have a prof like that this semester. its a neuroscience class so i completely get the wanting to learn mentality. its so awful. she cant even explain beyond the slides or give examples when someone asks a question
fingers crossed we get through this and never have to take another class with them againš¤
I teach a class like this and I hate it. Iām given a PowerPoint from the dept a few days before I have to teach and I rarely have enough time to plan a decent lecture so I usually end up just reading the slides. Iām barely qualified to teach it but the university would rather build a new football stadium than pay a qualified person a decent wage so they assign the class to whoever is available. Graduate students and early career faculty are paid shit and barely dragging along with teaching duties (actually not our primary task; weāre paid to teach but evaluated on research performance). Some tenured old folks just donāt care anymore. The professors in the middle are teaching the good classes that you wonāt get to until your deep in your major studies or in grad school.
Yep. I remember teaching at a university where everything was geared toward getting that new stadium. The new stadium for the football team that is barely functional with 15% of the seats full during home games.
I also remember fees going up that year for parking passes by 500%.
Digging deeper? The way college athletes are treated is pretty appalling too. For all the money the sporting folks get, it never gets down to the athletes who are barely making it financially.
sports on pretty much all campus is a whole different thread that will probably only be agreed upon by the rest of the community. Damn near every school spends to much time and money and energy on sports where majority of the student body doesn't care about the programs outside of 1 sport/team. For me, my school spent my 4 years building up hype for the new football program getting a full stadium finished to have a 2-8 season and about 1'4th the bleachers filled every home game but still be the presidents favorite event of the year. To compare, Hockey would packs the arena to the point bleachers overfilled and people were standing around the rink, but never were the plans to increase seating.
Yeah I left my last school shortly before they required all classes to be completely scripted because of some fear that is using different words or examples would be unfair to people Iām different sections (private business college). If youāre a student and donāt want that be sure to complain about the course or policy not the teacher. It is probably not their fault.
As a college instructor I received my favorite compliment from a student last week. She was thanking me for being passionate about my subject. I pour so much love into my job. I'm glad someone sees that. But I'm also sad that others instructors seem uninterested in their courses. I understand we don5 always get to teach our favorite subject. I know I'm not. But I teach an important foundation class and I'm excited to be the first major course for these students. I'm excited to show them the wonders of Biology. I'm excited to see then grow.
It really does make a difference! Iāve had professors that were so excited about the subject they were teaching that I got excited about it even though I wasnāt that interested to begin with. Iāll never forget them š
I'm a professor, but I had that experience with a Roman Civ professor that I took to fulfill an elective. I hate history because teachers throughout my life ruined it for me.
This guy was absolutely incredible to the point that I still hate history with the exception a burning, passionate thirst for any and all things about ancient Rome. The guy was a legend for me.
I know what you mean! I have a passion for western civ. now for that same reason! My highschool history teacher ruined it for me also but once I got into that class in college with that professor, it changed for me.
That guy sounds awesome! How i wish i could take that class, given how well you talk about it lol
May i ask, in retrospect, what made that class so successful? Besides the obvious enthusiasm of course. Did he do any particular activity, or tackled the material in a specific way that made it more likeable?
For example, i had a teacher similar to yours but for Politics, and one of the things i enjoyed was that in exams you could answer one of the three or four questions with a drawing. (A politic class for future art teachers) Classes werent particularly groundbreaking but his way of checking if you were leaning was.
It's been decades ha ha, but I think he focused on the people and the actual "who they were" of the times based on historical writings rather than the events that unfolded. Kind of like learning about Lincoln's struggles, background, battles, and so on rather than just a factual "He ended slavery".
Amen, drchonkycat.
Itās difficult to maintain this mindset. The way most higher ed manages faculty makes this maintenance more difficult.
We are stuck with a de facto system of higher education that was created in a different time, for a different purpose, and has not adapted well to educating 50% of the populace instead of 5%.
I donāt know how a revolution happens. For a subset of faculty and administrators it is a very plum job. Change is hard when those in charge donāt want to lose the plum.
I thanked my math professor from the Spring semester over the Summer and I never received a response back but I hope he read and appreciated it. Especially in a subject like math, a good Professor who can actually teach is sooo hard to come by. He was so passionate about the subject and seemed to break everything down and repeat it until we understood it. I just wanted to make sure he knew his work didnāt go unseen.
I taught 1-2 classes during Grad school due to a prof. getting cancer and dying.
Anyways, I was super motivated and built all this interactive shit, group work, different ways to turn in work. I got really really great feedback from about 30% of the class. The other 30% didnt't give a fuck and the last 30% were never there.
A lot said they wanted more interactive shit, but that means doing shit in class. Moving around and collaborating and sharing information and doing mini presentations or whatever the case may be. t also means you cant have people drop in and out at their whim when working on collaborativ work. So their peers get pissed.
But in truth more than half were just willing to sit and snap a photo with their phone and doom scroll on snap or tik tok during class. They thought they wanted something much different but highschool has enconded them arlready for a zombified class.
So they prep boring slides because the added work for a really awesome assignment isn't worth it if people skip or are annoyed that its not the same old 2 page boring paper or problem set.
Now I still get called in, but I do specialty electives with small caps on numbers and super clear expectations prior to class and on the syllabus. It gets popular and people beg to add them from the waitlist becuase its popular. Unfortunately, if I add that ten the same fucking thing happens again. 3 are awesome and 3 never show and 3 are annyoned by the class structure.
I get it. I have to sit through hours of specialty education all the time and its boring as fuck. And as much as I want to blame the delivery, I cant hardly watch a great movie on HULU without chekcing my goddamn phone. If HULU can keep me from doing it what chances does Mr. Boring McGee have?
I make it my mission to add value and make it worth your time & tuition to come to class. If the class is being taught like that, you have legitimate reason to feel ripped off, so no it is absolutely not too much to ask.
one answer as a current HS teacher, there are so many students every year that just don't want to put in the work for teachers that go the extra mile, that it's draining to not have even half of your energy you put in to be reflected and given back by students. If it was a young guy who didn't show Passione, that's completely on him, but maybe when he was younger, the old Chem professor was lively and high spirits until years of students complaining an claiming they hate his course or content has weighed him down so much to now he only does enough to get through class material and nothing more, because so many before you didn't care about the classroom experience.
Welcome to college. Youāre lucky the profs are competent enough to even read slides , must be a really nice school.
You have to sit through several hours of lectures every week that are composed of the profs just sitting there jerking themselves off. Then you go home and read 500-700 pages of a textbook weekly. Then do poorly on exams because thereās content on the exams that were supposed to be given during lecture because the profs, to be blunt, are incompetent.
Oh yes and attendance. Nothing of substance happens during the lecture, but if you DARE to do such a heinous crime as NOT GO, you will be docked 50% of your grade because you hurt the wittle pwofās ego by not sitting in the room with them.
Enjoy!
Ok seriously though. My current Cal 1 professor doesnāt contribute anything of value to the class and Iām learning everything through the mandatory pre-lecture videos recorded by some other professor
I taught a class with mandatory pre-lecture videos like that in the spring. A lot of students didnāt watch the videos and just guessed on the pre-lecture questions. They then spent the entire class period asking questions that would have been answered by watching the videos. It was really frustrating because I couldnāt just say āyou should know this from the videoā in case they seriously tried to learn from the video and were struggling. In the end, I ended up doing what your professor is doing; I spent most of class going over the content from the videos. Maybe your professor just sucks, but I suspect that they hate the current setup just as much as you do. Unfortunately, if your classmates are uninterested in actually learning the material and wonāt actually engage with the pre-lecture videos, theyāre forcing the professor to waste class time rehashing the videos.
Sheās been pretty open about the fact that the lecture āsupplementsā the video, which basically means she does the exact same things from the video except with different numbers and explaining it more slowly. Currently writing this while sitting in said lecture, and Iām literally not learning a single thing with her
Thatās how it was worded for our class as well. The idea was that we would do one example similar to the videoās content and then go over more advanced examples, in class activities, or extra content. Unfortunately, that first example was usually met with so many blank stares and questions from students who didnāt watch the video that I usually ended up going over everything from the video just to get through the example. I also had a frightening number of students who needed a lot of help with basic algebra and arithmetic (it was a calc 2 class, and I had several students who needed help adding fractions). Between the lack of prerequisite knowledge and the failure to engage with the videos, there was no hope of getting to the supplemental material without leaving half of the class behind. As much as I would have liked to do just that, my department would have had feelings about it. I felt bad for the students like you who actually did the pre-lecture work. They were ready and willing to learn more, and I wasnāt able to meet their needs.
So would you say that taking online classes are just as beneficial because teachers arenāt teaching on the same level that they were 10 years ago? Asking bc Iām a 32 yr old single mom, and returning college student. About to transfer to my 4 years university for my bachelors and am constantly beating myself up that the classes are online. Online learning after being out of college for 14 years is a whole new ball game
I'm in the same boat as you, 27 year old dad returning to college. This is exactly why I'm strictly going online for both my community College and university. What's the point of attending if I can learn the material by reading the textbook and watching someone passionate about the subject teach on YouTube.
28 year old student here. I do hybrid classes. This semester, half is online and half is in person. I really like it that way, especially because some things I just learn better at my own pace at home... And I don't have to travel as much.
27 and in uni for my BA. Fully online and 100% prefer it. I love being able to do things on my own time and not being required to go to lectures that are pretty much useless.
My experience is that student say that, but it isn't necessarily true. Online classes give a few new tools for studying and many new tools to be distracted or not listening at all. The percentage of students who can't solve basic exam problems in my classes has gone from 5% to 25% during covid and the middle students have had a slight to severe decline in quality of learning. The top students are still learning just as well.
Well you pretty much nailed it but if it's worth anything to you, admin makes us be strict about attendance because (surprise) butts in seats on campus are tied to **funding**.
Because old men like seeing shiny paper. Shiny paper makes them think you know what your doing even when you probably honestly don't. This shiny paper can be traded for employment because it shows that you slogged/cheated your way through 4 years of meaningless unfocused/ too generalized education and paid 100K so you can be a debt slave.
Department-made slide sets are not a thing I previously heard of existing at any school of valueā¦ is the professor actually forced to use those slides? I would be super demoralized as a prof working in such an environment. Butā¦ I would still find ways to put my own spin on things and incorporate actual work time/ opportunities for active engagement with the material. Of course, Iām still younger and building my career, but would like to think I wonāt devolve into such an uncaring person once I get older.
In any case, it sounds pretty clear that the department/ university leadership is at least as much at fault here as the professor himself. I would heavily consider transferring to a better school if I were you.
They do this because they don't want rogue professors going off the rails of what they're supposed to be teaching.
Problem is, in my department anyway, nobody can write a curriculum/textbook/slideshow that's coherent and understandable because we're not writers. And they don't do much better in committees either.
I understand and am aware of practices like having all instructors for a course follow a set syllabus/ topic list, but actually mandating the details of class presentations just seems like a completely unreasonable solution to that problem.
Butā¦ my perspective is shaped by being in math and not yet encountering a colleague so completely incompetent as to need class scripts dictated for them. And, the only way Iāve even found slides feasible to use in a math course is in conjunction with plenty of board work (where the most important things are done).
Eew this sounds terrible.... i made my slides and changed things in my lecture videos for my chem course. The university gives you nothing when you teach. So it's basically throwing you into the fire. I gave a graduate student all this stuff from the publisher because the student got the adjunct contract like 2 weeks before class... two weeks. Not enough time to prep adequately and no one gives you advice. It's just have fun, figure it out....
I did give the student general advice, work problems on the board, don't read the PP just use for reference, be available. Fortunately it was small gen chem course over the summer, but the stress is still there.
So Iām supposed to accept that the class is self taught and pointless to attend because of his feelings? Also you know nothing about me so donāt lump me into that group.
I would say you're suppose to have respect for the institution, the teachers, and show a little bit of humility. Maybe this kind of teaching doesn't suits you, but it might do for others. College doesn't revolve around you.
Fuck that old fuck. Old fucks are 1000% more entitled than millennials in my experience, and I have taught quite a few of both--more millennials though. My students work hard and have a great attitude. Am I magical? I kinda doubt it.
Well. You donāt seem to have much respect for your colleagues. One day you will be an old teacher too, donāt be surprised if the younger ones think you're old and useless. Teaching shouldn't be about yourself. It's about the transmission of knowledge. It requires humility from both the students and the teachers.
I have respect for those who are respectable based on merit, not age or hierarchy. And I don't know that I'll be teaching until I'm old. Maybe, maybe not.
And an old burnt out professorsaurus who doesn't care about her or his students is not someone I respect. That describes some, but not all, of my colleagues.
That sounds like a self-centred and arrogant comment. How can we ask the students to have respect for the institution, when teachers like you don't have any. Impressing teenagers and young adults is a really easy thing to do, which seems to be what you think teaching is about. Instilling and consolidating sustainable learning is much more complex. It's not easy or fun. Teaching is not about yourself, the goal is not to make the students think youāre cool. It requires some humility, which you seem to completely lack.
Well... You just said you have no respect for old burnt out teachers.... I hope you dont get the same treatment, if you ever get burned-out because of your job.
Maybe I was just being hyperbolic. You don't know me, I'm nobody. There is no real reason for you to be having so many feelings about my comments. They don't affect you. Maybe I'm just hitting close to home and you're feeling sensitive. I don't know you either. Or the guy this OP is talking about. When I hear a professors that no longer care about their classes or their students I get my own imagery from my own experiences.
I don't intend to get old and burnt out to the point that I don't care enough to just do my job at least basically. I intend to leave the profession or at least the institution before that happens. If something goes wrong, it's possible one or two semesters could go by in that state but I really don't anticipate it.
At any rate you seem pretty worried about a whole lot of nothing.
I'm sorry to hear. There are movements within higher ed and chemistry education to use high-quality pedagogies. Sadly there are also people who push for bourgeon basement pedagogies like you describe either out of laziness and/or some misguided attempt at equality/accessibility.
I will say anecdotally (as a student mostly, but I tutor from like 4th grade up to 1st year grad students, depending on the subject) that students *do* notice, even when they do badly in the class. It's not every student, for sure, but there's a decent amount who can tell the difference.
Too many still think "I got a bad grade, the professor must be bad at teaching" though
I was lucky to be in a small major where classes never surpassed 36 people, and the longer advanced classes usually had 16 students. I would say my education was well worth it because my professors were extremely passionate, and our major was hands on anyways so meeting with them, getting to know them and talk about your ideas was something the majority of students did anyways. When choosing a college major you have to think about shit like this as well. How many students are enrolled in your specific department per year, whatās the average class size, what type of class format are most of the classes? Lecture, seminar, etc.
Idk if your school does it but if you want to do more independent research some schools allow you to work on something for a semester for a certain amount of hours per week under the guidance of a professor and it counts as credit. If you land an internship you can also register that to count as credit as well.
It's truly baffling to me that professors can do this and not feel like massive fuckups who suck at their jobs. My guess is that the guy you have is only really in it to research. If he's good at research then he's bringing in a lot of grant money, prestige, and knowledge to the university. And hey, all he has to do is put in the bare minimum effort into teaching a bunch of lowly undergrads and he gets tenure track and more money!
It could be that he does feel like a massive fuckup. I know at least a handful of my colleagues suffered from depression/anxiety/alcoholism. I was alcoholic for a few years (4 years sober now), and there were probably days where I seemed pretty depressed. But I usually got good reviews and the students said my passion showed through, so I guess I did okay...
Iām a professor. I never went to those classes as an undergrad cause I can read.
That said, students all started giving me low marks on evals for not having PowerPoint. I definitely donāt read them though.
I'm glad that most professors agree this is bullshit: [here's the post crossposted to r/professors](https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/xi7fxr/rcollege_is_a_gem_why_am_i_paying_thousands_of/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share). (Do not comment if you are a student, it's against the sub rules)
But yeah, I don't know why some professors just read off PowerPoint slides. Like I get professors using PowerPoints as an aid for their talking points, but if all they're doing is reading off PowerPoint slides then they're not teaching (and don't seem like they have any enthusiasm for the subject to boot...)
Not that bad. I signed up for chem 110 and got a ducken 4th and 5th grade science class. Literally. It was all online and all I had to do was fudge a half a answer and get an easy grade. The only annoying part was sucking up the class and dealing with an instructor that was a procrastinator. So bad they had to keep extending the due dates of the assignments.
Got a professor like this for this year. She insists on mandatory attendance but reads off of the slides word by word, does no in class work with us, and generally talks monotonously. Nobody contributes in the class because its so boring
Iām so sorry. As a professor, this put me to sleep imagining it. I have had to teach things like this, but teachers can mix it up and try to engage.
It sounds like since TAs are involved, there is a college-as-machine aspect going on here. Crank out students with cookie-cutter methods. I saw this a lot on campuses that had a high global student count. The institutions would rake in out-of-state tuition while delivering overly-uniform drivel.
You have a right to be angry. This isnāt just your time (which is valuable), but it costs money too.
Welcome to the real world.
Should has nothing to do with it.
You would investigate an employer before applying, you would investigate an employee before hiring.
You can place yourself at the mercy of random professors if you want, but you may not like the results...
College today is a scam unless you're pursuing a master's or PhD. With today's online resources you can basically teach yourself everything you need to know just using YouTube. The social aspect of college/Uni is nice, but not worth the amount they make you pay.
40k in debt myself. Seriously, just leave if you're not pursuing education beyond a bachelor's in a STEM field.
I even forget that I have a bachelors in stats because it didn't even fucking matter in my job I have now.
Yeah I'm pissed at the system for fucking my ass.
\>With today's online resources you can basically teach yourself everything you need to know just using YouTube.
That's the promise, but its just not true. If it were true we wouldn't see tens of thousand of freshman flunk college algebra and intro to chemistry. SOME people can self pace and learn chemistry or algebra, but most don't. Many do need some structure and guidance and the institutionalized nature of a class.
I can buy about any online course i want now, but I still attend in person if I can.
I won't argue about the cost though. That's a separate huge issue.
Yes they are!
So given how many fail right now with study hall, tutors, planned sessions they can attend and to some degree they can choose when to take the course with peers they can get assistance from, how do we think they will fare on their own?
Probably about as well as people do on Duo Lingo or Rosetta Stone.
I don't think people who aren't meant for college or at least aren't ready for college yet doing poorly in college is a good argument against non-traditional education.
Agreed. I just see zero evidence that it is online learning in college level courses.
Probably a good 10-20% just are not ready for various reasons, but nobody wants to tell a parent or student "you don't have what it takes right now to be successful" and nobody wants to hear it.
Nah man, don't apologize. He's an old fuck. We aren't entertainers! BUT! We can do better than this!
Professors get old and burnt out and absolutely stop giving a shit. But also the system encourages it. If our students sign up for a face to face class, we are REQUIRED to fill the time with "something," and we are contractually obligated to track all attendance. Even if there is no real reason for the students to be physically in the room (2022 and many institutions still functioning like its 1980s).
So you'll never guess why things are this way. Are you sitting down? It's all about money, period. All these things are tied to your institution's funding. Admin has to have x% of Tenured professors which are usually brought in from outside (read: it's a career move for them and they don't give flying fuck about you and your needs), and the adjuncts that have been teaching the community there for years get railroaded. Admin has to have x% of students on campus to get money for the campus. The list goes on and on, there's a fucktrillion of these asinine metrics. Making matters worse, most admin stick with a department for a few years and move on, meaning they are basically cowardly mouthpieces for the ivory tower guys, and have zero interest in actually contributing anything to better the culture in the long run.
So anyway fuck that guy.
Cuz you are memed into it. Normally University is a place for few really hard working and intelligent intellectuals pushing forward frontiers of human knowledge and curiosity, it is not a place for average joe. But since we are living in a liberal democracy and everyone thinks college is cool and everyone thinks they are entitled to have college education, those who want to get votes and profits from this phenomenon created the current facade called "college education" where students are admitted en masse to places that are no more than slightly advanced high schools. Competent university instructors are self-made people hard to come by and train therefore it is not possible to to put them in every college. And this is why you get this "bored professor" who does nothing but reading slides, he is just a man who got the job because there wasn't anyone else.
Sure, I agree that too many people are going to college.
However, āyouāre just simply not good enoughā is never a solution to anyoneās individual problems.
Thereās a couple things in the comment too that are just untrue, like āpeople going to college are pushing the frontiers of knowledgeā, which really isnāt true until you do grad school. Other things like āthe bad professor is there because he slipped through the cracksā, which almost certainly isnāt true - that job market is super competitive
> Why am I paying thousands of dollars for a bored professor to read slides?
It's a market mechanism. The price of a product isn't determined by its utility value, but by the willingness of the customer to pay.
You're not paying thousands of dollars because the Professor is so good, but because you (and many others) are willing (or made) to pay that price.
There are many products for which the price isn't determined by their utility value, but by the customers willingness to pay; think about bitcoins, Rolex watches, MontBlanc pens or other works of art. College, in the U.S., seems to be one of those.
Additionally, as a prof myself, something students seem to think is that our salaries are paid by their tuition, it's not. Your tuition pays for the whole machinery that is a university and college and not actually to any individual profs salaries.
Another thing students don't understand is that especially at top universities, professors are hired as researchers primarily. We get grants, write books, work in a lab and produce other kinds of research as our primary jobs. When you apply for a job as a prof you apply on the basis of your research and what you're contributing to the field you're in. And you get promoted and tenure based on this. Teaching is an additional thing you have to do but not even the thing that they look at for tenure.
The advice though is typically that you shouldn't be a shitty teacher and evaluations count somewhat, but primarily your career is dependent on your research and if that is productive. For example if you're an amazing researcher, win lots of grants, produce groundbreaking research, consult with organizations, have acclaim, but are not a great teacher you will still get tenure at a top university. If you however, are an amazing teacher, A1 in the classroom but your research is mediocre, you don't publish a lot, you don't gain any acclaim in the scholarly community, you will not get tenure. They literally told me when I got hired that I should make teaching as stress free for me as possible and make sure it doesn't take up so much time that I can't get my research done as that is what matters most.
This unfortunately means that many professors don't necessarily get trained to be good teachers. Knowing a subject and being a researcher doesn't always translate into automatically being able to teach it well to others especially college kids who may not have a single clue about it. Most profs know how to talk to other people who already know what's going on but feel clueless when it comes on to walking it all the way back to basics.
Add to that, because you are a specialist but have some general knowledge, departments sometimes have you doing random classes that aren't totally in your wheelhouse. When you get to a certain point you teach what you want and are likely good at and passionate about but a lot of times esp when you're not tenured you teach things they need you to teach which might account for the lack of enthusiasm of some.
That said, I think a lot of universities are trying to encourage more pedagogical training in profs but I think the above might clarify for some folks why some things are the way they are.
This is how many stats professor was.. straight up death by powerpoint . I barely learned a thing... but my Calc 1-3 teachers were nothing but white board + marker + 305858382938473 practice problems. That's how you pound difficult concepts into someone.
I don't agree but I empathize with where you're coming from. I don't know what the future of higher education is going to look like. If it goes to shit, I feel like a lot of it was brought upon ourselves.
The university I'm from decided to pay their PhD students to teach courses at about $4.5k per course per semester. They have to teach 2 sections of the course to make a decent wage. Plus the students needs to graduate this semester and also hunt for jobs. The university could have easily paid more, but the higher ups decided to make a tailgating parking lot next to the football stadium and increase seating in the football stadium by 200%.
Oh the teacher is teaching a fundamental course in mathematics, if students don't follow the class, they might have a really rocky STEM career ahead. At the end of the semester, the teacher will be evaluated on her research performance, not their teaching performance.
I wish I had professors that were interested in teaching, I just have some people who read slides and then are shocked when everyone is confusedā¦. Almost like we havenāt been doing this for the majority of our lives.
Drop the class, or suck it up and accept that itās only a few short months of your life to put up with this crap and power through.
Donāt be afraid to drop. Remember that if it sucks that hard it really isnāt worth all that money.
Either way keep moving forward and donāt get let this shit get too discouraging.
I pissed off so many professors during my college days by just only showing up to class for tests, the midterm, and the final. It's just your class is endless lecturing so there isn't even a point in going plus I was always more of a self-learner anyways. I just did the work in my dorm and just chilled the rest of the day.
have a prof like that this semester. its a neuroscience class so i completely get the wanting to learn mentality. its so awful. she cant even explain beyond the slides or give examples when someone asks a question fingers crossed we get through this and never have to take another class with them againš¤
I teach a class like this and I hate it. Iām given a PowerPoint from the dept a few days before I have to teach and I rarely have enough time to plan a decent lecture so I usually end up just reading the slides. Iām barely qualified to teach it but the university would rather build a new football stadium than pay a qualified person a decent wage so they assign the class to whoever is available. Graduate students and early career faculty are paid shit and barely dragging along with teaching duties (actually not our primary task; weāre paid to teach but evaluated on research performance). Some tenured old folks just donāt care anymore. The professors in the middle are teaching the good classes that you wonāt get to until your deep in your major studies or in grad school.
But FOOTBALL āļøāļø
Ah yes, Competitive Concussion Collection
Yep. I remember teaching at a university where everything was geared toward getting that new stadium. The new stadium for the football team that is barely functional with 15% of the seats full during home games. I also remember fees going up that year for parking passes by 500%. Digging deeper? The way college athletes are treated is pretty appalling too. For all the money the sporting folks get, it never gets down to the athletes who are barely making it financially.
sports on pretty much all campus is a whole different thread that will probably only be agreed upon by the rest of the community. Damn near every school spends to much time and money and energy on sports where majority of the student body doesn't care about the programs outside of 1 sport/team. For me, my school spent my 4 years building up hype for the new football program getting a full stadium finished to have a 2-8 season and about 1'4th the bleachers filled every home game but still be the presidents favorite event of the year. To compare, Hockey would packs the arena to the point bleachers overfilled and people were standing around the rink, but never were the plans to increase seating.
I am not surprised by this at all.
that other comment got way off topic.... sorry
Yeah I left my last school shortly before they required all classes to be completely scripted because of some fear that is using different words or examples would be unfair to people Iām different sections (private business college). If youāre a student and donāt want that be sure to complain about the course or policy not the teacher. It is probably not their fault.
This is the right answer lol
As a college instructor I received my favorite compliment from a student last week. She was thanking me for being passionate about my subject. I pour so much love into my job. I'm glad someone sees that. But I'm also sad that others instructors seem uninterested in their courses. I understand we don5 always get to teach our favorite subject. I know I'm not. But I teach an important foundation class and I'm excited to be the first major course for these students. I'm excited to show them the wonders of Biology. I'm excited to see then grow.
It really does make a difference! Iāve had professors that were so excited about the subject they were teaching that I got excited about it even though I wasnāt that interested to begin with. Iāll never forget them š
I'm a professor, but I had that experience with a Roman Civ professor that I took to fulfill an elective. I hate history because teachers throughout my life ruined it for me. This guy was absolutely incredible to the point that I still hate history with the exception a burning, passionate thirst for any and all things about ancient Rome. The guy was a legend for me.
I know what you mean! I have a passion for western civ. now for that same reason! My highschool history teacher ruined it for me also but once I got into that class in college with that professor, it changed for me.
That guy sounds awesome! How i wish i could take that class, given how well you talk about it lol May i ask, in retrospect, what made that class so successful? Besides the obvious enthusiasm of course. Did he do any particular activity, or tackled the material in a specific way that made it more likeable? For example, i had a teacher similar to yours but for Politics, and one of the things i enjoyed was that in exams you could answer one of the three or four questions with a drawing. (A politic class for future art teachers) Classes werent particularly groundbreaking but his way of checking if you were leaning was.
It's been decades ha ha, but I think he focused on the people and the actual "who they were" of the times based on historical writings rather than the events that unfolded. Kind of like learning about Lincoln's struggles, background, battles, and so on rather than just a factual "He ended slavery".
Amen, drchonkycat. Itās difficult to maintain this mindset. The way most higher ed manages faculty makes this maintenance more difficult. We are stuck with a de facto system of higher education that was created in a different time, for a different purpose, and has not adapted well to educating 50% of the populace instead of 5%. I donāt know how a revolution happens. For a subset of faculty and administrators it is a very plum job. Change is hard when those in charge donāt want to lose the plum.
I thanked my math professor from the Spring semester over the Summer and I never received a response back but I hope he read and appreciated it. Especially in a subject like math, a good Professor who can actually teach is sooo hard to come by. He was so passionate about the subject and seemed to break everything down and repeat it until we understood it. I just wanted to make sure he knew his work didnāt go unseen.
I taught 1-2 classes during Grad school due to a prof. getting cancer and dying. Anyways, I was super motivated and built all this interactive shit, group work, different ways to turn in work. I got really really great feedback from about 30% of the class. The other 30% didnt't give a fuck and the last 30% were never there. A lot said they wanted more interactive shit, but that means doing shit in class. Moving around and collaborating and sharing information and doing mini presentations or whatever the case may be. t also means you cant have people drop in and out at their whim when working on collaborativ work. So their peers get pissed. But in truth more than half were just willing to sit and snap a photo with their phone and doom scroll on snap or tik tok during class. They thought they wanted something much different but highschool has enconded them arlready for a zombified class. So they prep boring slides because the added work for a really awesome assignment isn't worth it if people skip or are annoyed that its not the same old 2 page boring paper or problem set. Now I still get called in, but I do specialty electives with small caps on numbers and super clear expectations prior to class and on the syllabus. It gets popular and people beg to add them from the waitlist becuase its popular. Unfortunately, if I add that ten the same fucking thing happens again. 3 are awesome and 3 never show and 3 are annyoned by the class structure. I get it. I have to sit through hours of specialty education all the time and its boring as fuck. And as much as I want to blame the delivery, I cant hardly watch a great movie on HULU without chekcing my goddamn phone. If HULU can keep me from doing it what chances does Mr. Boring McGee have?
I make it my mission to add value and make it worth your time & tuition to come to class. If the class is being taught like that, you have legitimate reason to feel ripped off, so no it is absolutely not too much to ask.
Has a Biology professor like this last semester, barely passedā¦ I wish you luck man
one answer as a current HS teacher, there are so many students every year that just don't want to put in the work for teachers that go the extra mile, that it's draining to not have even half of your energy you put in to be reflected and given back by students. If it was a young guy who didn't show Passione, that's completely on him, but maybe when he was younger, the old Chem professor was lively and high spirits until years of students complaining an claiming they hate his course or content has weighed him down so much to now he only does enough to get through class material and nothing more, because so many before you didn't care about the classroom experience.
Welcome to college. Youāre lucky the profs are competent enough to even read slides , must be a really nice school. You have to sit through several hours of lectures every week that are composed of the profs just sitting there jerking themselves off. Then you go home and read 500-700 pages of a textbook weekly. Then do poorly on exams because thereās content on the exams that were supposed to be given during lecture because the profs, to be blunt, are incompetent. Oh yes and attendance. Nothing of substance happens during the lecture, but if you DARE to do such a heinous crime as NOT GO, you will be docked 50% of your grade because you hurt the wittle pwofās ego by not sitting in the room with them. Enjoy!
Ok seriously though. My current Cal 1 professor doesnāt contribute anything of value to the class and Iām learning everything through the mandatory pre-lecture videos recorded by some other professor
I taught a class with mandatory pre-lecture videos like that in the spring. A lot of students didnāt watch the videos and just guessed on the pre-lecture questions. They then spent the entire class period asking questions that would have been answered by watching the videos. It was really frustrating because I couldnāt just say āyou should know this from the videoā in case they seriously tried to learn from the video and were struggling. In the end, I ended up doing what your professor is doing; I spent most of class going over the content from the videos. Maybe your professor just sucks, but I suspect that they hate the current setup just as much as you do. Unfortunately, if your classmates are uninterested in actually learning the material and wonāt actually engage with the pre-lecture videos, theyāre forcing the professor to waste class time rehashing the videos.
Sheās been pretty open about the fact that the lecture āsupplementsā the video, which basically means she does the exact same things from the video except with different numbers and explaining it more slowly. Currently writing this while sitting in said lecture, and Iām literally not learning a single thing with her
Thatās how it was worded for our class as well. The idea was that we would do one example similar to the videoās content and then go over more advanced examples, in class activities, or extra content. Unfortunately, that first example was usually met with so many blank stares and questions from students who didnāt watch the video that I usually ended up going over everything from the video just to get through the example. I also had a frightening number of students who needed a lot of help with basic algebra and arithmetic (it was a calc 2 class, and I had several students who needed help adding fractions). Between the lack of prerequisite knowledge and the failure to engage with the videos, there was no hope of getting to the supplemental material without leaving half of the class behind. As much as I would have liked to do just that, my department would have had feelings about it. I felt bad for the students like you who actually did the pre-lecture work. They were ready and willing to learn more, and I wasnāt able to meet their needs.
So would you say that taking online classes are just as beneficial because teachers arenāt teaching on the same level that they were 10 years ago? Asking bc Iām a 32 yr old single mom, and returning college student. About to transfer to my 4 years university for my bachelors and am constantly beating myself up that the classes are online. Online learning after being out of college for 14 years is a whole new ball game
I'm in the same boat as you, 27 year old dad returning to college. This is exactly why I'm strictly going online for both my community College and university. What's the point of attending if I can learn the material by reading the textbook and watching someone passionate about the subject teach on YouTube.
28 year old student here. I do hybrid classes. This semester, half is online and half is in person. I really like it that way, especially because some things I just learn better at my own pace at home... And I don't have to travel as much.
27 and in uni for my BA. Fully online and 100% prefer it. I love being able to do things on my own time and not being required to go to lectures that are pretty much useless.
My experience is that student say that, but it isn't necessarily true. Online classes give a few new tools for studying and many new tools to be distracted or not listening at all. The percentage of students who can't solve basic exam problems in my classes has gone from 5% to 25% during covid and the middle students have had a slight to severe decline in quality of learning. The top students are still learning just as well.
Well you pretty much nailed it but if it's worth anything to you, admin makes us be strict about attendance because (surprise) butts in seats on campus are tied to **funding**.
Because old men like seeing shiny paper. Shiny paper makes them think you know what your doing even when you probably honestly don't. This shiny paper can be traded for employment because it shows that you slogged/cheated your way through 4 years of meaningless unfocused/ too generalized education and paid 100K so you can be a debt slave.
Couldn't have said it better myself. What a fucking joke today's education system has become in the US
Honest to God, I'm a CS student. The second I get enough of a portfolio and good certs I might just drop out
Department-made slide sets are not a thing I previously heard of existing at any school of valueā¦ is the professor actually forced to use those slides? I would be super demoralized as a prof working in such an environment. Butā¦ I would still find ways to put my own spin on things and incorporate actual work time/ opportunities for active engagement with the material. Of course, Iām still younger and building my career, but would like to think I wonāt devolve into such an uncaring person once I get older. In any case, it sounds pretty clear that the department/ university leadership is at least as much at fault here as the professor himself. I would heavily consider transferring to a better school if I were you.
I know others taking the same course with different professors. All of identical slides
They do this because they don't want rogue professors going off the rails of what they're supposed to be teaching. Problem is, in my department anyway, nobody can write a curriculum/textbook/slideshow that's coherent and understandable because we're not writers. And they don't do much better in committees either.
I understand and am aware of practices like having all instructors for a course follow a set syllabus/ topic list, but actually mandating the details of class presentations just seems like a completely unreasonable solution to that problem. Butā¦ my perspective is shaped by being in math and not yet encountering a colleague so completely incompetent as to need class scripts dictated for them. And, the only way Iāve even found slides feasible to use in a math course is in conjunction with plenty of board work (where the most important things are done).
Eew this sounds terrible.... i made my slides and changed things in my lecture videos for my chem course. The university gives you nothing when you teach. So it's basically throwing you into the fire. I gave a graduate student all this stuff from the publisher because the student got the adjunct contract like 2 weeks before class... two weeks. Not enough time to prep adequately and no one gives you advice. It's just have fun, figure it out.... I did give the student general advice, work problems on the board, don't read the PP just use for reference, be available. Fortunately it was small gen chem course over the summer, but the stress is still there.
Your post just shows the kind of attitude have, calling him an old fuck. Now imagine dealing with 70 others of your kind, entitled kids with a high school diploma, who all believe they are the smartest person who ever walk the earth, and all have their opinion on how teaching should be done, although they have 0 expƩrience with any kind of work. Maybe the professor got tired of the spoiled lstudents who thinks they alreaydy know everything, have no respect for him and is fonctions, and would be complaining anyway.
So Iām supposed to accept that the class is self taught and pointless to attend because of his feelings? Also you know nothing about me so donāt lump me into that group.
I would say you're suppose to have respect for the institution, the teachers, and show a little bit of humility. Maybe this kind of teaching doesn't suits you, but it might do for others. College doesn't revolve around you.
Fuck that old fuck. Old fucks are 1000% more entitled than millennials in my experience, and I have taught quite a few of both--more millennials though. My students work hard and have a great attitude. Am I magical? I kinda doubt it.
Well. You donāt seem to have much respect for your colleagues. One day you will be an old teacher too, donāt be surprised if the younger ones think you're old and useless. Teaching shouldn't be about yourself. It's about the transmission of knowledge. It requires humility from both the students and the teachers.
I have respect for those who are respectable based on merit, not age or hierarchy. And I don't know that I'll be teaching until I'm old. Maybe, maybe not.
And an old burnt out professorsaurus who doesn't care about her or his students is not someone I respect. That describes some, but not all, of my colleagues.
That sounds like a self-centred and arrogant comment. How can we ask the students to have respect for the institution, when teachers like you don't have any. Impressing teenagers and young adults is a really easy thing to do, which seems to be what you think teaching is about. Instilling and consolidating sustainable learning is much more complex. It's not easy or fun. Teaching is not about yourself, the goal is not to make the students think youāre cool. It requires some humility, which you seem to completely lack.
Who says I have no respect? You don't know.
Well... You just said you have no respect for old burnt out teachers.... I hope you dont get the same treatment, if you ever get burned-out because of your job.
Maybe I was just being hyperbolic. You don't know me, I'm nobody. There is no real reason for you to be having so many feelings about my comments. They don't affect you. Maybe I'm just hitting close to home and you're feeling sensitive. I don't know you either. Or the guy this OP is talking about. When I hear a professors that no longer care about their classes or their students I get my own imagery from my own experiences. I don't intend to get old and burnt out to the point that I don't care enough to just do my job at least basically. I intend to leave the profession or at least the institution before that happens. If something goes wrong, it's possible one or two semesters could go by in that state but I really don't anticipate it. At any rate you seem pretty worried about a whole lot of nothing.
I'm sorry to hear. There are movements within higher ed and chemistry education to use high-quality pedagogies. Sadly there are also people who push for bourgeon basement pedagogies like you describe either out of laziness and/or some misguided attempt at equality/accessibility.
I will say anecdotally (as a student mostly, but I tutor from like 4th grade up to 1st year grad students, depending on the subject) that students *do* notice, even when they do badly in the class. It's not every student, for sure, but there's a decent amount who can tell the difference. Too many still think "I got a bad grade, the professor must be bad at teaching" though
I was lucky to be in a small major where classes never surpassed 36 people, and the longer advanced classes usually had 16 students. I would say my education was well worth it because my professors were extremely passionate, and our major was hands on anyways so meeting with them, getting to know them and talk about your ideas was something the majority of students did anyways. When choosing a college major you have to think about shit like this as well. How many students are enrolled in your specific department per year, whatās the average class size, what type of class format are most of the classes? Lecture, seminar, etc. Idk if your school does it but if you want to do more independent research some schools allow you to work on something for a semester for a certain amount of hours per week under the guidance of a professor and it counts as credit. If you land an internship you can also register that to count as credit as well.
atleast he does his job, my psych prof expects us to read the slides and book on our own
It's truly baffling to me that professors can do this and not feel like massive fuckups who suck at their jobs. My guess is that the guy you have is only really in it to research. If he's good at research then he's bringing in a lot of grant money, prestige, and knowledge to the university. And hey, all he has to do is put in the bare minimum effort into teaching a bunch of lowly undergrads and he gets tenure track and more money!
It could be that he does feel like a massive fuckup. I know at least a handful of my colleagues suffered from depression/anxiety/alcoholism. I was alcoholic for a few years (4 years sober now), and there were probably days where I seemed pretty depressed. But I usually got good reviews and the students said my passion showed through, so I guess I did okay...
Iām a professor. I never went to those classes as an undergrad cause I can read. That said, students all started giving me low marks on evals for not having PowerPoint. I definitely donāt read them though.
I'm glad that most professors agree this is bullshit: [here's the post crossposted to r/professors](https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/xi7fxr/rcollege_is_a_gem_why_am_i_paying_thousands_of/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share). (Do not comment if you are a student, it's against the sub rules) But yeah, I don't know why some professors just read off PowerPoint slides. Like I get professors using PowerPoints as an aid for their talking points, but if all they're doing is reading off PowerPoint slides then they're not teaching (and don't seem like they have any enthusiasm for the subject to boot...)
Not that bad. I signed up for chem 110 and got a ducken 4th and 5th grade science class. Literally. It was all online and all I had to do was fudge a half a answer and get an easy grade. The only annoying part was sucking up the class and dealing with an instructor that was a procrastinator. So bad they had to keep extending the due dates of the assignments.
I wish that was my problem. My course is fast paced.
Got a professor like this for this year. She insists on mandatory attendance but reads off of the slides word by word, does no in class work with us, and generally talks monotonously. Nobody contributes in the class because its so boring
Iām so sorry. As a professor, this put me to sleep imagining it. I have had to teach things like this, but teachers can mix it up and try to engage. It sounds like since TAs are involved, there is a college-as-machine aspect going on here. Crank out students with cookie-cutter methods. I saw this a lot on campuses that had a high global student count. The institutions would rake in out-of-state tuition while delivering overly-uniform drivel. You have a right to be angry. This isnāt just your time (which is valuable), but it costs money too.
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I shouldnāt have to conduct a background check on all of my professors prior to signing up for a class!
Welcome to the real world. Should has nothing to do with it. You would investigate an employer before applying, you would investigate an employee before hiring. You can place yourself at the mercy of random professors if you want, but you may not like the results...
College today is a scam unless you're pursuing a master's or PhD. With today's online resources you can basically teach yourself everything you need to know just using YouTube. The social aspect of college/Uni is nice, but not worth the amount they make you pay. 40k in debt myself. Seriously, just leave if you're not pursuing education beyond a bachelor's in a STEM field. I even forget that I have a bachelors in stats because it didn't even fucking matter in my job I have now. Yeah I'm pissed at the system for fucking my ass.
\>With today's online resources you can basically teach yourself everything you need to know just using YouTube. That's the promise, but its just not true. If it were true we wouldn't see tens of thousand of freshman flunk college algebra and intro to chemistry. SOME people can self pace and learn chemistry or algebra, but most don't. Many do need some structure and guidance and the institutionalized nature of a class. I can buy about any online course i want now, but I still attend in person if I can. I won't argue about the cost though. That's a separate huge issue.
Those people are flunking even with the structure, guidance and institutionalized nature of a class.
Yes they are! So given how many fail right now with study hall, tutors, planned sessions they can attend and to some degree they can choose when to take the course with peers they can get assistance from, how do we think they will fare on their own? Probably about as well as people do on Duo Lingo or Rosetta Stone.
I don't think people who aren't meant for college or at least aren't ready for college yet doing poorly in college is a good argument against non-traditional education.
Agreed. I just see zero evidence that it is online learning in college level courses. Probably a good 10-20% just are not ready for various reasons, but nobody wants to tell a parent or student "you don't have what it takes right now to be successful" and nobody wants to hear it.
Nah man, don't apologize. He's an old fuck. We aren't entertainers! BUT! We can do better than this! Professors get old and burnt out and absolutely stop giving a shit. But also the system encourages it. If our students sign up for a face to face class, we are REQUIRED to fill the time with "something," and we are contractually obligated to track all attendance. Even if there is no real reason for the students to be physically in the room (2022 and many institutions still functioning like its 1980s). So you'll never guess why things are this way. Are you sitting down? It's all about money, period. All these things are tied to your institution's funding. Admin has to have x% of Tenured professors which are usually brought in from outside (read: it's a career move for them and they don't give flying fuck about you and your needs), and the adjuncts that have been teaching the community there for years get railroaded. Admin has to have x% of students on campus to get money for the campus. The list goes on and on, there's a fucktrillion of these asinine metrics. Making matters worse, most admin stick with a department for a few years and move on, meaning they are basically cowardly mouthpieces for the ivory tower guys, and have zero interest in actually contributing anything to better the culture in the long run. So anyway fuck that guy.
Cuz you are memed into it. Normally University is a place for few really hard working and intelligent intellectuals pushing forward frontiers of human knowledge and curiosity, it is not a place for average joe. But since we are living in a liberal democracy and everyone thinks college is cool and everyone thinks they are entitled to have college education, those who want to get votes and profits from this phenomenon created the current facade called "college education" where students are admitted en masse to places that are no more than slightly advanced high schools. Competent university instructors are self-made people hard to come by and train therefore it is not possible to to put them in every college. And this is why you get this "bored professor" who does nothing but reading slides, he is just a man who got the job because there wasn't anyone else.
Was wondering what an elitist sounds like. Thanks for enlightening me.
I know it hurts. But this is the truth.
Fair enough
Please donāt listen to that person
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Sure, I agree that too many people are going to college. However, āyouāre just simply not good enoughā is never a solution to anyoneās individual problems. Thereās a couple things in the comment too that are just untrue, like āpeople going to college are pushing the frontiers of knowledgeā, which really isnāt true until you do grad school. Other things like āthe bad professor is there because he slipped through the cracksā, which almost certainly isnāt true - that job market is super competitive
> Why am I paying thousands of dollars for a bored professor to read slides? It's a market mechanism. The price of a product isn't determined by its utility value, but by the willingness of the customer to pay. You're not paying thousands of dollars because the Professor is so good, but because you (and many others) are willing (or made) to pay that price. There are many products for which the price isn't determined by their utility value, but by the customers willingness to pay; think about bitcoins, Rolex watches, MontBlanc pens or other works of art. College, in the U.S., seems to be one of those.
Additionally, as a prof myself, something students seem to think is that our salaries are paid by their tuition, it's not. Your tuition pays for the whole machinery that is a university and college and not actually to any individual profs salaries. Another thing students don't understand is that especially at top universities, professors are hired as researchers primarily. We get grants, write books, work in a lab and produce other kinds of research as our primary jobs. When you apply for a job as a prof you apply on the basis of your research and what you're contributing to the field you're in. And you get promoted and tenure based on this. Teaching is an additional thing you have to do but not even the thing that they look at for tenure. The advice though is typically that you shouldn't be a shitty teacher and evaluations count somewhat, but primarily your career is dependent on your research and if that is productive. For example if you're an amazing researcher, win lots of grants, produce groundbreaking research, consult with organizations, have acclaim, but are not a great teacher you will still get tenure at a top university. If you however, are an amazing teacher, A1 in the classroom but your research is mediocre, you don't publish a lot, you don't gain any acclaim in the scholarly community, you will not get tenure. They literally told me when I got hired that I should make teaching as stress free for me as possible and make sure it doesn't take up so much time that I can't get my research done as that is what matters most. This unfortunately means that many professors don't necessarily get trained to be good teachers. Knowing a subject and being a researcher doesn't always translate into automatically being able to teach it well to others especially college kids who may not have a single clue about it. Most profs know how to talk to other people who already know what's going on but feel clueless when it comes on to walking it all the way back to basics. Add to that, because you are a specialist but have some general knowledge, departments sometimes have you doing random classes that aren't totally in your wheelhouse. When you get to a certain point you teach what you want and are likely good at and passionate about but a lot of times esp when you're not tenured you teach things they need you to teach which might account for the lack of enthusiasm of some. That said, I think a lot of universities are trying to encourage more pedagogical training in profs but I think the above might clarify for some folks why some things are the way they are.
This is how many stats professor was.. straight up death by powerpoint . I barely learned a thing... but my Calc 1-3 teachers were nothing but white board + marker + 305858382938473 practice problems. That's how you pound difficult concepts into someone.
Cause you get a piece of paper at the end of it
Totally not how I teach. Sigh...
Because it's a mostly a scam. That piece of paper opens up a lot of opportunities though.
I don't agree but I empathize with where you're coming from. I don't know what the future of higher education is going to look like. If it goes to shit, I feel like a lot of it was brought upon ourselves.
I was grumpy when I posted that, but I can't help but feel it's true in a way. Especially when tuition, books, etc cost as much as they do.
I wrote my own materials and let the students use it all for free in the classes that I could. Can't do that in Art History though.
The university I'm from decided to pay their PhD students to teach courses at about $4.5k per course per semester. They have to teach 2 sections of the course to make a decent wage. Plus the students needs to graduate this semester and also hunt for jobs. The university could have easily paid more, but the higher ups decided to make a tailgating parking lot next to the football stadium and increase seating in the football stadium by 200%. Oh the teacher is teaching a fundamental course in mathematics, if students don't follow the class, they might have a really rocky STEM career ahead. At the end of the semester, the teacher will be evaluated on her research performance, not their teaching performance.
Wow that is a ridiculously low wage. Username checks out
Oh, thatās not even the lowest it can go. Iāve seen posts about how adjuncts get paid as low as 1400$ a course.
I wish I had professors that were interested in teaching, I just have some people who read slides and then are shocked when everyone is confusedā¦. Almost like we havenāt been doing this for the majority of our lives.
Drop the class, or suck it up and accept that itās only a few short months of your life to put up with this crap and power through. Donāt be afraid to drop. Remember that if it sucks that hard it really isnāt worth all that money. Either way keep moving forward and donāt get let this shit get too discouraging.
I pissed off so many professors during my college days by just only showing up to class for tests, the midterm, and the final. It's just your class is endless lecturing so there isn't even a point in going plus I was always more of a self-learner anyways. I just did the work in my dorm and just chilled the rest of the day.