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There's one professor I was a TA for who was loved by the students. He taught the course more like a high school physics course than a university course. But, w
by tjl 11y ago
There's one professor I was a TA for who was loved by the students. He taught the course more like a high school physics course than a university course. But, when his students got to higher level physics courses, they were lacking in the basic skills taught in those courses so we'd have to spend extra time covering that material. Also, to break them of bad habits they had. He was the only professor to directly contradict me in front of the students. I had been marking like I had in other courses (he hadn't given any guidelines) and students complained so he made me re-grade everything, totally undercutting me in front of them. He should have let the assignment mark stand and change the marking going forward.
I have no doubt that students would have preferred that professor, but their skills and knowledge would suffer from that choice. Taking the easy road will catch up to you eventually.
- syntheticnature 11y agoMy favorite EE professor, in hindsight, was the one that had quizzes every week, and only semi-scheduled. Friends who had gone through her course before warned me about how 'awful and strict' she was. At the time, I hated it, until I realized come the final that I'd never been permitted to slack off and so needed to do much less to get myself ready for it.
- tjl 11y agoOne of my favourite professors in the department was a prof who had a review on RateMyProfessors.ca as "I'd say she worships Satan, but I think Satan worships her." She was a tough but fair prof and generally only got respect from her students in her upper year elective classes. She's fairly short and she's had some terrible disrespect from students in the past. She had a student who preceded to lecture her on how to set a midterm because they had taught swimming lessons (after they had got their midterm back and done poorly). She's even had death threats from students who were upset with her. None of this would have happened with my PhD supervisor who was about 6'5" and intimidated almost every student.
- WalterBright 11y agoI'm sure there'll be parents who pick the "easy A" teacher, and parents who pick the "hard but worth it" teacher, and parents who pick the "most charming" teacher, "has a knack for working with challenging kids" teacher, etc. Not every student chooses the easy road. Some of them want to learn the stuff and not waste their time. At Caltech, some of the toughest classes were the most popular.
- danieltillett 11y agoAs a former professor I used to have colleagues like this. My students would come in to my classes totally ignorant of basic material they needed to know. The missing material was in the course, but these colleagues would just not teach it because the students didn’t like it. The students all thought these professors were fantastic because they had such interesting lectures (only teach the fun stuff) and the work was so easy (give every one an A for being able to fog a mirror). That the students didn’t learn anything was just an unfortunate side effect.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago>Taking the easy road will catch up to you eventually. I know a math professor who reminds me of your physics prof. He gets the best ratings on ratemyprof, his classes always fill up, and he has the highest average grades in his department. He retired at the end of last semester after only 35 years. The college's administrators loved him as much as the students, even though the students were probably worse at any kind of math after taking his course(s).