Reply to Navigating Bad Professors -- Advice for Kid

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Navigating Bad Professors -- Advice for Kid"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a professor and had a professor like this in grad school. I went to my chair when I was the student,  and he said he could do nothing.  If the professor is tenured (likely so for your D), it would be a long process, and it would be hard to prove retaliation because it wouldn't take much to fail your D at this point.

In my case, my professor actively targeted me. I think I reminded him of his wife who had recently divorced him. Once I realized the criticism wasn't entirely rational,  I was in a better frame of mind to cope and do whatever it took to survive. I started playing the part of convert and devotee to this professor asking to rewrite previous work and going far beyond the scope of assignments.  I would also ask for guidance,  not just on assignments,  but on the application of theories or other topics that might appeal to the ego. There is a difference in a student who only asks about assignments and one who asks about ideas. I'll bet this professor has lots of sycophants but few devotees. Sell her on your commitment to the work, even if it is a snowjob. Commit. Survive.
Also,  live long and prosper. Good luck![/quote]

Thank you, PP. That is disappointing to hear regarding the tenure. That is what the department head had told my daughter, but I didn't think that could be true. I appreciate your advice.[/quote]

DP: It's a lot like surviving a bad boss--you can complain above your bad boss, but it usually isn't going to help you much unless they do something that violates HR.  The plus side of this is learning how to negotiate around a problematic person who has authority over you.  An additional plus compared to a bad boss is that there really isn't something like "failing upward" among professors like there is in the private sector--so as arbitrary as the professor is about grading/assignments, they probably have something meaningful to offer intellectually if they have tenure since it's pretty arduous to get and professors in the field/discipline have to support the granting of tenure.  
In my experience, professors sometimes lose touch with how long something takes for students--in grad school I had professors who would often say 'this should take you about an hour' because it would take them with their level of expertise about an hour but the rest of us worked on it for 40 hours with 1/4 as good results.

So I agree with the above to encourage DD to exploit her interest in the theme to go to office hours and engage and ask questions and get feedback etc. that will a) if the issue is ego-driven support the ego or b) if the issue is that they are out of touch with how long something takes for an undergrad (vs a grad student or themselves as a professor) in their feedback they can often give you a structure that will eliminate a lot of missteps or set an architecture for your thinking that gets you further along. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics