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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you look at the time stamp of the professor’s post, it’s 2 am. He/she is up late working and complaining about it. We all have to work late sometimes. Get over it or find a different job.

And yeah, [b]I think professors are self-absorbed, arrogant blowhards whose puffed-up sense of self-importance far outweighs the drivel that they constantly publish and teach. [/b]

[/quote]
Again, why are you sending your child to college to take classes with professors? If you truly believed this, why not refuse to send your child to college and instead spend four years as an apprentice somehwere? 
Frankly, you sound deeply insecure.[/quote]

1. You have no idea why they are awake at 2am, it may just be insomnia.

2. Everyone I'm related to is a professor or a teacher, and yes, they are arrogant blowhards. Most truly believe that their one, small area of expertise allows them authority in all other areas of expertise and they look down on anyone who chose to leverage their intellect in a lucrative field. Or who are pursuing funded research.

So yes, I find their opinions to be biased and self-serving.

3. I value professors and education, but I don't want my child's opportunities to be limited by a SLAC. The professor in OP's post seemed to imply that you can only benefit from an educational model of a small school with professors only focused on teaching. I disagree. I send my child to a mid-sized T20 school, R1, with lots of professional schools in affiliation, because I think that educational model is the right fit for this generation of academically motivated kids. Mid-sized provides plenty of close contact with professors/labs/research opportunities, without being oppressively small or isolated geographically. RI and affiliation with graduate schools means even more opportunities for shadowing, research, and visualizing career pathways.

There are lots of opportunities to work closely with professors, both those who are focused only on teaching and those doing exciting research. 
[/quote]

Late-night PP here.

1. Too many meetings during the day to get to what my students deserved, so late night it is. Some jobs don't come home with people at night.  Many jobs do, and this is one of them.  But addressing students' needs isn't a function of ego.

2. Fair in terms of your response to your own relatives, but please don't extend it to the whole profession.  Like folks in other fields, most of us tend to want to do the right thing and work very hard at it.  I love my career and don't mind that it's not what other people want to do.  The world needs us all in different ways.

3. It sounds like you found a good match for your kid - and provided an example of how great teaching, mentoring, and research can be available at many different kinds of institutions.  You genuinely have to take it one department at a time in many cases.  Just because an institution hires and fires based on teaching doesn't mean all of the faculty are great teachers any more than every tenured scientist at an R1 is a prizewinning researcher.  Most departments will welcome a prospective student to spend a real day with them, and kids can learn a lot that way when they are trying to make college choices.[/quote]

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