Now, first thing you need to know about my schedule this past Fall semester. I took four classes - Anthropology (transfer credit), Organic Chemistry I (which is Hell in a nutshell), Self Defense (for I am small and puny), and Moral Choices (a philosophy class, also for transfer credit). My Anthropology professor, whom I will call Professor D, was a recent hire and this semester was his first year teaching. He's a pretty nice, laid-back guy and his class reflects his attitude that the best way to get people learning is to get them involved in group activities. I hate group activities, but at least he used them to good effect. Overall, a nice guy, I liked him - he got me interested in a subject I really had little interest in, and I would certainly take a class he taught again. You're off to a great start, Professor D!
The Orgo Chem professor, whom I'll call Dr. J, is kindly but firm and doesn't believe in curving tests. She came from a military family and in her opinion, if you can't work up to PCAT or MCAT level knowledge, you're just not good enough, maggot - try harder. Her class is quite tough, and she is also a tough woman - if she were a chemical compound she'd be a non-reactive, non-chiral, non-polar saturated alkane; nothing phases her. She's picky about arrows in mechanisms and she often half-explains what the textbook explains far better, but you can tell she really wants to see her students succeed and she's passionate about the subject she teaches. I had her for lecture and lab, and despite her tough attitude and difficult subject matter, I'd have to say Organic Chem I was my favorite class this semester. So much so that I'm going back for more punishment from Dr. J this Winter for Organic Chem II. Oh yes, multi-step synthesis problems, hurt me more.
The Self Defense teacher, a lively older black gentleman whom I'll call Coach W, was probably the other favorite professor of mine. He's got a great sense of humor and knows how to pep you up for warmup where you have to do ten five-minute sets of twenty pullups which I still for the life of me can't do. He's a far cry from High School coaches, understanding when a person just cannot physically do something, and never takes things too seriously. He cannot pronounce my name, but he's such a fun guy I forgive him for it. Coach W is also very, very patient, to the point that when I had to ask him for the fifteenth time how to do an inside-out wrist takedown he remained as calm as if it were the first. Seriously, the guy just never loses his cool, he's like Batman without the Caucasian-ness, money, anger management issues, and cowl. I do definitely feel a lot more confident about wandering downtown alone too with the skills I learned from this class.
My Moral Choices Professor was an Asian guy who reminded me of a younger Mr. Miyagi, so I guess he gets to be Professor Miyagi since his first name starts with J and I already gave J to my Orgo Chem professor, and too many J's will be too confusing. Professor Miyagi likes to discuss things a lot, and he's fascinating to talk to. He was born in China and moved to America later (guess he liked either the freedom, the food, or both). Unfortunately, he also really, really, REALLY liked papers. Reflection papers, research papers, papers papers papers. We had precisely one test the whole semester, over Ethical Theories, and that was at the start of the semester. Conversely, we had two damn research papers and a reflection paper based on the reading that was due every week (we only met on Tuesdays). Criminy, Professor Miyagi, you think that's enough damn papers? I understand meeting once a week and I understand having a research paper or a test, but two papers, a test, and reflection papers every week? I realize that's not a lot compared to some teachers at some colleges, but God Damn, I haven't taken a class that required this much writing since my senior AP English class in High School, and even that had less writing and one research paper! Seriously. I go to a Community College and even the English classes here don't have their students write this much. Anyway, Professor Miyagi was a pretty chill guy and not overbearing to listen to since he started discussions that became heated debates. His class was easily one of the more interesting ones I took, but all the same it is not a subject I would take again if I could help it.
Anyway, that's not what this blog entry's about, is it? No, no. For you see, while on the shuttle to the main campus from my Anthropology class one day, I realized that there were more than a few common things professors do that just piss me the Hell off. It's to the point that some of the oldest ones (and the most set in their ways) have ridiculously picky specifications for things or horrendously annoying habits. I have had professors that, like my AP English teacher in High School, would NOT accept anything turned in on 'fuzzy paper', just because it annoys them. Or anything written in blue pen. Or anything that didn't conform to some other bizzare convention they held fast to. I even had a completely batshit insane Spanish 2 Teacher who was, of all things, Greek in origin, and just made class ridiculous (helpful, since the class in question was at 9:00 AM on a Saturday - this was when I started abusing caffeine; thank you caffeine, you are my God and Saviour). In fact there were so many things that professors commonly do that bugged me that I narrowed it down to my Top Five worst habits. It's not that I don't get why professors do some of these things, I do. I understand the logic behind them; for example, Dr. J is so picky about arrows because Organic Chemistry mechanisms are just LOUSY with planera. That still doesn't make it any less annoying to recieve a test back only to find out that Dr. J had removed half a point from a question for using the wrong type of arrow in a radical bromination reaction or for the back-attack in an SN2 reaction looking too messy or confusing. So without further ado, here's the 5 most annoying habits college professors have, my issues with them, and a possible reason why they do it.
- Setting a aximum Page Limit on Papers. Okay, for the Writing-Challenged in the audience, this at first seems like a non-issue - who writes to the maximum page limit? I do, and for me that max page limit is like being too warm and it's making you mildly uncomfortable and you can't turn the air on because the AC's broken in terms of annoyance. Why? Because I tend to write very, very, VERY long. I usually go around a page or two over the page limit anyway if I enjoy talking about the subject (not counting a works cited page), and I just don't wanna leave any information out that could be relevant. If a subject (like the topic of Homosexual Marriage) is interesting, I can write fifteen to 25 pages on it at double-spacing and 11-12 point font. If it's not I usually still put enough BS in to pad everything out so it looks convincing, and even then I can go over by a page or so. It just takes me a while to discribe everything I want to cover and to do so eloquently; a paper to me is as important as one of my stories is and thus I tend to write as much as I can. It's like my baby. My baby that I was forced to have. So when a professor sets a page limit I get a subconscious annoyed feeling and this slight anxiety that if I go over I'll be marked down on the paper, the paper I spent days perfecting and researching and writing. I actually once had a joint-class paper I had to do for Science and English in my freshman year of High School, and I went over the eight-page limit by three and a half pages. I had trimmed it down to this from around fifteen pages, and I was feeling confident I wouldn't have any issues doing well despite the limit. The English teacher gave me full credit. The science teacher marked me down to a B, just because I went three pages over and couldn't trim out any more information to please his arbitrary page limit. So in other words, because that teacher was too damn lazy to read three extra (quality!) pages, I lost points on the paper in that class. I have never forgiven that Science teacher and never will. I do get why professors do this, they don't wanna read a bunch of terribly long papers and they know if they don't set a minimum page requirement then the lazy members of the audience won't write a quality paper, but it still bothers me because sometimes I can't trim a paper down more without affecting overall quality, and as a perfectionist that bugs me. It's like having to rip my child's limbs off. Professors, why do you make me rip my child's limbs off? :c The only thing that bothers me more than max page limits is...
- Setting a God Damn Word Limit. Seriously? Are you OCD? Are you just so damn perfectionistic that you must count words to get your jollies? Who sits and does that all day? Well, some professors do, and it's about as annoying as using that crappy scratchy toilet paper in public bathroom TP dispensers. There's no excuse for setting a word limit, professors - nobody counts words anymore, that's what computers are for. This paper is not an entry in a competition, it is not a scholarship application, and it is not a poem. This paper does not require a 750-word limit, and setting word limits just pisses me off as a student and author because I personally can't put a full discussion into 750 words - that isn't my style of writing and it's just not possible for me to get all the important info into that word limit. For comparison, the four paragraphs in this entry about my professors this past semester are, combined, 794 words long, and that was just one side point of the whole blog I needed to get out of the way as reference for my main point. What it takes an average student 750 words to write, professor, it takes me double that amount. So if you want me to write you a paper about two different topics covered in the reading, it's going to go over 750 words, because that's the minimum I need to even get started on one subject! Four paragraphs! Try counting out the minimum paragraph number I need like every other normal teacher these days. How about five paragraphs? Is that enough for you? Does that fulfill your arbitrary basis of paper quality on the quantaty of words I write? Expecting a paper's word count to be an indicator of paper quality is like trying to put five bonds on a carbon - not only does that just not happen (Carbon can have only four bonds), having more bonds on the carbon doesn't mean that the quality of the product that carbon's in is better. Putting more of something doesn't always make something better; I could type the word "apples" 750 times and it would fulfill your arbitrary word limit, but it wouldn't be a quality paper. And furthermore, adding limits just limits creativity. Your student can only write as much as you let them, and while I do understand older professors doing this to spare their eyes having to read twenty three-page papers, it's still confining to the student, especially to students who write a LOT like I do. Furthermore, some word limits only specify a maximum, not a minimum, allowing slackers to get off easy by typing well below the maximum and passing it off as a good paper. Paragraph and sentence number minimums prevent this issue.
- Making Multiple Choice Problems That Take a Long Time To Solve. Science and Math professors, I'm looking at you. I can't understand for the life of me why some professors like to take questions that you need to work out on scratch paper and turn them into multiple choice questions, and this issue is really only prevalent with science and math professors. It just costs valuable time that could be spent answering other questions and takes up room to solve the problem. I had one Algebra professor who always wrote his tests like this, and it drove me insane. Dr. J also had this issue on her tests near the start of last semester where she'd say, "here solve this mechanism and name the product as the proper enantiomer LOL!" and then you had like four answers you could pick from involving Z/E nomenclature of alkenes and you had to do the mechanism as well and ARGH. Multiple choice questions, dear professors, are for short responses a student can easily mentally figure and then circle only, and that is all they should be used for. I realize you are trying to save space on the page or get your students thinking critically or whatever, but more often than not it just makes the student panic and think they'll run out of time trying to solve it. We students only have so much time to test, and for questions that take a lot of thinking to solve we need as much of that time as possible. To make questions that require a lot of thinking, like a multistep mechanism in Chemistry or a long factoring problem in Algebra, into multiple choice question just tricks the student into thinking it's an easier question until they realize they need more time to solve it because it's a tougher question. It's almost cruel to put the questions like that instead of as short answers, because a student will have to take extra time on that problem that could have been used solving another, tougher problem. It's as irritating as throwing some sand and sulfuric acid into your eyes and then rubbing them profusely, and it feels like a dirty trick to trip the student up. Bottom line, make problems that require a lot of forethought into short answer questions, NOT into multiple choice questions. Go ask the History professors how if you don't know, I'm sure they'll be willing to help, but for God's sake, stop pulling this card on students. It's mean. :c
- Giving All the Homework Through an Online Program. Let me tell you a story about my first Chemistry professor when I started college. I'll call him Professor Bob Marley because the guy was Jamaican and cool as Hell (no, he was not a Marijuana user as far as I know). Anyway, Professor Bob Marley was a good professor for Chemistry by all means, except for one fatal flaw. He didn't do textbook homework at all, and instead set all the homework up through the book's online parent site ARIS. Now the problem with ARIS and Chemistry is this - it's programmed to recognize only certain rules. For example, if your measurement doesn't have a decimal point even if it's not a decimal number, or has an extra zero after the decimal point, the answer is wrong. ARIS only recognizes a number like 456. mg, and not 456.0 mg or 456 mg despite those both being the same damn thing. Also, if you don't put an electron pair in just the right spot on a molecule, it's wrong. ARIS will, for instance, only recognize the unbonded electron pairs on a double-bonded Oxygen atom if you show the pairs at an angle to the bonds - not near the bonds or near each other despite those technically being correct. That last one threw me so many errors, I hated that error, it actually gave me a complex where I CANNOT draw a double-bonded Oxygen atom without putting those paired electrons on, and at an angle to each other (which is the most correct but seriously just putting the two electron pairs on there should have been recognized and corrected by ARIS to start with!). And if that's not enough, sometimes your answer will be right but ARIS will mark it wrong anyway! No points for you, ARIS is the Point Nazi! Even worse is when an online homework program just doesn't give you unlimited tries. Seriously, two programming errors later and that's it, no more chances. That's cruel and unusual punishment for having trouble with a problem, and it should be considered such. Either the programmers behind this are lazy or it's just a bad idea. I'm sticking with Dr. J and her tried-and-true hand-written, hard copy PAPER homework, thanks. I get you're trying to conserve paper and use the most of your technology, but online homework programs such as ARIS just cause more problems in the longrun because more often than not they glitch, are programmed badly, go down, or just don't work. If you're concerned about paper take the compromise route - write your own homework and put it up on Blackboard so I can download and print it myself. That way I'm wasting paper, not you, and it's also less that you have to do for your students. Leave the online homework programs to the birds. And speaking of Blackboard, my final pet peeve habit professors have is...
- Not Posting Grades on Blackboard Continuously Throughout The Semester. Oh God, I cannot stand this habit. How can I know how I'm doing in a class if you don't post my grades? How do I know what I need to work on and what I need to make the cut? I get that you're busy, you're professors. But for the love of Christ, this is just unacceptable. No, handing back papers isn't enough, because I don't want those papers back - I have them in hard copy or intend for you to do something with them; once a paper's done and handed in it becomes your problem, not mine. I don't need it back for a portfolio or whatever, I keep everything in a digital copy so if I need it later I can just print it again. Your red ink scribbles add nothing new to my paper except critique I'll take in mind for next time. I want to be able to track my grades in a nice, neat format like Blackboard has, that's why I check my grades there and why I don't keep the papers I stuff in my backpack with my notes, my textbooks, my lunch, and God only knows what else. If you don't want them, why not shred them and use them as compost? Or mulch it into the earth around your house? How about keeping a portfolio on your students who return for a second round of a subject so they can see where they've been and where they're going? But before you do that, post the grade on Blackboard so I can see it; I want to know how well I did without having to have twenty thousand papers that I'll just toss out anyway. It's wasteful and annoying. And please, for God's sake, just put the grade up in a timely manner. I don't wanna sit and worry about my grade on a paper while you go through the rest of your students' papers. I get it, you have lots of papers. But at least give me a ballpark estimate as to when it'll be done, because when you refuse to and then never post grades to Blackboard, God slaughters a kitten.