Worst Professor Ever

[ArcticChicken]

These threads reminded me of the worst professor I've ever had.

She waltzes into class on the first day "Blah blah blah, here's the syllabus, blah blah, papers, blah. And if you can't turn in your paper on time, don't bother coming back."

So, first day of class and I'm panicking about a paper I haven't even been assigned yet. A paper that not only counts for so much of my grade that I cannot pass the class without it, but that I can't even turn in if it's so much as an hour late. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect full credit for a late paper without extenuating circumstances, but most professors will give you a reduced grade, or let you do some kind of extra credit. And I'm really, really bad at writing papers. If I can get them written in time, I usually wind up with A's, but I can never get them written in time.

She's also completely unapproachable. Her office hours were few and far between, and the only way we were allowed to contact her was to leave a voicemail on her school line. No email. Period. She refused to use a computer at all.


Class proceeds as normal for a couple of weeks, and I liked the subject enough that I almost enjoyed it despite the fact that I was freaking out over a paper that I didn't have enough information about to get a head start on, and I was too scared to approach the professor to ask about.

Then I show up for class one day, and she's not there. No sub, either, just a note on the door saying class has been canceled for the day. Fantastic. My only class that day canceled. I just wasted a trip and the bus fare. It would have been so easy to send out an email to the class, I know the professors have that option, but no, she won't touch a computer.

The next class period I show up, and it's the same deal, just a note. Wonderful.

And again.

Then she's there for a day. No explanation for her absence, not to mention an apology for wasting our time.

Then she's gone again. At this point I am really pissed at her, because if I, as a student, had missed that many classes I would have been dropped.

The next class period I get to class, and there's no note on the door. Huzzah! Maybe I can actually get the education my parents are paying for. There are seven or eight of us in there, waiting, for about fifteen minutes, 'till someone says "Y'know, she's fifteen minutes late, and none of our classmates have come in for a while, I'm gonna go check the door."

Sure enough, there was now a note there saying class had once again been canceled. Great, so the guy who put the note up couldn't be arsed to stick give us a heads up? Asshole.

As I recall she missed about half the semester before I dropped that class. I don't know why I waited that long.

In hindsight, I wish I'd made some kind of formal complaint. It's one thing if I don't get an education because I fuck about. It's another thing entirely if it's because my teacher does it.

[Red Hand of Ulster]

See here I'm thinking that your prof is the one that snuck over there and put the note up. When I worked in a departmental office in college, I know a few of them in that department would have pulled something like that.

[MoxisPilot]

My current professor must be this woman. Only it's a man, and he won't reply to a single one of my e-mails, much less clarify any assignments, so everyone in the farking class is totally confused.

I HAVE reported him. >

[Kogarashi]

Thankfully I haven't had anyone this bad. Worst was this one woman who was my academic advisor for a semester.

I needed to set up a few meetings with her to discuss some academic things, and I hate calling people, so I opted for e-mail (thank goodness she used e-mail). I would've just gone to her office hours, but they were all during classes of mine. I e-mailed her the first time around 2pm or so on a Monday afternoon, asking when would be a good time that week to meet to discuss what I needed to discuss. By the time I went to bed that night, she still hadn't answered (and I went to bed pretty late).

The next morning, I checked my e-mail before I headed up to campus, and still no answer. No biggie, I figured, and went off to classes and projects. By the time I had computer access again and could check my e-mail, it was about 12:30pm.

Lo and behold, there in my inbox was an e-mail from her at about 10:30. Her response to my request to meet? "You can come by my office between 11 and 12 today." No other times or days suggested

So I e-mailed her back, explaining basically (and politely) that I didn't have all-morning access to my e-mail and had missed her response before the time window was gone. Was there another time this week that I could come by to discuss stuff with her? Sent off around 1pm Tueday afternoon.

I still had not received an answer from her by the time I headed off to classes Thursday morning, and when I got to my e-mail again around 1pm, guess what I found in my inbox. Yep. At about 10am, telling me, "You can come by between 11 and 12 today." Still no other times or days suggested to meet.

I sent off another e-mail explaining that I couldn't work with such short notice, since I didn't get the e-mail until after the time window had passed. No response before the weekend, but luckily I found out on Monday that one of my classes during her office hours was canceled, and I was able to show up then (well before she had a chance to give me another hour's-notice e-mail).

We repeated this dance once or twice else during the semester, with worse results, and the few times I tried calling I failed to reach her. I ended up going to the general academic advisement center, explaining that my particular professor was impossible to actually schedule time with, and arranging to meet with one of the two general advisors instead. By the beginning of the next semester, they had assigned someone else to be my advisor.

I also made sure never to take a class from this particular woman.

[SteverinoNY]

Academic Advisor

My advisor in graduate school is particularly horrible. He is supposedly a world renowned researcher in psychology, but does not believe in email (he uses a computer, but is horrible with responding to them) or voicemail. He does not have a telephone in his office. Of course he is never in his office, but rather out in the field researching or teaching somewhere. I have actually never met him because he never responded to my initial (or any follow up) emails to schedule a time to introduce myself. And he also has no posted office hours, so its hit or miss if he is there.

[sprocket79]

That reminds me of my advisor one year. The university I went to was on a quarter system. They instituted some rule my senior year that all schedules needed to be signed by our advisors. No signature, you might as well not even have gone to class because it wouldn't be on your record. The first quarter I emailed my advisor to set up an appointment. She said that there was a sign up sheet outside her door. I went, signed up, had my meeting with her. Everything was fine.

Second quarter I decide to just go to her office and see if her sign up sheet is there. Nothing. I wait a few days and go back. Nothing. I email her asking when we can set up some time to meet. I wait a few more day. No reply. I call and leave voice mail. No call back. I start going to her office several times a day to see if I can just run into her. I never see her. Finally I run into one of my old professors in the hall outside this woman's office. He asks what I'm doing and I say I'm waiting for this woman. He says that she went on a year long research trip to South America. WHAT?!

She left the country for a year and didn't let any of her advisees know, even though it was crucial to get these signatures. She left nothing on her door. She left no vacation reply on her email. She didn't change her voice mail. I had no idea she had gone!

Luckily my old professor was cool, so he walked with me to the department secretary and got me switched so that he would be my advisor. He said he trusted that I had picked classes that I needed to graduate and signed it without looking. Next quarter went smoothly because he didn't up and leave the country without telling anyone.

[BethB]

The worst I've had wouldn't have been so bad if...HE DIDN'T TEACH CLASS TO THE BOARD!!! That's how he did his lessons. by speaking to the board. It was almost as if he was trying to convince himself that that was how the math problems were solved. I dropped the class and went to one where the instructor actually talked to the class. a side note: these classes were taught by grad students. Maybe the first was actually afraid of people. who knows but he kinda weirded me out.

[Shpepper]

Mayhaps he was channeling a young Jim Morrison?

[JLRodgers]

The worst I've had wouldn't have been so bad if...HE DIDN'T TEACH CLASS TO THE BOARD!!!.....

One of my professors did that.... in a class I already knew the subject (we're talking I was tutoring the thing, and considered the subject for a major [didn't though]). And he talked in monotone. One day as I was falling asleep, I just packed up my things and left the class for the day. Five minutes later the rest of the class was outside.

Every single student had walked out of the class -- and he was still teaching to the board completely unaware that the class was empty.

Felt bad for him about the others leaving, but I wasn't about to fall asleep in class.

[BuggedMei]

I had a professor, that on the first day, told us we would have three assignments, not allowed to be late, and that would be our grade. Fast forward to the end of the semester, I come down with strep, so I email my assignments to the professor(she wrote on her sylabus that she would answer "Only to emails" outside of class.). Shes absent for the next two classes, semester ends. I keep emailing her trying to get a confirmation about my assignments, leaving notes at the dept she worked in, ect. My grades come in and I have a F. I asked the chairman what I should do since, when they logged into her email box, she had over 100 unread messages from her students with various assignments attached. They fired her that day (after finding her in a bar, ~10 mins away from campus) after realizing she failed everyone that semester.

[Imogene]

Had a professor try to get half the class in trouble for a paper he told us to write, wherein he asked us to find three jobs in the industry, find out what's required in those positions, and explain why we wanted those jobs.
Most of us took that to mean: "Go find job listings, copy paste and explain."

Professor turned us into his boss for plagiarism. We got talked to... one of us even had a works cited page, the prof just didn't print it out.
We had to convince the prof's boss that that was EXACTLY what the prof had asked of us.

No idea if we still got in trouble. The school worked on a two shot 'plagiarism' system. First time's a warning, second's expulsion. None of us got expelled. Prof got dropped two semesters later.

[sanchopanza65]

This semester I had the worst professor that I have had so far. It wasn't anything too bad, like many of the other stories here, but he was horribly disorganized. We got a syllabus at the beginning of the semester, that we stopped following about 5 weeks in. The lectures never had anything to do with the readings though. THe worst part was that we occasionally had movie screenings at night, and once the Syllabus was dropped, we never knew if we had one until about 2 hours before it was schedualed. NIce enough guy, but not a good teacher at all.

[chrisfabo]

I have to tell the story of my LAST professor in any class, in Undergraduate work.

In a word, this man was total self-absorbed tool. Oh, sorry, that was 7 words.

It was a class, required, a professor-designed course on the writing of some Modernist British author I've put out of my memory since. The professor was born in the same town as this writer, and took pride in his knowledge of the author's work and methodology/mentality/purpose/etc.

I should have know there would be problems, when one class, on a wierd whim, he took the entire class period to explain the intricate ins and outs of Cricket, out of pride for his apparently legendary skill in the game at University.

I personally drew his attention, when he was told, horror of horrors, that I was learning disabled and might need some assistance meeting the deadlines for his paper. First, it had a specific date for a first-draft submission, after which it would be graded and then we could revise it for an attempt at improving that grade. So, two dates, simple and clear, right?.....wrong. >.<

The first revision? D+. the red ink was EVERYWHERE. Smug jerk even told me I wasn't much of a writer. After getting As and Bs with EVERY OTHER PROF in the department. Woulda been nice if he had mentioned that he used a different writing format and citation style than the norms....I wasn't alone with that problem, in the class, either. >.<

So, I start revising...but it's very very clear I'm not gonna make the deadline. I had two weeks to get through the 30 page paper, which was.....yeah, I don't do well with this sorta assignment, just doesn't work well for me, on such a short time.

I make an appointment to talk to him, and explain that I'm in a pinch, and having trouble with the assignment revisions. To my surprise, and you'd be forgiven if you think this is the redemption of this professor, he says he's sorry I'm troubled by the assignment, and considering my graduation, at the end of the sememster, he'll actually write it off as a B for the semester, and give me a pass, out of sympathy.

Ecstatic, I make the big mistake....and call my dad to tell him the news. I quickly gotta note that my father is a retired military commander, XO of a helecopter squadron. Not one to take any er....guff. *cough* So, he's naturally skeptical of this astounding offer, from a man I've rather bluntly described, I must admit, in the past to him.

He calls the professor to 'thank him', while clearly trying to suss out if the offer's real.

The Professor had a MELTDOWN. I could hear this man's ranting words over my dad's phone over MY cell phone, he was that vitriolic.

The man took offense at 'my lack of trust in his moral fiber' or some such.

I almost immediately get an email from the professor, the first i'd gotten from him, informing me I didn't have to bother coming to the class again, and that I'd only get the promised grade if I stayed OUT.

Er....hey! I suppose that's sucky AND good. I checked with the department, and he'd filed the grade that evening, just before they closed the office, it seems. He'd also left a note that I was 'allowed' to miss his class for the rest of the semester.

I dunno, it's strange...I'm both happy the class turned otu the way it did...and....yet I blanch thinking about it. The man coulda snapped on a student IN CLASS. My dad swears he heard something smash over the phone. *shudder*

[protege]

Oh, where to begin? I mean, do I start with my stats professor or the idiot I had for business law?

Stats prof had some "attitude problems." That is, he was an asshole. This is the guy who showed up to the bank branch I was working, and chewed out the manager because the ATM was "always down" around noon. Never mind that the branch didn't do much business then--he just *had* to have it up so he could withdraw cash for his lunch.

Anyway, he came in ranting and raving, how the bank "sucked," one day, and my boss--the senior VP of auditing--told him to get bent. Not in those exact terms though

After the asshole left, I told him who the guy was, and we all had a good laugh. In fact, my boss...was thinking of some ways to get even Something about using the ATM's built-in microphone to mess with the guy. Probably along the lines of "Professor X, I hear you've been saying bad things about me. No cash for you!"

Business Law prof wasn't exactly bad, but arrogant. First semester, he seemed OK. Second...was another story. By then, he was attempting to run for county judge, and was either late, letting us leave early, or just glossing over things totally. How the hell can you learn that way?

At least I could take some delight when he *lost* the election Seems that one of my grandmother's friends...won by a landslide. Not surprising, since the prof's dad was one of the county commissioners, and had landed himself in some "hot water" over missing funds and an extramarital affair of some sort. Still, seeing that guy lose made my year

[mariamousie1]

I once had a history teacher who managed to make ancient history completely boring, which I didn't think was possible. Also, he sped through the powerpoint too fast for me to take notes. However, at the beginning of the course I realized that before every test he would tell us exactly what was on it- he'd walk us through the text chapter pointing out the paragraphs and sentences there would be questions on. So basically I would use his class to catch up on my sleep, except for the days I would mark what to study in my textbook. I got an A in the class.