The absolute worst thing that a professor can say on the first day of class is, “I’m not your typical professor. I don’t want to bore you by lecturing the whole class.” I’m all for making class interesting, but I am not paying you to entertain me. I’m paying you to teach me. So when you make class “fun” and “different” it better be for the sake of education, because if it’s anything else you are wasting my time.
Three of my professors this semester have opened up class with the line above. In my operations management class, instead of teaching us the material in the chapter, he pulled up online practice questions and one by one read us multiple choice questions and had us answer them. We hadn’t even gone over the chapter yet! Thank you, for reading every question and every answer, because I couldn’t do this myself. Oh yeah, I forgot I don’t know how to study by myself either. I need to be spoon fed because I’m not a grown adult who can think and study on my own time.
Another highlight of my week is in my advanced corporate finance class. This class is comprised of solely studying case studies. No new material is taught; we just analyze these cases (it just sounds stupid explaining it). He split us into groups (“I love group projects and group assignments!” Said no one ever.) and proceeded to ask us fairly difficult questions about our case study. Many of the questions addressed material that our group hadn’t even heard of before, but we managed to BS our way through our answer. The team after us wanted some more clarification, though. The girl said, “We were a little confused–” and then my professor interrupted and said “Stop right there. This isn’t a good start. If you were ever to say those words, the marketers, investors, and managers would eat you alive.” He continued to berate her and then finished by saying, “So start over and answer the question.”
I love classes where I can’t ask questions. Oh, I guess I could ask a question, if I wanted to be humiliated in front of the entire class of 65 students and get no answer at all. I love professors that are so willing to help students when they don’t understand things the first time. Especially since we hadn’t been taught anything.
I also love egotistical, self-absorbed professors. My finance professor is also really good at talking about himself. It’s nice to know a little bit about my professor’s background, but the key word is little. I don’t care that you got a Louisville Slugger engraved with your name on it. I don’t care how many companies you were a CEO for, or how much money you’ve made through various investments. If it’s relevant to the material, please share. It’s nice to have applicable, real-world examples. If it doesn’t though, then I don’t care. You’re wasting my time.
I love spending thousands of dollars on professors who fail to do what they are payed to do: educate. I am so peeved, so aggravated, so tired of wasting my time and money on people that don’t deserve either.
What a frustrating semester, and it’s only the second week of classes. I have no motivation to do anything in classes with terrible professors. I don’t want to go to class, or read the material, or teach myself everything because the professor can’t. So far at UMKC, I’ve been pretty fortunate with really great professors, but I guess it’s catching up to me because this semester I hit the jackpot with the worst professors ever.
Shoot me now.