Nitty Professors

[MexKrax]

I turned in a chemistry lab report where I had to calculate %error, and was supposed to show my work. I did, at the end it worked out to something like 3.14/100=3.14% error. The TA dinged me for not writing 3.14/100 X100% =3.14% instead!

[bav]

I always enrolled in one more course than I actually intended to keep. I'd show up to all my classes the first couple days and generally know which one I wasn't keeping after the first class. And the one I dropped was usually based on the instructor being a prick. Sometimes it wasn't obvious which course had to go until some homework or an exam got graded. I HIGHLY recommended this if your school lets you get away with such things. I explained to my advisors what I was doing and why and they were completely cool with it, and each semester when I'd come in saying I needed to drop whatever class they'd ask for the story and essentially take notes, so that they could steer other students away from those instructors. One of my advisors was very particular about getting specific faculty for specific classes, and he'd have me taking courses out of order sometimes just so I could get the good instructors or dodge the bad ones.

There was the Statics class where a grad student in camo literally marched back and forth in front of the class swishing a cane for a solid 20 minutes spouting "You WILL come to every class. There will be NO excused absences for any reason whatsoever. You WILL sit silently unless called upon. You WILL turn in homework at the beginning of each class. You WILL NOT get any credit for anything turned in after the beginning of class. You WILL put your name in the upper right corner of each page. You WILL put the page number in the bottom right corner. You WILL put the date in the upper left corner of every page. You WILL put the course name and number in the center top of every page. You WILL use a straightedge to draw all straight lines. Any homework turned in which does not precisely follow these requirements will receive a 0. You WILL..." Bloop...gone. Took it the next semester and got a good ol' boy Texan who was good natured and laid back, AND he was a good teacher.

Or the time I took a computer graphics class and the prof explained that we would almost exclusively be writing device drives this semester. Oh, by the way, there is this textbook that you need to read on your own, and we'll have a test over that stuff eventually, but there will be no lectures or homework related to it, so better start reading the textbook in your spare time. In the meantime, here's the lab of plotters and scanners and whatnot that we can't use 'cause I don't have device drives so start thinking what device you want to work on... Bloop...gone. (Not like I was alone...14 students turned into 2 within 2 weeks.) Took it next semester from an EE prof instead of a CS prof and actually learned stuff.

Or the Digital Electronics class where the new faculty member lectured for 2 courses and totally left every one of us baffled, assigned the most insane homework ever seen which nobody could do, then accused us all of cheating because we'd talked to each other about the homework to try to figure out what was going on, and he explained that we were stupid and foolish to help each other since we were all competing for grades and jobs. Bloop...gone. Again, took it one semester later and learned tons from a guy with lots of practical experience.

Cherry pick your profs.

[ImAKing]

whatever. they want to be dicks they can, it is their class, but still gay

[AWoodside]

I had a professor in a philosophy class who really had her panties in a bunch about gender neutral pro-nouns. She talked for almost a whole class before the first paper about the importance of using he/she, him/her, etc. She said she wouldn't accept papers that didn't stay general neutral, this was later confirmed by a friend of mine who had to re-do her paper and got marked down because of it.

I'm proud to say I didn't use one gender-neutral pronoun the whole semester. Every paper I wrote contained exclusively feminine pronouns and she never said a damned word about it. I ended up getting an 'A' in fact. God I hated her.

[higher_energy]

really good advice from bav. found this out sophmore year, a prof. can make or break the class.

That year my friend and I took micro with a very intelligent professor who knew Nash, made us doo insane excel spreadsheets and we did not even touch any models. Pretty much everybody cheated, did not learn anything and we all got B+s.
My other friend that same semester took the same EC12 which will show up identical on the transcript, learned the standard crap and got an A-.

Ever since than i go to www.ratemyprofessors.com as well as the internal rating website at my school. I would not judge a class solely by this. There are some that are just too good to pass up only because the professor might not be very good, but overall its a good resource to consider.
Keep in mind though that some reviews might be negative just because the students did not do so well....

[Keyser.]

[ QUOTE ]
I had a professor in a philosophy class who really had her panties in a bunch about gender neutral pro-nouns.

[/ QUOTE ]

um

[wmspringer]

I had a TA who took off points because my style of psuedocode looked too much like C++.

[edtost]

[ QUOTE ]
I always enrolled in one more course than I actually intended to keep. I'd show up to all my classes the first couple days and generally know which one I wasn't keeping after the first class. And the one I dropped was usually based on the instructor being a prick. Sometimes it wasn't obvious which course had to go until some homework or an exam got graded. I HIGHLY recommended this if your school lets you get away with such things. I explained to my advisors what I was doing and why and they were completely cool with it,

[/ QUOTE ]

this is clearly the best way to go. i'm currently signed up for 6 classes spring semester, which i'll cut down to the 3 i need the first week of the semester.

[Kimbell175113]

Listen to bav. I do the same thing, sign up for more classes than I intend to take, then drop down to x hours, leaving me with a much better schedule than if I had just picked x hours worth of classes beforehand. Not only do you get better profs, you get to affect other aspects that you couldn't otherwise (at my school, the time of each class is randomly done by the computer, and I did use this method once to evade a 7:30 class, and just took the same course next semester and wasn't so unlucky wrt mornings).

[T50_Omaha8]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm proud to say I didn't use one gender-neutral pronoun the whole semester. Every paper I wrote contained exclusively feminine pronouns and she never said a damned word about it. I ended up getting an 'A' in fact. God I hated her.

[/ QUOTE ]
You gotta love hipocrisy.