Jovers

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.

The fall 2014 semester is done and over! Here are my class reviews for this semester:

Corporate Finance 326

This was one of the weirdest classes I’ve ever taken. My instructor was very, very nice, and so willing to work with students. However, we didn’t really do anything in the class. We met once a week for three hours, and I can’t tell you a single thing that we did or learned.

He basically said that you have to prove to him that you do NOT deserve an A in the class. So it was just a GPA booster, I guess. Still, overall a bit disappointed because I was looking forward to this class.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

Marketing 324

A surprisingly difficult class, considering there was just so much material he tested us over. Our instruct was very entertaining and made lectures interesting though. If I was a marketing major, I’d want to take him again.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

Business Communications

What a stupid class. Every major is required to take a writing intensive class in their field, so this was mine. Every time I walked into class I felt like I was transported back to kindergarten or first grade. We were required to do pre-writing and brainstorming and turn them in with our work. We learned things that I learned in middle school and so you would think her grading would be pretty straightforward.

Not at all. She’s one of the most difficult graders I’ve ever had so I had to spend a lot of time on my work in there. The class was just so bipolar.

To top it off, my instructor was one of the most snarky and rude instructors I’ve had. Not a flat out, blunt rude, but she was so unwilling to work with students and acted like a middle school girl with how she handled it. There was one day an assignment was due, and several people showed up late to class. She made them stay afterwards and lectured them on the rudeness of being tardy and then deducted points from the assignment. Won’t be missing her.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

Microeconomic Analysis

A surprisingly entertaining class. Our instructor was an economics grad student so he made the class really fun. The material was pretty dense, but the tests weren’t too difficult since they were open notes and had some extra credit questions. If they weren’t open notes, I probbaly would not have gotten as high a grade in here. ;P

My third and last economics class. YAY! No more econ!

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

Spanish 110

So I took this class because Andrew is double majoring in Nursing and Spanish, and as many of you know, I took four years of French in high school and a year at college. I love the French language and anything French at all! But, since I am marrying this boy, I thought it would be fun to learn some Spanish – and it is a beneficial language to know.

This was one of my most work-heavy classes, and my teacher was like a Nazi! That may be a bit of an extreme reference, but the first month and a half of class, I was terrified of her. She set up the class like an old 1800s teacher would: you do exercises/answer questions aloud in front of the class and she corrects every grammar or mistake you make and makes a huge deal out of it. “You don’t study enough!”

There was also a huge language barrier. She couldn’t answer very many questions well because she didn’t understand what we were saying. The class was overall unorganized, which made it difficult because there were so many assignments and we never knew when they were due. I always do every assignment and do it on time, but I missed several in this class because she was never clear on when things were due.

We also had to do this online language coaching sessions. AWFUL. You basically skyped with two other students (from Lord knows where) and a “language coach” and spoke Spanish with these strangers. So awkward and terrible! I don’t know enough Spanish to speak with these people!

Oh, goodness. All I can say is no more Spanish for me. I made a good grade in the class and I did learn quite a bit, but it was traumatizing. Sorry Andrew, I tried.

Credits: 3
Final Grade: A

Overall, a great semester! I had easier classes this semester compared to previous semesters, so I was happy to receive a semester GPA of 4.0. This raised my cumulative GPA to a 3.93. Not too shabby! I’ve just signed up for next semester’s classes and I’ve just ordered textbooks (sob). Not ready to go back to school

Dear Horrible Professors

Fall 2014 Semester Review