could try and figure these answers out objectively, as all multiple choice options would be four equally meaningless & subjective platitudes. Is it more important for a manager to "encourage the heart" or "examine new paradigms"? There was no way to triage it.

Sorry, I mean STEvie

a. I wish I could have been there when the mutiny went down; I love seeing power-hungry assholes get served
b. I love that you called me Setvie

c. pretend I said something other than "power-hungry assholes get served". ew.

40. tell class that wife has opera tickets so he's going to have to leave early but that they should carry on the discussion

If I were a prof, I would want hard copies. As a copy editor, I find that I'm able to read and engage with something better when it's on paper than on-screen.

Yes, plus if you did want to print out copies for ease of reading/feedback, it wld be $$$ to print out all those student papers.

26. Using class time to show off personal accomplishments for no reason

I had a French professor who just happened to let slip in class one day that he played classical guitar, and would anyone like for him to bring his guitar and play sometime? Like, the next class period? So the suck-ups all say "yay!" He was actually very good, but the blantancy of "here is my ego -- stroke it please, yes, just like that" was kind of gross.

Idly saying "this'll be an easy proof for one of the homework questions". 6 hours later, I reach for algorithms book and discover a 20-page proof that made my heart skip. The undergrads thanked me when I sent the email around telling them to ignore the question ;)

I would like to add a corollary to #26: Using extended periods of class time to discuss how everyone in the scientific/academic community is ignoring your research or theory even though it is totally awesome. Not to say that it's bad to break with the consensus, but there are times when it turns into a dude burning like ten minutes of a lecture getting butthurt about how the consensus is missing the boat, it is awful. Especially in introductory survey kind of lectures, since the dispute they're talking about usually requires a pretty sophisticated knowledge to make sense of, but their lecture audience is full of people who learned this material five minutes ago. Last year a guy went on for fifteen minutes about a study he had done like 15 years before that hadn't really ever been followed up on even though the results seemed promising, and ruined what should have been a delightful lecture about spinal cord injuries.

31. Upping their royalties by making their own book required reading.

― Madchen, Wednesday, 17 February 2010 13:52 (7 hours ago)

This is really awful. Especially when it's its full of totally unvaluable information. Firing off a book identical to hundreds and hundreds of others out there, and sold at unabashedly overpriced rates (my friend was showing me one of these that was like 200 pages worth of garbage for $65) is groudns for 'disgusting savagery'.

I paid upwards of $120 for my calc textbook freshman year.

22. Making online (and open-book) quizzes in which you phrase questions by taking sentences from the book, removing a word, and putting it in a multiple choice question with some synonyms.

[...]

________ is responsible for the image we see on the screen.

A. The editing
B. The agent
C. The light
D. The director
E. The producer

is this question real, Stevie? If so... what's it all about? Being able to find a sentence in a book? I've never seen anything like it.

Yes, the correct answer was C! Um.... what is this teaching me, again?

It is teaching you that all are welcome in the laaaaaaaaght.

how about one like this:
Film is most like which art form?

A. Music
B. Photography
C. Sculpture
D. Theater
E. Painting

i picked painting, just because, but the "correct" answer is apparently theater! why do they think these types of questions are a good idea with these answers?

42. Demands a hard copy of your final paper. Not the worst thing here but the email post reminded me that I HATE this.

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 10:59 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

waaaaaiiiiiiit. it is really annoying to read and grade papers on the computer, and we shouldn't have to pay to print out 75 10-page papers. (and believe me, the department is not going to pay for it.)

also, i totally understand older profs not bothering with email. who cares? maybe it's because i was an undergrad in the 1990s when a lot of older professors just didn't bother, but it never seemed like something that would bother me.

as for page counts, i'm pretty flexible, since the hardest part about a paper is, you know, making it coherent and stuff, and not fitting it a precise page count. that said, if you turn in a 5-page paper for a 10-page assignment, you're getting an F.

xpost

WTF is that quiz question? that's some fucked-up horrible film professor right there.

bother bother bother bother

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5w-7IpI0fI&feature=player_embedded

Ew @ his weird hyperactive smugness

For the record, this morning I opened my email and found two essays. Students feh.

It'd be great if they weren't even assigned, they just emailed you some essays they spontaneously wrote.

That way I could spontaneously erase them.

The kiddie science museum here used to have liquid nitrogen demos. They were way more fun than the autistic science professor there.

students made sad faces when I told them I didn't have their rec letters prepared despite having only asked me a week earlier. ???

bigshot professors never showing up to class and expecting everyone to be grateful when they do

the one professor I had that did that was imprisoned and wrote his novel on toilet paper tho

7. assign tons of reading that is never once alluded to in lecture or discussion. assign more reading than can possibly be even broached in class. this isn't whining about quantities of reading, just noting a basic pedagogical faux-pas.

I had a prof who assigned more reading than every other class I was taking that entire year combined; total cost more than £300, and insisted that it was all "essential". Then basically did the entire course from one textbook.

Searching specifically for words they use in class when grading essays

http://mhudack.com/post/405530147/i-wish-i-went-to-nyu

On the Course Documents page I uploaded a 5-page article discussing the differences between feeling, emotion, and affect.

Woah. Presenting at NYU class tmmrw on affect + heavy metal.

http://mhudack.com/post/405530147/i-wish-i-went-to-nyu

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, February 24, 2010 9:20 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

"You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. "

i LOL'd

leave their fly unzipped for half an hour without realizing it (this was me today) :(

http://mhudack.com/post/405530147/i-wish-i-went-to-nyu

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, February 24, 2010 9:20 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

Wow, I gotta say, the entitled student is totally out-assholed by the professor in this exchange.

Something profs in my uni don't do: read the free online encyclopedia pages related to the presentations that are to be given in their classes. I wish they did, so that we didn't have to listen to lazy people read out such pages verbatim for their assessed presentations. Students give themselves away when they're unable to recognise words in what is supposed to be their own writing, but I've never seen anyone pulled up on it.

i flunked a student for plagiarism for doing this

i've seen GRADUATE STUDENTS read whole paragraphs from wikipedia in presentations

Good. It really does annoy me. Not just the daftness of thinking it's okay (or, worse, not thinking it's okay but doing it anyway), but cos it makes a mockery of the time you spend trying to make your own work original and interesting.

GRADUATES?!?!?!

Grief.

Actually, I don't know why I'm surprised. The last person I witnessed doing this was a finalist who was applying for an M.A., so...

Plagarism is savagery tbh-- only thing I've ever snitched bc of

i was in one class that mixed graduate and undergraduate students, all of whom had to give one course presentation at some point in the semester. the undergrad presentations (and one or two of the grad ones) were so awful, and most were so obviously plagiarized, that i made a point of not attending on days when most of the class would be taken up with their presentations. a dick move, i suppose, since the rest of them sat through my presentation, but i felt that if the professor wasn't going to call students out on it, i really didn't want to sit through it.

i should note that most were not wholly, but partially plagiarized. still.

MOST???

the course materials for a class I'm teaching this year are almost completely plagiarized from various english help sites around the web. really wish I was a student and could call him out on his bullshit.

so for our midterm, this professor had everyone in the class write two potential essay questions, and then from all of those he would select two for the actual test. and he told us that after we all submitted our questions, he would upload them so we could look at them before the midterm, yada yada. so today i go to look at them and he has merely uploaded everyone's separate word document, so i'm now supposed to download 25+ different word documents, which i obv will not be doing for moral reasons

good lord that's lazy

(i meant him, not you -- although not wanting to download documents does count as a special kind of laziness imo)

hell is not students; hell is people in other departments trying to get up in your department's business

once a week i have a lab led by a TA & in the past two classes he's started off by weirdly asking questions about grooming -- this past friday he goes "so ladies, how many of you wax?" and everyone's like "..." and he went on to talk about how at his wife's salon he waxed the inside of his nose (or something) and the whole time the whole class was all http://i43.tinypic.com/33bny1v.jpg

and the week before he took a survey asking the guys in the class how we shave, and then he spent 5 mins advocating shaving w/o shaving cream -- i almost brought up the seinfeld episode where kramer shaves w/ butter but it was too early in the morning

no way this doesn't end in tears

he's working toward his PhD in depilation?

what class is this J0rdan

I think I would hang out with that guy.

Just try it out, you know, to see what we had in common.

what is the course actually supposed to be cover? You didn't drop out and go to beauty school, did you?

it's a lab so i deduce it is a science class so maybe there is actually some tenuous substantive reason for these inappropriate questions

Talk about how rap has no emotional depth, disparage all contemporary music, etc.

lol no -- it's a political science class that mostly focuses on statistics -- it's a "lab" because we're in a computer lab, not a science lab -- there's no reason for the topic of grooming to come up

pube lab

Most Non-Irritating Thing My Professor Did This Semester: he allowed us to bring wine today for our last class (one I'm auditing).

i can't even explain what's going on in this class right now

the grooming dude has just structured this whole lab around the nfl draft... and now we're arguing about the nfl draft...

oh maybe he kind of rules. i'm confused.

one of my professors pronounces words like "if" and "it" like "eff" and "et", and it was only a slight irritant until today when she repeatedly seemingly said "menstrual show"

ha, profassor valleygirl?

no not at all actually altho she may be from out west cuz she used to teach at u of wash

my remedial math professor insists on standing directly in front of the chalkboard in order to work out his problems and comes to the result before i even have the chance to copy down the work/see what the hell is going on, thus extending my years to be spent in remedial math courses.

my remedial math professor insists on standing directly in front of the chalkboard in order to work out his problems and comes to the result before i even have the chance to copy down the work/see what the hell is going on, thus extending my years to be spent in remedial math courses.

This is a never-ending cycle. If you're at a good school, it will subside at infinitesimal calculus. If you're not, it might subside with algebra. So, hot tip: self-learn.

It's incredibly easy if you're motivated. Check out http://www.khanacademy.org/. Start from scratch (i.e. counting and arithmetic). You should also read age-appropriate material (e.g. Steven Strogatz's columns for the New York Times -- http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/steven-strogatz/). A college student should be able to go from numerical illiteracy to infinitesimal calculus in a month, maybe two. Really.

A college student should be able to go from numerical illiteracy to infinitesimal calculus in a month, maybe two. Really.

A college student without a math disability, you mean? Not everyone can do or comprehend higher math. (Oh, and try to avoid using words like "age-appropriate" when you are referring to adults.)

No. I didn’t. I assume if someone had Dyscalculia, they’d be excused. Otherwise, the cognition necessary to comprehend infinitesimal calculus (which, by the way, is not “higher math”) is ready available to literate adults (i.e. you).

Furthermore, my use of “age-appropriate” was deliberate and not malicious. Most material is intended for adolescent children. Therefore, I believe it’s completely reasonable to emphasize that you should pursue material that isn’t the default.

A college student should be able to go from numerical illiteracy to infinitesimal calculus in a month, maybe two.

This is a massive bubbling cauldron of wrong. I mean, unless by "calculus" you mean "understand calculus as well as you would understand it from reading Strogatz's columns" or something like that. I think Strogatz's columns are great! But he would be the first to say that reading his column is not going to put you in the position of "knowing calculus."

seriously, that's like the ingles sin barreras method of learning math
ie, so not gonna happen

"Annoying Habits of College Professors" (circa 1935 to 1937)

Among the habits judged by students as being “very annoying,” some of the most frequently listed were rambling, “riding” students, pausing too long, and using pet expressions. I’m not sure how these particular pet expressions would go over in today’s college classroom, but in Moore’s study, some of the more bothersome ones apparently included “Ain’t that right, pal?;” “In the final analysis;” “Interestingly enough;” “Like an old mule” (I can only guess what this was referring to.); “If you please, gentlemen;” “Yes suh! Yes suh!” and perhaps my personal favorite, “That’s the meat of the cocoanut.”

That’s the meat of the cocoanut.”

so tired of this lol

“Yes suh! Yes suh!”

yessah massah?

polisci_4995_jk: For Friday


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show details 1:44 PM (56 minutes ago)

Unless I hear that somebody is allergic, Friday is officially "Capstone Puppy Day."

huh?

we're allowed to bring dogs to class

What class?

Oh wait - polisci?

yeah, cuz we're gonna discuss this http://www.economist.com/node/17468228

it's actually a fun class & the professor gives us tons of control over the direction of it, but in this case the direction is "people want to bring puppies to class"

How is that not awesome???

J0rdan be bringing bitches.

look, i love dogs as much as the next person, but i kinda just want to show up to class w/o having to worry about barking dogs running around and making noise & shit -- we're adults here

I love my parents' dogs but no one else's.

Yeah, I see that. I like dogs but they can be stinky/slobbery/sheddy/bitey/humpy, which is nagl on a dog that you don't already know and love.

true of professors as well

Haha!

beleaguered haha as a professor who also is a dog owner
(though i have NEVER EVER taken my dogs to class nor would i -- who could concentrate? it's the same reason i don't allow students to have their kids with them in class)

please never with the "how 'bout that sarah palin" -style digressions.

trying to compare stuff to facebook is *always* the wrong way of explaining it.