Thread: Professor problems, any advice on how to deal with him/it?

Matt, you are very right to take a redirection. I'm relieved to hear it's not a kneejerk decision, but a very well considered one.

Good luck Matt!

Originally Posted by Matt88s

.....When I'm feeling down, I often remind myself that I .....

could always go shopping for a dress & some make up just for the laugh.

Nah, work smarter, not harder, just don't call yourself a quitter.

''I strongly suggest you also keep a record of all correspondence and a diary of conversations"

Mate I would agree with what has been said above, next stop is the Dean mention the words discrimination and bullying these are both acts that are against the law and it seems this is what is taking place.

See if you can get one other person to stand up as well and explain why these guys are dropping out of the class the frustration and stress its causing asnd tell this to the Dean.

When it comes down to it you are paying for a service and that is to be taught it costs as you are aware a crapload of money so you deserve to treated with some respect.

If you are going to go out make sure its with all guns blazing stand up and be counted it will be hard but you will learn form the experience.

Chin Up Fella

Most of our Unis downunder have a Student Rights Officer working for the Student Union or SRC, so a chat there is one option.

Joe's right: play back everything that's been promised to the Prof in an email.

Also set deadlines for him. Viz. if you don't get the grades or confirmation of verbal agreements you will write to the Dean by (date) expressing your concerns. etc etc.

Originally Posted by WillyInBris

If you are going to go out make sure its with all guns blazing stand up and be counted it will be hard but you will learn form the experience.

I think his strategy is to save the guns until they'll do the most damage. He seems to be very level headed and he's approaching the situation in a very analytical manner.

Matt. It's certainly frustrating when you're being hard done by and there's no easy solution. It's a pity that you'd have to take a gamble on his grading when making your decision. Pretty slack of him not giving you the grades in a timely fashion, and from your description it seems that there may be a motive to it, ie reassure you first, and then hit you when it's too late for you to back out. If you play it safe, and drop his course then it's a lot of time and money wasted on your part.

That's a hard decision to make, especially when it can affect your career in such a way.

You're the only one that can make it though.
And whatever happens, have no regrets. Life's too short for that.


Good luck.

you guys just offered a bit of constructive criticism and honestly it wasn't bad advice

For my part, that's exactly how I expected you to take it. I think sometimes you need to have someone tell you to pull yourself together and take the long view.

I had a similar conversation with a 15 year old kid once. Very smart guy but one of his teachers had taken a disliking to him, and it happened to be in his favourite subject. I tried to explain to him that by rebelling, he was only hurting himself. The teacher would go on in their chosen career without missing a beat and it would be him (the 15 year old) who suffered. It's not fair of course, but that's life.

Well, I went up there Fri, early before I had to be at work. I was going to talk to him and see if we could pin down what my grade was and what he though I should do, just to see what he though I should do, I'm not saying I was planning on doing what he said, just see what it was and if it sounded like good advice.

He wasn't there. So I wandered over to finite aid and said, whats this going to do to me if I do this? They said, well chap, you'll be suspended immediately. My tuition waver too I said? Well, we're not sure on that, check back Monday. So there's a chance that won't be affected. I usually get it, in fact, most people with above a 3.0 GPA, that actually apply for it, (and there's part of the trick right there, many don't know about it or that they have to apply for it, or that there is a deadline to apply for it, and so miss out, but since I always apply on time and have above a 3.0 GPA so I look like the good little student that I am, I usually get it.) Tuition accounts for about half of the overall cost so it helps out a lot.

Anyhow, with him being gone I pretty much had little choice. Even with him there I would have had little choice. I didn't want to and I'm not happy that I did, but I'd be more unhappy if I didn't I think, so I changed it to audit.

That in itself was a bit of a monumental undertaking, I had to go to the financial aid office, get permission, go to the Admissions office, get the form, take it over to the Administration office in the Math and Science building because the form requires the professors signature, which I obviously wasn't going to get, only to find the only other person with power to grant me permission to audit, the dean himself, had left right before I arrived and wasn't going to be back. (what the heck is up with everybody leaving campus on the last day to withdraw/change to audit/drop? )

I was like, I really, really don't want to drop this class, I'd really rather audit, well, actually I'd really not to either, but I don't have much of a choice.

You've had since the start of school to do this said the person behind the desk, its really best if you don't wait until the last day like this.

Well said I, we've been waiting on lab grades, we still haven't gotten any of our grades, and he's been saying he'll get to them, so I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and it's obviously not going to happen so here I am.

Surely not, said the person behind the desk, no one else has complained, maybe its just you.

I was like, um, no, its like the labs for the whole class.

So the person behind the desk, (who probably is really who runs the whole school) tried to contact him, he wasn't answering his cell or home, but his lab phone was busy. So she tried again, and again, and again, and eventually she got ahold of him and got verbal permission for me to audit.

So I'm auditing.

I wish I hadn't missed the dean. I could still go talk to him but it would have been nice if he had been the one to approve the audit, and had been the one to ask why I felt I needed to change to audit, and I could have explained what the problem was and some of the stuff that had been going on. That would have flowed better and maybe had more impact I think, than a student coming in and complaining after the fact, everybody's upset after they drop and liable to make excuses for why they did so, blame the professor etc.

This has been a real learning experience. I've never had issues with a professor before. Hopefully I won't have to deal with this again in the future but if I do I'll know to address things sooner and take action instead of just trusting the professor to act and behave as they should.

I think I did the right thing though, I'm not saying I'm happy that I did it, I think I could have still easily pulled off a B in the class, maybe even an A, maybe, but this was all hinged on how he graded the labs, and if he graded them harshly, and if I did poorly on the next exam or final, then I could have feasibly at worst failed, and certainly easily slid to a C or D. This is so screwy though, because if I was making A's or B's or even A's and B's on the lab reports, I would have had a good solid B in the class and had another Exam and the Final to try to pull it up to an A. But I didn't and I with no feedback and no clear instructions on how things should have been done, I didn't know, and I didn't trust him not to slam us on our grades after the drop date, so I bailed. I think it was the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, but dang it hurts and its really going to screw a lot of things up.

Now that I've done it though, I'm a lot more relaxed, peaceful, calm, back to being happy again. There for a while I was so stressing over this, my blood pressure was up, (just being around this guy puts my blood pressure up, after one particularly stressful time of trying to get help out of him, and his yes, no, maybe answers, I finally went home because I was feeling woozy and I took my BP and it was 175/100), I was having trouble sleeping, I couldn't hardly eat anything with out getting heartburn, my heartrate would go up when I was in the lab and I'd get shaky, there were times I felt like puking I was so sick of the unfairness of it all, now I'm like a new person, I like being myself again. Now I just have to get my lathe working again.

I'm chilling, its all over. I'm now one of two guys in lab though. This is going to be interesting. Auditing frees me up quite a bit, now without having to worry about how my actions are going to affect my grade, maybe I can give as good as I get and set him on the straight and narrow.

Next semester we do it all over again. I'll definitely know what to do and to document things and not let things get out of control like they did this semester. It's going to be an adventure for sure.

And so our bookbuster picks himself up off the ground, dusts himself off, and charges off into the future, hoping for the best, planning for the worst, and knowing no matter what, like a piece of wood, (not ebony, not cocobolo, not any wood with a density reading lower than that of water) but one like balsa or bass, he'd always bob to the top.

Cheers!

Thanks everyone!

Originally Posted by Matt88s

And so our bookbuster picks himself up off the ground, dusts himself off, and charges off into the future, hoping for the best, planning for the worst, and knowing no matter what, like a piece of wood, (not ebony, not cocobolo, not any wood with a density reading lower than that of water) but one like balsa or bass, he'd always bob to the top.

Magic quote!

Worthy of a repeat.

Originally Posted by pawnhead

Magic quote!

Worthy of a repeat.

Actually, it was a really dorky thing to say, I wasn't in my right mind though.

Anyhow, I thought I'd give an update. I decided not to retake Organic with the same professor, and rather to gamble on another, an adjunct at that, and take the 5:30 rushhour class at the downtown campus. It worked out pretty well, it was my days off so I would get there early to miss the traffic rush.

It turned out my gamble paid off, even though he was an adjunct and this was his first time teaching organic, he was a really swell fellow. He taught alternative education at one of the local high schools. Great guy, funny, flexible, had a we're here to learn attitude, very respectful. If anything he was too easy on us, always working with those who were behind, giving extra credit, etc, etc.

Me an another guy in the class got into a friendly lab report contest, and were turning in 15+ page reports complete with color graphics, step by step pictures we took of our experiments in lab, soundtracks, I think he even turned in a video on his last lab, lol, funny guy. The two of us took the class a lot more seriously than the other students and the professor recognized it, we got lots of extra credit on our lab reports and whatnot. It was nice that he was willing to recognize our work if we were willing to go above and beyond just what was required. It made his job a little more fun too I think, he told me he greatly enjoyed my lab reports and asked if he could have copies of them at the end of the semester.

When it was all said and done I had a 99.5.

It was all a very fun and educational learning experience, and the professor managed to bring out our best, not our worst.

It is of interest to note I was taking a physics class at the campus that the professor I had so much trouble with taught at, and some of the students in my physics class were in that professors organic class.

It appears he was up to his old tricks. I heard from the other students towards the end of the semester that when he finally returned labs one of his students went ballistic and had a screaming fit at him. Evidentially he'd been doing something on all of his labs that the professor didn't like, so he counted off on all of them for it, regardless of the fact that he hadn't graded and returned any of them so that the student would have the opportunity to learn and correct what he was doing, and instead just blew the crap out of the kids semester lab grade, and by doing so pretty much ruined his class grade.

I fully understood the way the kid felt, I wanted to do the same thing last semester, I probably should have.

Originally Posted by Matt88s

When it was all said and done I had a 99.5.

Matt,
It is amazing what a difference a good, student oriented, lets learn attitude can do for your education. I was 62 before I found a prof like your second go around.

Its a real s*$( that a professors mental health can effect someones life like this, and there is no recourse. My husband works with someone who is supposed to be jointly running something with him and the other guy just seems totally paranoid. An impossible situation. But there is no way to call in the white coats anymore. And the whistle blower or complainer still loses. But the bad professors just do so much damage to students. Glad it worked out in the end for you Matt. Pity the professor is still there.

There is recourse believe me. I'm in the industry and have visited the US oivay.

Not easy it has to be said but what is?

Matt is being disingenuous if he says there isn't.

Good to see it worked out for you, pity about the others though

Good to see it worked out well for you. Just a little feelgood story from the other side. I teach students in my old profession, and it's amazing when you get an assignment in where it's clear the student has put a bit of extra work in - sets you up for the whole day.
I've just come back from the graduation for last years students. One of my students took out a state award, an award from our professional association worth about $1000, and next month takes home another prize, as well as getting to present his major project at our annual conference. Tonight, he did the address on behalf of students, and it was the best speech of the night.
I don't want to hear anyone complain about the yoof of today.