Professor/Teacher Horror Stories

[SpunGirl]

Edaarin's thread reminded me of some bad experiences I had, but I though it'd be slightly off-topic to post them in all in that thread.

I had a professor for Sociology of Gender that was terrible. She was a super-duper feminist, and worked to push that idea into the head of every person in her class. If you didn't agree with her ideas and theories you were automatically wrong. My first paper received a "D" with only one word writted on the top - "naive." Just because I didn't think everyone who wore a penis full-time was out to get me, I deserved a D.

For the rest of the semester I turned out absolute garbage that was all about the plight of women, and I managed an A in the class. Didn't feel so great, though.

There was another Soc professor who taught Soc of Sexuality. He was horrific. I'm not a prude by any standard, but this guy was pure sleaze. He gave a poster to a friend of mine that had five pictures of flaccid penii and five pictures of erect penii, and the idea was to match the penii. Kind of funny, but hardly appropriate for a 40-something teacher to give to a 19 year old student.

If anyone ever objected to anything he said/did in his class (he was really lewd), he would tell them they were just being too closed-minded, that they needed to expand their sexual horizons and quit being so uptight.

Last I heard, he had been asked to leave.

So post yours!

-K

[Edited on 4-6-2005 by SpunGirl]

[Hulkein]

Freshman year I had to take Public Speaking... my professor was a pretty big bitch to begin with, but that's expected from time to time.

What still has me pissed off is she graded the class by improvement in public speaking, not overall skill.

I've always been comfortable speaking in front of a class so my first one was good and I didn't really improve... I got a C in the class while some stoner who did less work than me got an A all because he had a panic attack, said fuck this, and walked out shaking during the first speech like a week into class.

Not really a horror story, but it's still the worst grade I've gotten in college, and it was such a stupid meaningless class.

[Edited on 4-6-2005 by Hulkein]

[Jahira]

I had a lab instructor last year. We had to write a 20 page report on a project we had done. The report was guided by some questsions. I made sure to answer those questsions in my report.

This report was worth something like 75% of our grade. She called me into her office one day and accused me of plagarazing because someone had about the same information as me and it was too crazy to be coincidence. She told me she was going to have to talk to the head of the department to see if she was going to give both of us a zero.

About a day later I get a e-mail saying that after showing the work to the head of the department, the reason they were similair is because we both answered one of those questions given to us. The stupid instructor didn't even read those and just the reports. Scared the shit out me though. I didn't even get an apology.

[The Cat In The Hat]

My instructor last semester claimed she didn't recieve any of my homework since the end of January... Making my grade a 53/F even though i scored nothing under 80's (mostly 90's and 100's) on quizzes and got 184/200 on the final.

Luckilly, I was able to resubmit it since it all had file creation dates on them which coinsided with the due dates and got my A for the semester.

Talk about a scare...

[Edited on 4-6-2005 by The Cat In The Hat]

[Vixen]

My english lit professor freshman year was going through a really nasty divorce at the time. Half the time she didn't show up for class even. We'd walk in to a note on the board that had some kind of assignment and underneath would say. Oh yes, and men are scum: Discuss.. and other various male bashing comments.
She left on psych leave soon after.

Not really a bad experience for me really, just something amusing to me that I remember

I re-enlisted at ft lewis about 2.5 years ago for 6 months of school. Which basicly meant my job in the Army was going to community college. It was the first time I had taken any college classes and about the first time I had taken school seriously in about 9 years. Anyway, I picked intro to philosophy as one of my first classes because I loved the subject. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have taken that class at Tacoma Community College but oh well.

The teacher was a total flake. It came up in the middle of the year that he had had a stroke the year before and as a result his memory was a little "fuzzy" shall we say. He'd come in and dump like 90 pages of assorted reading on us, which wasn't so bad for me because I had already read the entire works of most of the excerpts. The thing is, he'd pass those out and then talk about some inane aspect of his life or what he say on TV, and then walk into class 2 weeks later and go..Okay you guys ready for the test? ..... Well no one knew we had a test, and of course the response was "Wtf are you talking about?" Oh? I didn' tell you about the test? Oh..well..my bad here it goes.

Anyway, I was the *only* person in that class who ever passed a test, with all B's and an A mind you. I mean seriously *everyone* I talked to failed every single last exam, but people still showed up because they knew he had to grade on some sort of curve. Well, the class ends and grades come up and somehow I manage to get a D despite my lowest grade ever being a B- . So of course I go talk to him about it and his response is "Uh...who are you again?"

....

"I'm the guy in your intro to phil class?"

"Oh..yea..whats up?"

"Well yea, you gave me a D and I have all the quizzes and tests here and as you can see I didnt' even get below a B so I'm wondering how that worked out"

"Oh. I musta confused you with somebody else. I'll change your grade right away"

So about two weeks go by and nothing changes. Obviously, Im kinda going WTF and I'm contemplating going to the dean or whoever and I talk to him again.. and of course his initial response is "Uh..who are you again?" So, I go through the entire thing again and eventually he changes my grade to somethign like a C+ or B- and I just said fuck it and moved on. I was just so frustrated of fucking with it. I've managed to get my GPA back up to a 3.5 in the time since then but I was kinda screwed on GPA for a while.

Oh, and about those tests. They weren't general "pop quiz" sort of questions but rather take home final with 2 weeks to prepare type test.

"What did so and so say in [a small diversionary section] of his work and how does that contrast with the character used to illustrate another point in another obscure paragraph of somebody completely different"

[SpunGirl]

I had a funny experience with a teacher my freshman year of HS who was very loudmouthed about being a "constantly recovering" alcoholic. There had to be something else besides that wrong with her, because she was a total wacko. We used to do things like pass a note around that said, "coordinated pencil drop, 10:15 and 20 seconds," and everyone would drop a pen/pencil on their desks at that time. She'd jump about a mile.

Same with coordinated book drops or people randomly humming the "jeapordy" theme JUST loud enough for her to hear. OK, so maybe WE drove her crazy, but there was something weird about her to begin with.

-K

[Artha]

I didn't do 1 English assignment this 9 weeks. It was a 10 page paper on American Romanticism and how it influenced something modern, with a powerpoint. I have gotten 100s or above on every test, and a 90 on a quiz. I have a 70 in that god damn class.

edit: Everyone else that did it did 3-4 page papers that were a week late and crappy powerpoints. I just hope my dignity is worth those 30 points.

[Edited on 4-6-2005 by Artha]

[Edaarin]

High school doesn't matter for shit.

EDIT: If given the chance, I would go back, go to a public high school, and then do just enough to get by and get into my state university.

[Edited on 4-6-2005 by Edaarin]

[Alarke]

Sophomore year I had a Management Information Systems teacher that was by FAR the worst teacher I've ever come across in my life.

The first day of class, he was trying to show us information on DOS. Anyone that has used new windows knows there is no true DOS set up like there used to be, and you need to run cmd.

Anyway, he couldnt figure it out (a freaking MIS teacher!) and said that the reason was because he hadnt read the instruction manuel yet.... uhhhh, okay.

Every day he'd tell us about how he knew everyone at Procter and Gamble and how he could get us all jobs there if we did well in his class and all this shit, and he never did anything for anyone. By far the worst, most incompetant teacher ive ever come across.

[Warriorbird]

"EDIT: If given the chance, I would go back, go to a public high school, and then do just enough to get by and get into my state university."

Pff, spoiled. I'd have given a fair amount to attend a NOVA high school and not have to deal with all the idiots. Though it is a damn good state university.

As for me? I've had a few hideous professors.

I think the worst was an English professor who told me that "William Faulkner was not a part of 20th century American literature." I'm sorry, you whore, but just because he wasn't born in New York doesn't render him not a part of the 20th century. I was livid when she gave me a C- on that count alone. I did my best, several years later, to try to keep her from getting tenure.

[Jazuela]

College: Freshman English.
Teacher: A history teacher filling in for someone who had to bow out that year.
Assignment: Some creative writing assignment.
Grade: D
Reason: She didn't like the topic I picked.

Action: I went through her red-marks, brought the paper to the Dean, showed him the paper, explained the assignment and my opinion on the matter. With his blessings, I then CORRECTED her red-marks since she couldn't spell or punctuate worth a damn, then opted out of the class and went straight to Advanced Creative Writing (a Junior-level class).

Post-Grad: Intro to Computer Programming, C++ at the local community college
Teacher: Some head of math at the college
Assignment: The entire course
Grade: Oddly enough, A-
Situation: We didn't even have computers to work on in the class. It was a regular classroom and he projected the compiler and editor onto the blackboard and show us what to do. We were expected to take copious notes and do the work at home, or in Lab, which he never showed up for the entire semester.

Assessment of the course: I would've done much better if I didn't have to attend his lectures at all. I didn't understand a word he said, and had to visit a certain website forum for geeks to get any explanations I needed.

I don't know how I managed to even pass the course, let alone get an A-. I somehow did the assignments correctly, but didn't have any idea of what the hell I was doing.

[Skeeter]

I took a class in German History. The entire grade was based on one page summaries on all 36 chapters in the assigned text, and we also had to write 10 page book reports on the 5 boring ass German literatue books assigned.

The real kick in the nuts was that attendance at the profs lectures was mandatory, but he never once discussed the text or any of the assigned books or what he would like in the reports.

Basically we had to sit through meaningless hour lectures on whatever whim he decided to touch on that day. What cracked me up was all the people furiously taking notes. Pavlov would have been proud.

[Wezas]

High School Freshman English.

Teacher was a total tool. From day one she started singling me out in class and putting me at the front center of the room. I hated her. She made you write a journal page every single day (that would be 3 due on Monday morning). I came home and bitched to mom about her almost daily. I squeeked by with a D.

Fast Forward to Junior year. They try to put me in her class again (she taught Freshman & Jr.'s). Talked to mom, she called up the school counselor and had me moved to the other Junior english teacher's class. B+

Gov't teacher had pop quizzes all the time but it was so easy to get him off topic. He would talk for an entire period about the workings of Pyramid scemes or when he had to "get married at least once a week" to rent a hotel room with a lady back in the day (hotel owners wouldn't let them rent the room unless they were married).

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by Wezas
Gov't teacher had pop quizzes all the time but it was so easy to get him off topic. He would talk for an entire period about the workings of Pyramid scemes or when he had to "get married at least once a week" to rent a hotel room with a lady back in the day (hotel owners wouldn't let them rent the room unless they were married).

Geez... his divorce count must be through the roof... nevermind his STD count... :lol: (it sounds Vegas-style)

[Theyesman]

Originally posted by Jazuela

Post-Grad: Intro to Computer Programming, C++ at the local community college
Teacher: Some head of math at the college
Assignment: The entire course
Grade: Oddly enough, A-
Situation: We didn't even have computers to work on in the class. It was a regular classroom and he projected the compiler and editor onto the blackboard and show us what to do. We were expected to take copious notes and do the work at home, or in Lab, which he never showed up for the entire semester.

Assessment of the course: I would've done much better if I didn't have to attend his lectures at all. I didn't understand a word he said, and had to visit a certain website forum for geeks to get any explanations I needed.

I don't know how I managed to even pass the course, let alone get an A-. I somehow did the assignments correctly, but didn't have any idea of what the hell I was doing.

Welcome to academic learning for computer programming. Fortunately for me, before i took my first C++ class, I'd fiddled with it a little myself.

Essentially, if you aren't very self driven, and never had prior programming experience to college... you'll be sitting in a lecture hall asking yourself WTF?!?! over and over again.