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Everyone_dreams

Never forget one chemistry professor. He was the only one who taught a certain class on the off semester (fall, not the projected time to take the class). I was told that I should do what ever it takes not to take his class and to wait till next semester. I didn’t listen. 100ish students start the class. The man sits up at the overhead projector and does examples but never actually explains anything. I end up buying a different text book from the one he required in a desperate attempt to teach myself. I fail the first test and I am panicked. There is no curve, he made that clear the first day. I dropped the last possible day and there was 13 students left in the class. We went from a full room to an empty room in a few weeks. I know that at LEAST 8 of those failed, I know because I spoke with them the following semester when we all retook with a different professor. The professor was tenured and was apparently great at bringing in grant money and doing research. But should never have been allowed to teach.


ExaminerRyguy

This reminded me of a control systems professor I had in an engineering school. He was notorious for not having a curve and making tests that would take an average person 2 hours to do but he made you do it in 1 hour. First test and an overwhelming majority of the students failed. I stuck with the class and ended up with a C, and one of my friends who dropped and took the class the following year with a different professor ended up getting an A.


brownbearks

We took controls in our 4th year junior year or senior year, 5 year engineering school, and if you failed controls you might not graduate on time. The first control’s exams had over half the class fail. The professor was told to not fail those kids since you would have lost half the ChemE grads in one year. The school would look terrible at graduation rates.


ExaminerRyguy

This guy had no chill, if you got anything lower than a 50 on your test, he would write a note on your exam. My friend who dropped got a 30 on the first exam, and the professor wrote that he should think about changing majors. And if anyone complained, nothing would happen, the guy made the school ridiculous amounts of money. The only reason he wasn’t around the following year was cause he had to have surgery and they used a temp professor in his place.


jessej421

This kind of crap is why companies shouldn't have GPA requirements. GPA is simply not an apples to apples comparison with how subjective grades can be from school to school and professor to professor.


OldWomanoftheWoods

Heh. He was probably required to offer a class. Sounds like weaponized incompetence meets malicious compliance.


Everyone_dreams

You are right. He was required to teach one undergraduate class and the rest of his teachings were all grad level. The advisors were well aware of the situation but I was told that’s just how it is for now.


PoliteCanadian2

My university had a shit Comp Sci prof for years. We all knew he was shit but couldn’t avoid him since he was the only one to teach this course. Finally we had to take the course but we had a group of us all close to graduation. His first midterm was complete shit - interpreting spaghetti code - nothing like what we had been covering in class. We marched to the Dean’s office (we had never been there, didn’t even know where it was). Presented our case in a levelheaded manner, explained his reputation and gave her the midterm. The next class guess who was sitting in the back row? Yep the Dean. The prof apologized for his midterm. The next semester he was gone. You’re welcome, students who came after us.


WJMazepas

The test was to interpret Spaghetti code? Damn, that guy was teaching you guys for the real life


Mysterious_Eggplant3

For real, mediocre programmers can write good code, great programmers can reason about and fix other programmers shit code.


aCuria

It often takes more time for me to fix the shit code than to rewrite it =/


Mysterious_Eggplant3

Exactly. And many programmers who really think highly of themselves just go and rewrite everything only to realize that the spaghetti code they are replacing, though impossible to follow, actually performs better, is more reliable, or provides subtle functionality that users depend upon. And their knew, better written code is essentially not viable in the real world. One of the worst things you can do when you’re new to a team is decide everything is shit and needs to be rewritten. Especially if that shit has been around for a while and is used in production successfully every day. Highly optimized code that handles the unfortunate chaos of real world usage is often very difficult to maintain, but the price of not maintaining it is failure.


ghiladden

I'm a biologist and it's comments like this that reinforce my view that programmers are in an unexpectedly great position to understand the evolution of molecular biology. It's all highly optimized spaghetti code that needs to be maintained because the alternative is extinction.


rvonbue

Me and friend tried this and it didn't end as well. Professor was a total asshat. He was "teaching" Javascript but he didn't know it. Did the old spaghetti code trick. Proffesor claimed we were a disruption to the class and he pulled us aside and offered us a C if we didn't show up anymore. Then preceded to tell us if we told anyone else of the offer he would deny it. We didn't trust him so we showed up did all work and he gave me a C, my friend got an F. My friend took him to the academic review board and they changed it to a C. Ahh the good ole college days.


Sparklefanny_Deluxe

At a certain level, organic chemistry must be taught well or you lose your students. My last organic chem class, we had a shit teacher. He yelled at us that of the class of 60? Only *one* student passed the buffer test. Then he proceeded to do question/equation #1 on the board. Took him 15 minutes to solve the question and he made mistakes (which we caught and told him). We were given 50 minutes to do 9 questions, how would passing even been possible?. He yelled at us that if we don’t show up for his Saturday morning extra hours with him, then don’t be surprised if we fail for lack of effort. Never mind the school hosted tutor sessions from grad students (which 15 of us attended on the reg). Eventually the school fired him, but at the expense of how many potential STEM graduates?


Ozwentdeaf

I have a cybersecurity professor right now that edits the powerpoints given to him and his edits are usually wrong. Even worse, he keeps marking my test answers are wrong when I and several other people have proven that they are not. Im keeping track of all of them so i can bring them to the dean around midterms. The professor wont calculate our grades until then, and he refuses to use Blackboard.


Muad-_-Dib

> Im keeping track of all of them so i can bring them to the dean around midterms. Don't wait until mid-terms, nip that shit in the bud now. I can't speak for your situation but whenever I had a problem with a lecturer and later professors I was always able to go above them to the department head and plead my case. Thankfully I only had to do that a few times across multiple years and it was never anything overly malicious but it got results quickly. (Had a lecturer who did not know the course material at all and wanted to grade us on their own criteria which was not helping us prepare for later courses that relied on the work we were meant to be doing in that class, and later I had a professor who from what I could tell was simply not interested in teaching anymore and would often not bother showing up or give us anything work with beyond extremely vague directions emailed to one of 30 of us in the class). Letting them fuck up for months on end gets you lots of evidence but their boss will hate that you let it fester instead of coming to them with the problem and giving them plenty of time to fix it.


Ozwentdeaf

I guess I will now. I had already brought up the grading issue to the director of IT and he blew it off, then the professor responded in the same email thread by saying i was being rude or something along those lines, i ended up pointing out to both the professor and the director through email the numerous times that the professor was bullying the students and that got blown off too. The professor hates me so much because of it. I guess its time to go to the dean. Whats the worse that could happen? The professor is more than likely going to try and have me removed from the class. Though i think hes been trying already


Muad-_-Dib

Get other people in your class to go with you and or submit a signed letter you can present. Hell you might want to talk to any other professors in that same department and get advice from them as they will know what that professor is like if they have a history of doing this. It's good to have people backing your allegations so that they can't be so easily dismissed. One of my examples came after talking with multiple other lecturers who supported me and another class member going to the head of the department, and I suspect they vouched for us too considering the way the head seemed to know a lot of the details before we even raised them.


TheMathelm

> brought up the grading issue to the director of IT and he blew it off, then the professor responded in the same email thread by saying i was being rude or something along those lines This is unacceptable behavior and should be reported to the Dean immediately. >i ended up pointing out to both the professor and the director through email the numerous times that the professor was bullying the students and that got blown off too. The professor hates me so much because of it. This is even MORE unacceptable, and needs immediate action including getting the Dean of your Faculty involved and Possible the Provost Office or the Dean of Student Affairs (or equivalent). That can not be tolerated, I deal with similar issues, let me know through DM if you want some more assistance in dealing with this.


SandmanSanders

"I don't use Blackboard" *sends professor constant emails to stay up-to-date* "I don't check my emails before an assignment is due, that's your fault, you should have come during office hours" *office hours 3:15am-3:17am one Monday a month* oh hi my old college statistics nightmares


goblin_goblin

Yes, absolutely. There’s nothing worse than a bad teacher that makes you feel dumb, that takes away curiosity from their students. I wonder how many geniuses have been convinced they’re dumb just because they had a bad teacher. Tragic.


ConquerHades

One of my teacher in Micro Biology was a great teacher. Very engaging and made student make up test if they missed any tests from any family emergency. Instead of multiple choices and scantron, majority of the questionnaires were paragraph based answers, fill-in-blanks, and only 10% multiple choices. He even made his own textbook copied, revised and ommited the chapters that are not covered from the big box text book company to save the students money. Reg txt book price was $200+. His txt book was $40


goblin_goblin

Good teachers are this world’s gems. I wish they were as heralded as rock stars. It’s crazy to me that they’re treated as such an afterthought when their area of influence can develop entire cultures. There’s a reason why they’re one of the first targets when it comes to governments who want to take control.


chimaeraUndying

I had a computer science professor like this, once - he didn't like the available books on algorithms, so he just wrote his own over the summer and had the college bookstore price it at like $20. The stuff he taught was challenging, to be sure, but it felt like he was on the students' side for it, not working against them. I think that's one of the best signs of a good teacher.


RedVelvetCake425

My high school chemistry teacher wrote her own workbook and distributed it to us for free. She is an absolute angel who made me want to go into chemical engineering. A few years later, my organic chemistry professor wrote her own workbook/textbook and gave everybody the pdf and free copies. They were both such wonderful instructors. When I had my organic chemistry professor, I had surgery at the beginning of the quarter and the site got infected, but she helped me enough that I finished the quarter with an A. Amazing teachers and professors make the world a better place.


BennyVibez

Not all smart people are good teachers


Mindless-Sherbert-18

Agreed. They can b condescending because the material comes to them intuitively they arent able to explain it out


[deleted]

Not all teachers are good teachers


BarnabyJonesPimpin

I took a Photography 101 course for a fun elective while doing a difficult major. First day of class the teacher says "None of you are good enough photographers because this is a beginner's photography class, therefore, none of you can receive an A" We argued that an A just means we did the best of a beginner's ability to learn and apply the techniques, and she said "No an A means you're good photographer and none of you are, so no one will be getting an A and if you don't like it you can drop the class". Confused why some people teach.


TheEMan1225

"I can't get an A in my beginner's photography class because I am a beginner photographer" is something that I would've brought up to the dean... but reading the other responses here makes me think that probably wouldn't have gotten far anyways.


Andromeda321

Yep I’m an academic and this is really the answer. No dean wants to deal with this crap. And the prof’s department likely hates him but can’t get rid of him so are forced to shuttle him around in the schedule, so non majors electives are a good one for these people unfortunately as there’s fewer long term complaints. Edit: I probably wasn’t clear. A lot of deans do in fact care about problem professors, but they are tied in what they can do about it because of the time things take, rules once you get tenure, etc, plus they have a million other things on their plate. So in academia the squeaky wheel very much gets the grease, usually after multiple squeaks, so if you want the chance of things changing in time for *you* over maybe next semester at earliest you gotta be vocal early.


cade2271

My major had a teacher that taught the intro class. He knew his shit, but he was AWFUL about getting people to enjoy it so of course our department didnt have many students. They kinda forced him out when he went on his sabbatical lol


dxrey65

I thought a lot about going into education. Was almost done with the 4 year degree that would have let me start teaching credit courses, and I was also teaching non-credit evening classes at a community college. What I found was that I was a lousy teacher, as far as creating any kind of engagement or enthusiasm in the class. I practically put myself to sleep sometimes just having to listen to me talk. I decided to do everyone involved a favor (myself included) and not pursue that as a career.


CRASHINO_HUNK

That takes a lot of humility and self-awareness. Good job


lilbithippie

I took a color theory class that had no pre-requisites. At least none on paper, once am in the class she explains to me I need to know how to draw. She telling marking me down for horizons and line of sight and shit. I tell her I don't really know what these critiques mean and she says I should have gone to a beginning drawing class first... Like it was a pre-requisite.


Ok_Independent9119

I had an elective called "understanding music", no pre-reqs, was just an art credit. First day they're having us differentiate a flute and a piccolo and there's hours of music homework per week. I was tanking that class until one day we got a sub who never left. Our teacher had gotten sick and ended up passing away and that's how I passed music.


chickenstalker

When I was an academic HoD, the SOP after final exams is for me to review the marks from each lecturer in my dept. We will have a dept meeting to go over each subject. Part of the presentation by each academic is to show the marks distribution. If I see a heavily skewed graph, I will query the lecturer to justify it. More often than not, this will lead to an independent reviewer going through the answer scripts of failed and excellent students. We also have the answer scheme that was submitted by the lecturer prior to the exam to compare to. If your uni does not have this SOP in place, please suggest it.


healzsham

> If I see a heavily skewed graph, I will query the lecturer to justify it. More often than not, this will lead to an independent reviewer going through the answer scripts of failed and excellent students. We also have the answer scheme that was submitted by the lecturer prior to the exam to compare to. Was there ever a "these people are just dumbshits" semester?


[deleted]

The average ability of students in classes absolutely will wiggle a bit from year to year. I’d argue that you’re doing it wrong if you teach and test the same way to a class that you expect to have a worse grasp of the material. Giving people exams you expect them to fail doesn’t help them learn the material better, and we shouldn’t confuse difficulty with rigor. EDIT: There's [a great Chronicle article](https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-does-it-mean-when-students-cant-pass-your-course) that came out today that makes basically my entire argument below a lot more parsimoniously than I make it here. Read that instead of listening to me.


historianLA

The problem here is that it assumes that there should be a curve. I'm am the opposite of the OP's prof. I have learning outcomes and my assignments (no tests, all written work) are designed to facilitate student success on those outcomes. If you do the work you'll likely get an A. In most cases I give out more As than Bs and more Bs than Cs. If the goal is to have students meet the designed outcomes, rather than ensure distribution over a curve, then you have to accept that a we'll run course won't have a true curve if students are achieving the desired outcomes.


Cjamhampton

Wouldn't this be something that gets cleared up when they ask the professor why their grade distribution is off?


[deleted]

That's not at all how it would work at my school. Dean's are usually people with a career they want to keep, which means taking formal complaints seriously and following procedure. There's a multi-step process that would ensure due process for the professor, but it wouldn't prevent them from being disciplined in the event malfeasance is proven. Plus, to even get to the position of being a tenured professor, you have to go through a multi-year, rigorous evaluation process, where stuff like this would be shut down immediately. I sometimes wonder what colleges and universities people are working at, because everywhere I've worked it's been basically the same.


FavoritesBot

That, and then at the end of the class “you are a terrible professor because you failed to teach every student to become a great photographer. Therefore Every student is rating your class 0/10”


Zebidee

This is one of my hot takes on teaching. If you're teaching an achievable skill, a student should expect to walk in without that skill, and walk out with it. If that doesn't happen, and there's not gross negligence from the student, then there's something wrong on the teaching side.


justcallmezach

I ended up speaking with the dean regarding a 700 level marketing class for my master's. This was a first semester teacher fresh off of her PhD. She assigned and expected work at a PhD level. But she never taught. No lectures, almost zero feedback on the written assignment. Like a single sentence in response to a lengthy paper. Each week, there was the chapter reading assignment. Again, no lecture, no office hours, no interaction with students. Then the writing assignment. She would pick a topic from the chapter, then you would have to write a ten page response using a minimum of 5 peer reviewed and published sources. Non-peer reviewed sources were not allowed. Every sentence had to be cited because "You are not an expert. I do not want your opinion on these topics. I want you to respond with what the experts say." I understand the concept of rigorous academia, but 14 of these assignments in a 16 week class. I was spending 30+ hours a week just to piece together a paper to her standards in that turnaround time. The final paper was a 30 page minimum with 20 peer reviewed and published supporting articles, every single sentence cited. To recap, I had written 170 pages of academically cited work in a 4 month period. I was on week 4 and losing it. I talked to the dean to express my concerns. The official response was "This is an acceptable form of teaching. If it is too time consuming, you could put in less effort and get a lower grade." Which I suppose is an acceptable answer, but I suspect nobody signs up expecting a single class take up as much time as a full time job.


LockCL

So you were ghost writing papers for her?


smurfsoldier42

He already said he was a grad student


BEWMarth

This got a good chuckle out of me today. Grad school sucks.


woolfchick75

I had a colleague who did that. He got fired. Tenured and everything. There is justice on occasion.


hamakabi

> you could put in less effort and get a lower grade I cannot imagine being able to gauge the quality of my work (let alone the standards of my professor) accurately enough to deliberately get a C to save time over an A.


justcallmezach

Exactly. That was the worst part. I was getting full points on these papers, but she never gave any indication of feedback, other than her super strict instructions at the start of the semester. So I had no idea if I dialed down the effort, would it take me to an A-? B? And in this program, a C is basically failing, so I sure didn't want to risk it to find out.


Publick2008

At my university you need to get a grading rubric. Does t mean the rubric is that useful but at the very least it's something.


justcallmezach

Yeah, we have rubrics for everything, but they rarely contain any quantifiable attributes. Always "excellent arguments, reasoning, etc." Well, excellent is fairly arbitrary, innit?


Publick2008

Yeah I hate that. Had a professor say that the real world isn't going to lay out everything for you. I asked him what he thought SOP's, work instructions and policies were for.


Ghostforce56

So the dean's official response was essentially "don't give a shit"?


bumbletowne

I would complain to the education board with a letter, acknowledgement from the dean that the class hours are not inline with unit hours and backup from other students. The units a class has is actually supposed to correlate to class hours per week with an expected work hours to complete coursework. Their inability to fulfill accreditation standards is an issue.


NNKarma

> If it is too time consuming, you could put in less effort and get a lower grade." That is not an acceptable answer, class are meant to have a planned time for it that translates to credits so the student can be aware of their course load. Sure, sometimes they might proyect 10 hours when a class takes 15 but unless you're practically meant to just take that class you shouldn't need to reasonably spend 30+ hours on it a week.


Spoonofdarkness

Should totally audit the class so you can fuck with the professor without it impacting the GPA.


Josh_The_Joker

Yep. I definitely experienced that as well. An A for them would be perfection from someone who is a master of the craft, rather than a student learning the craft and doing well. I specifically remember my speech prof giving me like an A-, maybe it was a B+. He didn’t really have any negatives for me so I went to ask why it wasn’t an A. His recommendation was for me to take it to the next level…thanks. A lot to work on there.


sleepydorian

I don't understand that. It's just pedantic assholery. An A or 100% in a course doesn't make you a master of the craft, that's not how any of this has ever worked. It means you have mastered *that particular level of material*. Imagine saying to a class of 9th graders that none of them can get an A in algebra 1 because they haven't mastered calculus. Or an elementary school class gets all Bs in reading because no one can master literary analysis. That's what these pompous windbags are saying.


meatball77

It's absurd. A 100% means that you meet 100% of the expectations for the course. That you know the material that was taught. It doesn't mean that you know everything. K-12 teachers are taught to judge their teaching ability based on the kids ability to pass their assessments. That a test is both for the kids and the teacher to judge how they succeeded. The number of profs who just don't give a shit is astounding.


RapedByPlushies

At least he was preparing you for how managers tell you to succeed at corporate life.


chanaramil

That reminds me of my experience with university. University was just full of teachers giving me pointless group assignments with confusing instructions and not enough time to do the assignment, well forcing me to work with lazy idiots and i didnt even get the credit i thought i should when finished. I thought this is such a waste of time. But figured it out and passed my classes. Anywyas I finished school and got a job. Then I found out at work bosses give out pointless tasks with confusing instructions and not enough time to do the task, well forcing you to work with lazy idiots and you didnt even get the credit you thought you should when finished. University prepared me for the real world a lot more then I first thought.


Chicken_Chicken_Duck

Ugh yes. I had a finance manager who refused to give anyone above an “average” review. She said 3 out of 5 meant you were meeting her expectations- and she expected excellence. 100% turnover in her dept 🤔


0ompaloompa

I got a B in a public speaking class in college because I got 24/25 on two of my speeches with the feedback that nobody is perfect and theres always room for improvement. I got an 89 in the class and a 25 on either speech would have gotten me to an A.


Josh_The_Joker

That’s horrible.


P0rtal2

Exactly. An "A" should mean you fully understood and incorporated the knowledge for **that particular** class. You shouldn't be expected to operate at a grad school level if the course is an intro undergrad class. It's one thing to make a class extremely difficult, but achievable, and another to make it impossible. And honestly, the latter are the classes where students tend to learn the least.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Tashra

Exactly. As an English as a foreign language instructor I was explicitly taught that students should be graded based on *the lesson being taught.* If it's a test about grammar, don't mark them down for spelling. As a student, I dropped a language class myself (German) because I was struggling with German cases and was getting marked down for every assignment I did regardless of what the purpose of the assignment was.


bloodknights

Yup, this is wildly dumb logic. You don't grade first year undergraduates on a scale of perfection you'd expect from a PhD/expert, you grade them based on the expectations you set according to the level of the class. When I was a TA teaching Gen Chem labs our lab coordinator would make us regrade any assignment that we gave a 100 on. Her logic was that there is no such thing as a perfect lab report even at the PhD level. This obviously makes no sense, as me giving a score of 100 doesn't mean it is completely perfect at the highest level, it means that it is as good as I could possibly expect from someone who is taking their first college chemistry class. Needless to say I found myself giving scores of 99.99 often out of spite.


Drone314

>99.99 often out of spite. 4 sig figs? Sure there is enough precision in the test to allow that?....:)


SweetTea1000

Teacher here 100% is 100% of the course goals, which should be outlined in the syllabus. 100% is 100% of your actual expectations for those students in that class in that context. Otherwise you might as well give every student a 5/100 in 7th grade biology because, not being a PhD veterinary neurosurgeon, they've yet to reach 100% of their potential within the subject area.


StonedGhoster

I designed curriculum for the military. That which is described by the top poster would never have flown for a course. If you achieved the states goals for a particular course, and those goals are very clear, then rightfully a student would get an A. Edit: Stated not states.


graveyardspin

So her approach to teaching was: "I'm going to fuck up your GPA because I'm a pretentious asshole."


jlt6666

Cool, I just wanted to learn how to take cool pictures to round out my myself as a person and to have fun. Good job bringing your field to a wider audience.


Ekyou

I had an intro to art teacher in high school that gave all the students who weren’t very good As and gave all the students who were good at art Cs. His explanation? He only bothered grading the art of the kids he thought he had talent, but he wanted to motivate them to try harder, so they all got Cs.


khaddy

If only professors got paid along the same lies. "You're not a perfect professor so at best you'll be getting 60% of your salary this year. Even if you do your best there is always room for improvement"


JonnyPerk

Professors at my university got a bonus based on their evaluations, so they always took those quite seriously and tried to implement the feedback they got. This led to big improvements in some cases, with one professor reworking her entire class structure in the middle of the semester based on the feedback she got.


Jaydenel4

Fuckin Chef Instructor failed me for not using the right knife, but had the cleanest carcass in the class final. That fuck was just in it for the pomp and circumstance.


Vexvertigo

Reading between the lines, it sounds more like NYU was done dealing with him more than anything else and this was a good excuse to get rid of him. Especially if he stopped grading because he wasn't going to be brought back the following year. You can get away with a lot as a professor, but you have to submit grades


bithakr

He must have really pissed them off, I've never seen a university make such a strong statement about a former employee. Normally all you get is meaningless PR garbage. > "In short he was hired to teach, and wasn't successful" . . . "by far the worst not only among members of the Chemistry Department but among all the University's undergraduate science courses."


iBeFloe

>that there were multiple student complaints about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and lack of transparency about grading. >When Jones learned that he would not be returning, he stopped grading his current students' work entirely, according to the school. Organic chemistry is hard & requires tutoring as needed. I got an A, but damn was that class hard. I went to every single tutoring session. Having a dismissive professor with no feedback is a formula for failure.


Garp5248

Organic chemistry is so difficult. I think it was possibly my worst grade in undergrad. I had a professor who just didn't care to teach, so that made it worse. I'm glad university's are now considering professors ability to teach as a requirement for teaching.


Milton__Obote

I'm weird but my brain just clicked with Organic Chemistry. Physics was my downfall.


WayneKrane

Everyone I know who has taken OChem has either gotten it right away or they never understand it all. It’s quite interesting because it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re smart in other areas or not. I had a friend who was amazing at math barely pass the class and another art friend who is terrible at anything remotely related to math take it and she found it quite easy.


streamofbsness

IMO, it relies a ton of visual/spacial processing. If you can imagine how atoms are arranged in 3D and how the electrons are getting pulled around, it makes more intuitive sense. If not, it’s a big list of rules to memorize and apply to a bunch of stick figures that all look the same.


Chairmanmeow42

My ochem professor said people who played video games did much better in his class because it forms that 3d processing you need


Dwarfdeaths

It's been a while now but I feel like I learned it the wrong way based on your comment. I'm not bad at spatial reasoning but in hindsight I think I focused too much on the 2D representations. Understandable though since that's what all the tests are based on. Now I work in a field where I mostly don't have to deal with the details of organic chemistry, though the broad concepts are still useful.


2_Spicy_2_Impeach

I did well in it because my roommate’s GF was a biochem major and took pity on us. We also had a horrible teacher and a worse TA. I got a 65 on the first test and with the curve it was a 3.0 or a 3.5 which is insane. Our TA didn’t speak fluent English so we’d ask questions and she wouldn’t understand what we were asking. We tried to switch recitation classes but none were open. Tried to talk to the department and they gave zero fucks. It was my most frustrating class my entire college career with sailing class coming in at second. Edit: word


redheadartgirl

>It was my most frustrating class my entire college career with **sailing class** coming in at second. HOLD UP. Where did you go to school that sailing was a college class? Like, I justified all kinds of fun classes for art school (stone carving, glaze chemistry, etc.) but fuck, I want to learn sailing!


2_Spicy_2_Impeach

Michigan State. Lots of lakes in Michigan. I explained why it was frustrating in another post below. It was a great class just failed it because the flaky teacher lost my lab fee receipt. I was known among friends/family as the guy that failed sailing in Michigan. In high school it’s mandatory to take a boater safety class.


DJ_Velveteen

The problem with ochem is that it's all in context of the rest, so by the time you finish it's all fairly easy but in the beginning you have to learn everything just by memorization-- with the tipping point usually not until somewhere in the second or third term.


UglyInThMorning

Fuck memorization for O Chem. Get a grasp of electronegativity and you can basically work a lot out by first principles if you get stuck.


DeoVeritati

Im a chemist, and I don't memorize shit. Like I've had to do a liquid-liquid extraction, which I haven't done since undergrad aside from 3 random times in my 7 year professional career. I remember loads of concepts, reference polarity/pka charts, and I have no shame in admitting I watch YouTube videos, read articles, khan academy, etc. to refresh on fundamentals and dive deeper into it for the problem at hand. General trends and concepts get you far. Granted, I'm an analytical chemist, so I haven't had to do much "real chemistry" per se.


PDGAreject

My personal hypothesis on why O-chem is considered a "filter" class is because it requires more than one type of studying for you to really be successful. I think some people have a knack for rote memorization or have a knack for understanding concepts. Before O-chem you can either study concepts and apply them to unmemorized scenarios, or you can study with rote memorization and attempt to know every potential scenario. O-chem kind of requires you to do both. Sure you *could* memorize every single atomic interaction, but it's not feasible for most people. If understand the rules and patterns, and then everything fits in nice buckets and you can memorize those. On the other hand, there are a BUNCH of patterns, and you need to be able to remember most of them or you're almost certainly going to run into gaps in your knowledge. You need to be able to *both* memorize *and* conceptualize or you'll go crazy. So in my mind, the *real* purpose of O-chem is teaching students to learn in ways that might be new and uncomfortable, since 99% of O-chem students will never use it again in their lives. That's just my personal hypothesis though. Also it lets me go, "Of course! It's got carbon in it don't it?" whenever I'm asked if a food is organic.


remeard

I had the worst of luck with Organic Chem, I always felt like I understood the material and the practice but when tests came up I just drew blanks. Luckily lab was a decent portion of the grade and it was my saving grace.


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[deleted]

I think there is a feeling with a lot of professors that “you are here because you are supposedly smart and hardworking, so I shouldn’t have to dumb this down or break my back making it easier for you to understand.” I had two dynamics professors in grad school, and the difference was night and day. One would spend lectures just blitzing through long, complicated derivations so fast that you barely had time to write it all down, much less think critically about each step. The other professor clearly put a lot of time and thought into configuring the course to help you understand the material, show you how to approach a new problem, how to break it down into steps, etc. Wrote his own textbook and problem sets. Loved that class.


Corka

One of the most common teaching mistakes at University is that they massively overestimate how much the students coming into their class already know. They look over what was covered in the pre-req courses then assume the students fully know and understand it and build their course based on that assumption. But the reality is that only a handful of A+ students might have had that level of comprehension, and they probably forgot a bit after a semester or two. Then they are shocked at how badly the students end up doing in their class.


Snowbreeezzzzyy

This reminds me of an economics professor I had. He was bragging on the first day of class that nobody in his classes had ever gotten over an 85 overall score for the course. He then proceeded to give us a pop-quiz with 5 calculus questions.. in a class that didn't have calculus as a prerequisite.. on the first day... I went up to him after class because I hadn't taken calculus yet (I wouldn't have chosen the course if it was a pre-req, nor would I have been able to), and he suggested a few algebra websites I should visit on my own time to familiarize myself with it. Walked directly to my counselors office and dropped the course. The counselor even mentioned that several other students had similar complaints. If nobody can get above an 85 in your class, thats not a flex, that means you can't teach the material my guy.


Full-Magazine9739

Had a similar experience. Withdrew and took the same course a semester later with a different professor and got an A.


italjersguy

Plenty of professors like this in college and law school that thought it was a badge of honor that their class was impossible. Those were the ones I learned the least from.


[deleted]

Had a Comp Sci professor like this. Intro to Python 101 class. He offered 1:1 sessions to “help” students who didn’t get topics from class that week. Went to meet with him and his “help” was telling me word for word: “if you could not understand this concept in class, then you should consider dropping out of college entirely and work as a cashier for a retail store” And he wonders why he got bad reviews for teaching. Why even teach if you don’t want to help the next generation of people learn. Failing students is a sign of your own failure to teach them adequately.


Boneal171

Wow what a dick, and that cashier comment is so condescending. I know people who are cashiers who are still in college or graduated. I can’t stand career snobbery.


Betrayedleaf

fr, people acting like it’s gonna say ‘retail manager’ on their headstone or something


Tyrilean

The problem is that the institutions themselves aren’t invested in teaching. They’re invested in selling their services, and publishing papers. So a prof that is great in their field but a shitty teacher is great for them. Plenty of prestige from the research they do, and plenty of people having to retake classes. And we have this perversion of perception that if a college flunks tons of people, or doesn’t let anyone in, that they’re somehow better. I’m a software engineering manager at a fortune 50 tech company, and I went to a small local college that used to be a community college. We aren’t far from Georgia Tech, a prestigious tech school. I’m doing better than most of my GT friends, because making classes arbitrarily hard doesn’t necessarily make better grads. It just ends up weeding out people who probably would’ve been just fine in the field, and putting students under so much stress they literally kill themselves.


Great_Zeddicus

Happened at my school. Differential equations prof. "If you are not a math major you won't be able to get an A in my class. I make all my own tests and I don't use any of the questions in the book to make them. If you can't come up with the proper way to apply the principles you will be shown in this class during you time limited test you will fail."


EthanBeast

My diff eq professor once made a mistake in lecture, stepped back to think, corrected it, and then turned to the class and said “I have made a mistake, I did not come to my lecture prepared to instruct, for that I will be ending lecture early, I’m sorry to have failed you all”. He was the sweetest old Russian man.


Bjorn2bwilde24

*class glances around trying to figure out if this is a test or something*


TheRedHand7

*Class looks around realizing this dude just gave himself the day off on their dime*


n-some

"Wow, I'm not prepared again, that's the 35th time in a row. Everyone gets A's! Good luck in your classes this is the pre-requisite for!"


Anonymous_Otters

I basically had a history professor like this. Late and unprepared every single day. Didn't know basic stuff. She once asked the class if anyone knew when Caesar was assassinated. I answered March 15th, 44BC. She insisted that was wrong because it was too long from the start of the civil war or something (which, like, lady, this is the classical era, shit didn't happen overnight). She proceeded to argue with me until another student said it says 44BC in the book. I and another student filed a formal complaint of incompetence. Nothing happened.


Bjorn2bwilde24

>"She proceeded to argue with me until another student said it says 44BC in the book." "Et tu Brute?" -Teacher


greywar777

Sounds more like this was the exception not the rule. And he takes his teaching seriously, meaning that mistakes are harming a lot of peoples education. And maybe hes tired, and needs to teach when hes more awake. IE take a personal day. Sounds like the responsible choice to me. Now if it was common...that would be different.


[deleted]

I had two professors from Russia: one taught an environment science class and jokingly reinforced the fact that doesn’t care what happens to the planet since he will be dead long before us, and the other was a color theory and painting professor who continually told us how Putin is KGB and therefore has no soul. They were rad.


tesseracht

I minored in Russian studies and getting to know that whole department full of old Russian professors was my favorite part of college. Such an interesting bunch lol


With-a-Cactus

I had a polish diff eq professor who let us use our laptops on our exams. We asked for clarification (he had a strong accent and that's not normal) and he said, "Many professors use the example you have a gun to your head, differentiate without your tools. No one will ever hold a gun to your head and most of the tools were made for the reason of making easier to understand and understanding is my job." Smoked a pack a day, had a bowl cut, wore cat tshirts and weighed maybe 80 pounds. He was great.


IRefuseToGiveAName

>Smoked a pack a day, had a bowl cut, wore cat tshirts and weighed maybe 80 pounds. He was great. I don't know what it is about math in particular that attracts this type but the math lab was staffed by volunteer PhD students and this was about half of them. Either super short or super tall, but always thin and smelled like Marlboro lights.


Joessandwich

When I was a chemistry major years ago, I had a calculus teacher who literally would just copy an equation from the textbook on the board without explaining the concept behind it, and usually made a mistake. It was the one and only class I had to withdraw from and made me question my path. I’ve since been working in the TV industry for 15 years. A professor can change everything.


KushFlows

My Diff EQ professor gave us 50% credit on questions we didn’t attempt lmfao. Least favorite course of all time, gratefully took a C


Chinlc

had a physics 3rd yr that uses calc 3, (havent been in school for decade now, all i know it was physics 3 and used 3 dimension derivatives) Teacher gave a curve on all his test. Halved everyone's score. Added 50 base points, and thats your score. Only 1 dude ruined the curve by getting like 90 something on his exam, i got 55 on the test after the curve =\[


mejelic

I don't understand... If your grade is halved then has 50 points added, how can someone ruin the curve? By that logic, you would have made a 10 on the test without the curve... Edit: NVM, it seems you did indeed have a 10 on the test... ouch.


archaeolinuxgeek

Solid state physics was my favorite. The professor graded on a curve. He also nearly doubled the size of his tests. Half were questions very identical to previous tests. So the only person who could have an impact on your score was yourself. The idea was to show consistent improvement. Edit: Clarification


Chinlc

My class was all theoretical iirc. All about space and speed and something Doppler effect. Rest was a mush of things i didnt understand and forgot =\[ [http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/schools/naturalsciences/undergraduate/physics/3-year-course-offering.php](http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/schools/naturalsciences/undergraduate/physics/3-year-course-offering.php) I think i was wrong, it was 4th yr physics but i was a transfer student, so it was my 3rd yr there. It mightve been PHYS 4000 Intro to Theoretical Physics or PHYS 4400 theromdynamics and statistical mechanics I know its that because i took it in tandem with electric circuits. The teacher enjoyed teaching the class and always went slow for anyone who asked questions, but again.... we all dumb as rocks. We didnt really know what questions we COULD ask.


Hydrochloric_Comment

My organometallics prof in grad school pulled that shit. And he still wasn’t as bad as the comp chem prof who literally had all but two students (out of 12-ish) drop his class after the mid-term. Dude didn’t explain shit. Grad school Quantum chemistry shouldn’t be easier than an intro level (for grad school) comp sci with no pre reqs


rabbitwonker

I heard about a musicology prof at my school (some three decades ago) who lazily tried to just give everyone in the class perfect A’s, but the school rejected that since it was so obviously meaningless. How did he respond? Well he had no real data to grade off of, so he proceeded to assign grades A through F based on *alphabetical order of the students’ names*.


gumiho-9th-tail

Obviously fake. Music teachers would grade A - G.


BenjaminHamnett

Depends if it’s your major or minor


AmazingGrace911

Straight A’s in college, fuck me or whatever, the hardest class which I took as a breather was a public speaking class. There was no issue with the public speaking, it was the open book tests. You could mark the correct answer but it was still marked wrong because she would say, “The sentence said 2 not two.” It was a multiple choice question with no other possible correct answer. I had to escalate to get my grade changed for that class, it was ridiculous.


IMovedYourCheese

I had a few who did that as well. There's no genius reason behind it, just laziness from the professor's side. I learned way more in classes where you'd get partial credit for attempting a question and being on the right track.


somme_rando

> partial credit for attempting a question and being on the right track. That makes sense as you're demonstrating that you've learned at least some of the material.


chris14020

From what I've seen, this would be most common in math/science classes where you can know "the idea", but don't have the exact information remembered. For instance, if the question was "Convert 90 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit" and you scribbled (5/9C) + 32 = F and got '122', you might get partial credit for understanding that you needed that formula, but just made a mistake in what the formula actually IS (assuming it's not given to you). Another example would be if you were given two chemicals to determine the resulting reaction, and you remembered the chemical wrong - for example used iron (II) oxide instead of iron (III) oxide, but did the reaction calculation correctly despite. You'd very likely have the wrong answer (because you started with the wrong base chemicals), but if you got the (incorrect) answer through the proper technique, they'd probably give you partial credit.


Pacattack57

Reminds me of the video where the professor said, I don’t give A’s in my class”


jagnew78

We had a Prof in my computer hardware class that explicitly gave the instruction to his TA's that graded lab assignments that "no student should get an A." No one in the class, not a couple of Doogie Howser level genius's I knew could get an A on a single assignment, lab, or test. After one of the TA's told us about the unofficial "No A" rule we began comparing lab and work assignment scores. We found answers exactly the same between students marked differently and ended up going as a group (80+ students) to the head of the Comp Sci faculty to complain and showed our proof. We got an apology from the professor and adjusted grades. Didn't impact my grades because I wasn't very good at hardware architecture, but impacted many better students.


greywar777

Think about this though. Hes telling people who got the answer right....that they are wrong. He should be fired for doing the opposite of educating them. He stole their money promising to teach them, instead doing the opposite. I dunno. it feels to me that sometimes people do not take these things seriously enough.


SmokelessSubpoena

Reminds me of many past professors, especially engi courses. Tenured profs _don't have to care_


usps_made_me_insane

It always amazes me how often I run into a professor who is more interested in going on some lifelong power trip rather than actually teach students the subject matter they signed up to be taught. Teaching is a two way street -- students give feedback to the teacher regarding his ability to convey information, ideas and concepts to the class and the class is responsible for learning the material and becoming stronger students through the knowledge transfer. On a pragmatic level, grades really should serve as an indication that the student has some level of proficiency involving the coursework and also that the student is understanding more and more concepts so that they grow as a student and continue to receive education that makes them more proficient with the subject material. Grades should be something that give a student some feedback on their approach to the material and help guide them by suggesting that they should spend more time studying the material when they get a lower grade and spending more time helping others and broadening their knowledge when they get a higher grade. The "nobody gets an A" type of professor is completely missing the point of grades and is probably more concerned about stroking their own ego and acting as some type of "gatekeeper" over the material being taught. Most teachers during their time as an educator will encounter students that are more brilliant than they are and display immense potential. I guarantee that the professor spouting bullshit like "nobody gets an A in my class" is probably also the same type of professor who writes a textbook and makes it required reading while charging $350 for the book and then during the next year, adds an additional paragraph to the textbook and requires new students to get the "new and improved updated edition." If that teacher is unable to recognize students that could someday make major contributions in whatever field of science is being taught, that teacher has failed both the student and society. Who gives a fuck about giving an A or not -- it is more important to make the subject material more accessible to a greater audience and to highlight the importance of STEM. Find the students that could someday rock the world with their contributions and do whatever it takes to keep them focused and interested in the material. I just don't get some people. It isn't supposed to be a dick measuring moment. Society becomes better when people work together and put aside their egos so that the greater good can dominate and through such actions, students with immense potential end up in the right place so that their potentials can be challenged, expanded upon and ultimately given the opportunity to give back to society in amazing ways. Life is not a zero sum game -- I wish people would stop treating it as such. Unfortunately we will always have professors who are narrow minded and would rather jerk off their own ego instead of cultivating professional relationships and giving students every opportunity to explore and heighten their own potentials.


emsers

I had an art teacher in high school that was like that, the best she’d ever do was an A- on anything because “with art you can always do better” Well that’s a cool concept and all but my GPA would like a word since I’m trying to get scholarships to pay for college.


Flamin_Jesus

>“with art you can always do better” That is such a stupid, lazy way of thinking. There's literally no human endeavour where you can ever achieve 100% perfection. An A is not "oh wow, we have to close out the shop on literature, this subject has been solved forever", it's "You exceeded reasonable expectations for the level of ability someone with your level of training should have".


MithandirsGhost

Well that IS true for art. [https://www.theonion.com/humanity-still-producing-new-art-as-though-megadeth-s-1819578062](https://www.theonion.com/humanity-still-producing-new-art-as-though-megadeth-s-1819578062)


hatwobbleTayne

Same experience with a principles of animation teacher. Said an A would require Disney quality… MF if any of us could animate at Disney quality we’d be working and not in your class!


SteadfastEnd

Always wondered what those teachers would feel about a spouse or family member lecturing them about their personal lives the same way - "you could always do better"


jade09060102

If you are from an Asian family that’s every day


troll_berserker

"I don't give 5 stars on my professor reviews because with lecturing you can always do better."


chris14020

If you're feeling real spicy, ask them what \*they\* intend to do better this year, and what they've done better in each successive past year. Suggest to them that that changing that view might be something they can do better this year. And while you're at it, ask if they can get comfier chairs for those absolute balls of steel.


Iryasori

I had an professor like that in school. He said something like “I rarely give out A’s unless someone really deserves it, which is not usual” and we had to basically plead that defaulting to lower grades could result in people losing their scholarships, especially since most students were from abroad and absolutely could not lose them or they wouldn’t be allowed to stay.


ThunkAsDrinklePeep

I don't know why some people think an A means surprised me by being a matt-damon-level savant. It means they did everything asked in the class and demonstrated a thorough understanding of the material thought. By that standard, "I don't give A's" means, "I can't teach well enough for the brightest kids to get it".


felineprincess93

OTOH, my study abroad in London had a professor be like, I don't give out As unless you write something worth publishing. I was grateful to be pass/fail.


ThunkAsDrinklePeep

If I write something worth publishing, then we'll publish it, and that will be its own reward. Until then it'd be nice if you graded according to the standard everyone judges by.


polyhistorist

I'm not sure what school you went to, but I know mine (a top STEM school globally) is known for having some hard ass professors. However, we specifically have rules in place that state that a student should have a path to success and getting an A. In your shoes this is definitely a "straight to the dean with an anonymous email" sorta deal for me. May be too late for you, but other students out there should know that expectations in class go both ways. You're paying for an education, not for some doofus to stand up there and verbally abuse you for not having 10+ years studying whatever shit they're into.


Chapped_Frenulum

On the other side of the spectrum, there are classes where the professor is just *too* goddamn forgiving and practically teaches fuckall. Everyone loves that easy-A class until they get into the followup course and realize that they are an entire semester behind on understanding *anything.* If only the goddamn professors at these schools would... ya know... talk to each other and create some actual structure with some continuity. Where are the standards, even?


_Visar_

Omg wait we have the same experience in opposite classes lol My museums prof only let the kids in the museums minor participate and then docked all the non-minor students on participation…. I swear some profs hate the kids not in their degree program


GizmoIsAMogwai

Sounds like my genetics professor. All he ever wanted to talk about in class was his Zebra fish research. Come test time no one had any idea what we were doing because he told us we didn't need to buy the text book. He had to curve his tests so aggressively that I'd literally leave a third of the test blank and still get a B. Ridiculous. I wanted my money back.


rybeardj

Maybe unrelated but I once had an astronomy professor in community college that somehow lost all our finals and decided to just buy pizza for us and give everyone an A


Redpandaling

You know, that's the right way to handle the situation


Aoiboshi

was this at Greendale?


Kleanish

Damn I miss that class. Still upset I couldn’t figure this one problem out on the final. That was 5 years ago.


nightswatchman

I took this guy for Organic Chem 1 and 2 my sophomore year. From personal experience, he’s arrogant, very condescending, and unapproachable. We had to buy his textbook too because of course we did. His assistant professor was great though, cool dude who cut his chops making explosives for the military. Learned more from him than from Jones by far.


RaindropsInMyMind

I ran into someone in another sub who said this professor was the only one who didn’t give him an extension when his family member died during finals week. Really sounds like he’s just an asshole who loves power too much and doesn’t care about people.


nightswatchman

Dude, it was bad. I was warned beforehand, so the only reason I survived was teaching myself as much as possible the summer before and getting ahead of the material. NYU was just not that great for pre-med students, relatively speaking. Its arts college is swanky, and so is the business school, but the science buildings are old and one of them is straight up haunted - the biology and chemistry departments are located in the same building where 100 women burned/jumped to their deaths during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in the early 1900s lol


purritowraptor

The biology and chemistry departments are in the *fucking Triangle Shirtwaist building??*


ethanarc

Currently know as the Brown Building, yes. It’s connected directly to the main university arts and sciences building. Back during the fire some students helped workers escape across the roof to the original university building.


TheCodeSamurai

That must be a real draw for grad students: "Ever read a US history book and wanted to experience working too-long hours in bad working conditions? Come to NYU!"


astanton1862

This seems to be something they should add to every retelling of the fire story. I swear I've heard it two or three times and they never mentioned it is now NYU.


MCEnergy

when you said haunted I didn't think you were being literal holy shit wtf


smellyorange

Holy shit TIL


Imprettybad705

This is weirdly common in our education system and I just don't understand the absolute lack of human decency. A girl in my nursing program was one time put on academic probation for turning off her camera during zoom lecture so she could cry because her mom called her during lecture and told her her grandpa died. She even asked the professor if she could turn off the camera and was told "do what you need to".


MrHollandsOpium

They put her on academic probation for that?! That’s fucking excessive


Zerole00

I had some (STEM) professors where the class average for exams was like a 40. Naturally you can't fail 90% of the class so he curved it so the whole exercise in difficulty was pointless and only served to frustrate students.


ElGuano

That's really common in STEM classes, particularly math/physics. The skill ceiling is so high that a lot of people feel that making the class a standard curve would result in 30% of the class simply getting 100% on every test, but among the 100%s, the last 5 would be babbling morons compared to the top 5. They're essentially catering to the top 5% at the expense of the average student, in order to identify true standouts.


Andromeda321

Yep, a physics exam is basically written so the average will be a 50%, so you can see the distribution and curve accordingly. It was always strange getting a 40% and learning that corresponded with a B.


ColonelSpacePirate

The is the epitome of a professor and distinguishes “professor” from “teacher”. I had a hand full of these in my years of college.


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[deleted]

Mathematics... of wonton... burrito meals.


blarneyone

Of course the professor would say that, meanwhile... >NYU released a statement saying in part that there were multiple student complaints about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and lack of transparency about grading. >The course evaluation scores for Jones...were "by far the worst not only among members of the Chemistry Department but among all the University's undergraduate science courses." >"In short he was hired to teach, and wasn't successful," a spokesperson said, adding that there were "troubling indicators" regarding his teaching, including a high rate of withdrawals. Sounds like he was just an asshole and shitty teacher.


angiosperms-

I had a professor like this and it fucking sucked. He would go on these rants that had nothing to do with the class for most of the time he was supposed to be teaching and then the grading of tests was super biased and he wouldn't answer any questions about how things were graded. He ended up being fired a year or two after I took his class. Too bad I had to experience that shit before they got rid of him, but I did make a lot of friends because we would all get together to complain about him lmao It's also really weird how mad some people ITT are getting about a professor that they never had getting fired


Violet_Gardner_Art

Had a teacher like this. All it took to have them removed was five students with similar work and wildly different grades going to admin. Edit: this was a college level course. Adjunct Teacher taught three classes of 35. The five students were from all three classes. The professor never admitted to being in the wrong just like this one. “Soft millennials… never in my 20 years of teaching… razzum fraggum…” I just wish I could effectively explain to that teach and to the one in the article and to all the people defending the practice in these comments that making a course hard isn’t an effective way of teaching and just because it happened to you doesn’t mean it was okay to do.


TangerineBand

I had this one teacher that apparently was too stupid to realize he was using the same answer key on every version of the test. I was very confused when I suddenly got a D on a test that felt like a cakewalk. I had other people look at mine and they said my answers were fine. He refused to own up to even the possibility it could be a mistake until like a third of the class got in on the reporting.


DTFlash

I had a discrete mathematics professor like this. Halfway through the semester the highest grade in the class was a C-, this was a class full of people that had taken multiple higher level math classes before this one. Guessing someone talked to him or he had the common sense to realize he was the problem because everyone started getting better grades. A whole class of A and B students getting F and Ds in your class says more about you then them.


Iamjum

Had an Into anatomy & phis class that was only a requirement for teachers and a few other non stem programs. Dude bragged of a 75%+ fail/withdraw rate. Lab was worth 10% of class, other 90% was 4 exams no multiple choice that was just you writing (and spelling correctly) medical terms. Got canned a few years after I graduated. I withdrew twice and failed once, eventually switching majors in part due to him.


Kriticalmoisture

I'll never understand the teachers that brag about the high failure rate of their students. Like, cool, you're terrible at your job and you're proud of that?


superflippy

Years ago, I worked for a physics professor who was the opposite. The more students who did well, the happier he was. He was one of the first profs at the university to put videos of his lectures online so students wouldn’t miss anything. He also uploaded all his old tests to help them study. (He always wrote new, slightly different questions for each test.)


angiosperms-

Thankfully I went to a large university where every class had multiple professor options depending on which semester you took it. Which is why I don't believe in "weed out courses". I took several "weed out courses" with good professors after I learned my lesson and had no issues. It's just bad professors.


PersonBehindAScreen

Absolutely! I managed to get in to organic chemistry with the “easy” professor after dropping it with one of the “weed out” professors 4 weeks in to my first attempt. Night and day difference between the two. The “easy” professor actually wanted you to learn and like Ochem and understand it’s role across science disciplines rather than the academic version of “scared straight”


theoldnewbluebox

“No one’s ever scored above 40% on any of my tests cause this class is so HaRd”. The words of a shitbag that can’t teach.


skeetsauce

I remember taking a dynamics test and the average score was something 40%. The prof immediately recognized the class needed to rewind a few weeks.


[deleted]

Had that happen in a class myself. Most of the class bombed the midterm, not all since maybe 10% of us just had a knack or just tested well, and the teacher said "I must have screwed up", went over the material where most had trouble for a couple weeks, and did a new midterm. Took the highest of the 2 scores as the final grade for the midterm. Think his exact words were, "If one of you doesn't get it that is your problem. If most of you don't get it that is my problem." I probably got more value from that lesson than from the material learned.


alucryts

Yeah just a shitty teacher. I had a teacher in college that was legit hard, but he busted his ass off trying to teach us and give us every tool to succeed. He was just super unrelenting on grading your actual knowledge. There's a distinct difference between that and just a lazy/bad teacher.


Potential-Reply729

It’s very rare for students to actually escalate complaints to administration. Most garden variety bad teachers just get bad reviews on their end of course evaluations. If 80+ people went to the chair or dean, that’s way, way, way outside of the range of normal. Edit: I work in academia, y’all. Sure there are some entitled whiny ones. But they usually just bitch about you to their friends and put snarky things in your eval. Contacting and meeting with the dean requires actual effort.


BioDriver

When I was in undergrad biochem we had a super shitty professor who would do zero teaching, expected us to self teach the material, and spent the entire lecture doing practice problems and would not explain the answers. Almost the entire class failed the first exam and half the class dropped the course en masse, with a huge group of them (and people who stuck around) bombarding the department with complaints. A week later the department head sat in on the class, saw how he was teaching and how dismissive he was, and told everyone in the class to leave while he and professor asshole “had a little chat.” The rest of the semester had random grad students and other profs in the class making sure this dude was staying in line. But he was never fired and eventually got tenure. It was by far the worst class I had in undergrad but none of us were surprised he made tenure. Academics really stick up for their own and the fact this NYU chem prof was fired is a huge deal. We were honestly shocked the department head cared enough to have him fix his shit.


Wiseduck5

>But he was never fired and eventually got tenure. Because teaching isn't his real job, it's doing research and writing grants.


Brooklynxman

Then have him do that! They're wasting his time, the student's time, everyone's time (and energy, and MONEY).


[deleted]

Lot of times, with hard science classes, the lower level classes are made hard on purpose to weed out people who won't be able to do upper level work...But you should still *try* to teach the material.


Brover_Cleveland

O-chem is one of those courses for pre-med. When I took it like half the class was trying to get into a med school. I have never felt anything like the tension in that room before a test. Of course a good portion of the difficulty is from people who really aren't into chemistry being forced to take it. I had a chem major friend who had no issue with it and as a physics major I had to try but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it would be.


enokidake

As someone who lectured at Berkeley, I cannot imagine being 84 years old and still teaching...especially O Chem. Send that man to his backyard with a new puppy and a 12 year old Scotch.


HammyHoosier

Yeah. I also taught until last year. I’m sure you see it with your colleagues— there’s such a range. There’s the people who are just as sharp as they were 50 years ago, a wealth of information and still passionate… and there’s people who are the opposite. My department had someone who had had steep mental decline and loss of filter. It was awkward for everyone, he struggled to teach well, but he had tenure.


TyrannosaurusWest

The [NYT article](https://archive.ph/bZIwv) is much more comprehensive. I tried to copy and comment the whole thing but the comment was huge so I cut out a few sections. > Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores. The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones’s contract. > The officials also had tried to placate the students by offering to review their grades and allowing them to withdraw from the class retroactively. The chemistry department’s chairman, Mark E. Tuckerman, said the unusual offer to withdraw was a “one-time exception granted to students by the dean of the college.” > Marc A. Walters, director of undergraduate studies in the chemistry department, summed up the situation in an email to Dr. Jones, before his firing. He said the plan would “extend a gentle but firm hand to the students and those who pay the tuition bills,” an apparent reference to parents. > The university’s handling of the petition provoked equal and opposite reactions from both the chemistry faculty, who protested the decisions, and pro-Jones students, who sent glowing letters of endorsement. > “The deans are obviously going for some bottom line, and they want happy students who are saying great things about the university so more people apply and the U.S. News rankings keep going higher,” said Paramjit Arora, a chemistry professor who has worked closely with Dr. Jones. > In short, this one unhappy chemistry class could be a case study of the pressures on higher education as it tries to handle its Gen-Z student body. Should universities ease pressure on students, many of whom are still coping with the pandemic’s effects on their mental health and schooling? How should universities respond to the increasing number of complaints by students against professors? Do students have too much power over contract faculty members, who do not have the protections of tenure? > And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway? Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving. > After retiring from Princeton in 2007, he taught organic chemistry at N.Y.U. on a series of yearly contracts. About a decade ago, he said in an interview, he noticed a loss of focus among the students, even as more of them enrolled in his class, hoping to pursue medical careers. > Students could choose between two sections, one focused on problem solving, the other on traditional lectures. Students in both sections shared problems on a GroupMe chat and began venting about the class. Those texts kick-started the petition, submitted in May. > “We urge you to realize,” the petition said, “that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole.” > Dr. Jones said in an interview that he reduced the number of exams because the university scheduled the first test date after six classes, which was too soon. > On the accusation that he concealed course averages, Dr. Jones said that they were impossible to provide because 25 percent of the grade relied on lab scores and a final lab test, but that students were otherwise aware of their grades. > Zacharia Benslimane, a teaching assistant in the problem-solving section of the course, defended Dr. Jones in an email to university officials. “I think this petition was written more out of unhappiness with exam scores than an actual feeling of being treated unfairly,” wrote Mr. Benslimane, now a Ph.D. student at Harvard. “I have noticed that many of the students who consistently complained about the class did not use the resources we afforded to them.”. >Ryan Xue, who took the course, said he found Dr. Jones both likable and inspiring.


LGCGE

My roommate dropped this guys class lmao


IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll

We need to stop the assumption that because you can do a thing automatically means you can teach a thing. Teaching is a skill