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Professors suck
- Thread starter brianbj46
- Start date
now, i didn't take the class myself, but one of my friends did the graduate level electrodynamics sequence (as a friggin' sophomore!).
(to give you an idea, in one's first year as a graduate student in physics, one usually takes three sequences of courses: quantum mechanics, classical/statistical mechanics, and electrodynamics. i ordered them based on difficulty, easiest to hardest, based on what i've heard. i took the grad quantum mech sequence, myself.)
i'd have to ask him to get the actual numbers, but i believe an A in those courses was in the low 70s.
that is to say, the professor properly acknowledged the extreme difficulty of the material and graded accordingly.
yeah, what the prof did in the OP is definitely not right. i would make a case with the instructor, and if that doesn't work, contact the appropriate person in the department. (department chair?)
(to give you an idea, in one's first year as a graduate student in physics, one usually takes three sequences of courses: quantum mechanics, classical/statistical mechanics, and electrodynamics. i ordered them based on difficulty, easiest to hardest, based on what i've heard. i took the grad quantum mech sequence, myself.)
i'd have to ask him to get the actual numbers, but i believe an A in those courses was in the low 70s.
that is to say, the professor properly acknowledged the extreme difficulty of the material and graded accordingly.
yeah, what the prof did in the OP is definitely not right. i would make a case with the instructor, and if that doesn't work, contact the appropriate person in the department. (department chair?)
I guess i should probably do that....but i just don't feel like i'll be taken seriously. I just feel like it won't do any good. I haven't actually talked to anyone else from the class yet, so I'll probably talk to my peers and also my TA about it tomorrow.
I had a similar situation in college. I took the 2nd of a three part physics course in summer school thinking it would save me some time. The visiting professor that taught it had other plans. He told us on the first day that he wasn't going to use the book. He lectured (and tested) on topics that were not part of the curriculum (this was supposed to be thermodynamics and he started on day one with Gauss's Law) and assigned virtually no homework save for a two examples scribbled on the board at the end of each lecture.
The first midterm was a disaster. I did what I could, but left knowing I failed. I went to my T.A.'s office hours to get my test back early and saw that I got a 32 out of 100. The next day was the deadline to drop the course, and I did. A week later a friend of mine in the class asked why I dropped. I told him my score and he said, "I know, Lonnie (our TA) told us. It was the highest in our discussion section. The average was an 18." Apparently only 3 people in the whole class of 60 or 70 did better than me. Even if I had known that I would have dropped the class. I wasn't learning anything regardless of my grades.
I could tell you similar horror stories from my friends who had Dr. Wu for any math class he taught. Success in your field doesn't always translate into an ability to teach it. I learned early on to do my research on professors, especially when the same class was taught by two or more people each semester.
For now, tough it out and get as much help as you can, preferably from the professor himself. At the very least, it will teach you how to deal with an unreasonable boss when you get out into the working world.
Good luck.
Thanks for the advice....
The good news is that it's a 3-professor course (i think) and we have a new one for the second section. Hopefully the tyrant is gone, but it still doesn't undo the damage that he did.
To the OP: I see you are in Madison. Are you at the University of Wisconsin? If so, do you know the rank of your prorfessor? If he an assistant, associate, or full professor? At a school like Wisconsin, he is certainly in a publish or perish situation. He will need to publish just to keep his job permanently. You mention he is writing a textbook, usually a textbook is not enough to secure tenure at a Research 1 school like Wisconsin in the humanities. It may be different in the sciences if he has secured some big grants and published his research in the right journals.
None of the things I mentioned are excuses for poor teaching, but they might explain his distraction. Your situation is also a good example of why regional schools, instead of the main research insititutions are often a better deal for undergraduates because faculty are under less pressure, and the atmosphere is more oriented to teaching.
None of the things I mentioned are excuses for poor teaching, but they might explain his distraction. Your situation is also a good example of why regional schools, instead of the main research insititutions are often a better deal for undergraduates because faculty are under less pressure, and the atmosphere is more oriented to teaching.
That's nothing. I had a Chemistry midterm in university where the average grade was 36% and 3/4 of the class failed. I believe I got around 55%. He was ticked at us but in his case I believe he had the right to be.
A 4th year course.. So, did you have a book, and how many times did you read that book? If you didn't have a book, why didn't you find any, if you knew what you were supposed to study?
Some prof's don't care too much about your learning, and some seem to be set on showing that you have to learn the stuff yourself.. But I'm sure you're familiar with this as a 4th year student.
Surely you can't mean he should... gulp... like... TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS LIFE?
That's an outrageous suggestion! How dare you?!
Sometimes professors are just tools. I recall taking an open-book test as an undergraduate where I recognized that one of the problems on the test was a worked example in the book (written by the professor) -- verbatim. Naturally, I copied the solution from the text and handed it in. When I got the graded test back, that problem was marked as incorrect. When I approached the professor he gave me some spiel about the department needing more money from the state so they can hire additional TAs etc. OK, that's great, but what about my test? He told me that the grade would stand -- tough rocks.
Some people are just jerks. I went to an engineering school where a 40% class average was not uncommon. But in those cases 40% was generally a C.
Some people are just jerks. I went to an engineering school where a 40% class average was not uncommon. But in those cases 40% was generally a C.
One of my profs. in college told us he designed his tests to make the average grade a 50%. It challenged me to learn much more than other classes that I knew I could get an A or B with minimal studying. I went to one class the first day and the day of the exams, got a B. Didn't learn a **** thing.
Your in a 4th year course, and are using text books?
Guess it must be different on your side of the pond, over here there is no point in reading the text books as what we are doing is more advanced and the text books are outdated, the only way to keep close to ontop of the work is by reading journals. (we are obviously given a reading list, the vast majority of papers are ones which have been published this year or late last year, so nothing older than experiments from say 2005ish)
Guess it must be different on your side of the pond, over here there is no point in reading the text books as what we are doing is more advanced and the text books are outdated, the only way to keep close to ontop of the work is by reading journals. (we are obviously given a reading list, the vast majority of papers are ones which have been published this year or late last year, so nothing older than experiments from say 2005ish)
+1
Had AMAZING some teachers(Dr. Gary Sod:Engineering Calculus, Dr. David Derbes : physics now here http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/070314.derbes.shtml )
and some really lame ones in college.
The LAME ones(similar to yours) taught me to:
1) Buy Schuams and REA Problems Solvers for EVERY course
2) On day 1 after class, empty the library of every book that looked useful for the more challenging subjects. Renew them
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:
Learn to teach yourself in case the "instructor" in not one.
Here is the answer to your question, "Why did the professor teach a class that is so difficult that the average test score is 45%?"
Because his purpose is to WEED OUT those students who aren't dedicated enough to put up with such difficulties by making them so frustrated they quit. This is a typical practice for entry level carreer science classes such as physics, biology, chemistry etc... When I took PhysicsI, almost half of the 150 students dropped the course after the first few weeks and of the remaining 80 students, fewer than half could manage to pass the course by achieving the minimum score of ......get ready for it...... 20%! That's right; the grading scale was 80/60/40/20.
They're trying to make sure that any student who is still in the program by the upper level classes really belongs there.
If you want to succeed, the only way is to learn the material independently, at home, on your own time. This will not be easy but if you really want to pass the course.....
Because his purpose is to WEED OUT those students who aren't dedicated enough to put up with such difficulties by making them so frustrated they quit. This is a typical practice for entry level carreer science classes such as physics, biology, chemistry etc... When I took PhysicsI, almost half of the 150 students dropped the course after the first few weeks and of the remaining 80 students, fewer than half could manage to pass the course by achieving the minimum score of ......get ready for it...... 20%! That's right; the grading scale was 80/60/40/20.
They're trying to make sure that any student who is still in the program by the upper level classes really belongs there.
If you want to succeed, the only way is to learn the material independently, at home, on your own time. This will not be easy but if you really want to pass the course.....
Jazzdogg
Less barking, more wagging!
I'm not sure I understand your concern: Are you saying you're more concerned about the mark you earned than your failure to demonstrate competence?
As I have told countless employees and students over the years, when you're worried about your performance, it is best to spend your time improving your performance instead of worrying, complaining, or equivocating.
The simple truth is that the most successful among us are those who are mature enough to consistently accept personal responsibility for their shortcomings and respond by improving their self-management skills.
