As students, we have the duty of accommodating to our various professors, but that doesn't mean we like it.
Some professors make us bend and stretch for them, and others have lenient polices and bonus points. While every professor is different, here are 7 things across the board that drive students mad.
1. Showing up to class late.
Most of us start showing up to the classroom 15 minutes before class starts. I’m not saying the professor has to be there that early, but 10 minutes before hand is courteous. It drives me up a wall when professors show up a minute or two before class starts, particularly on exam days. My old basketball coach used to always tell us, if we weren’t 15 minutes early- we were late. When the professor strolls into class at 9:29 for a 9:30 AM test, approximately 90 of us are waiting in the hallway for you to come and open up the classroom. Then we have deal with fitting a flood of people through a skinny door, and if one of us has a question, now it is pushed to after class.
If the teacher is actually late that’s even worse. Don’t worry, take your time. No one is paying for you to be here or anything.
2. Cancelling class without proper notice.
If you are going to cancel class, I think the “professional appointment” rule should generally be followed. Emergencies are not included in this of course, but please give us 24 hours. We have pressing matters also, and jobs, so we don’t check our student email every 30 minutes. In one full day, the large majority of us would have gotten word there isn’t class.
Nothing sucks more than busting your butt to get through traffic, and then waiting outside the door just to hear someone say, “Oh I just checked my email… she canceled 2 hours ago.” If you give us notice, I love to hear class is cancelled!!!
3. Reading us the textbook and calling it a lecture.
Congrats, you have just gone from a professor to an audiobook. I had a class this semester that forced us to read the entire textbook and do tons of these short quizzes for all the sections. We had one due about two times every week; it felt like I was doing them constantly. With that, the teacher decided to use PowerPoints distributed by the textbook maker… So I read the whole chapter a day or two before… and then went to class to hear it read back to me in a different way. It was basically a big waste of time.
4. Putting ridiculously specific questions on exams.
This includes questions that usually have answers like… A) 110,000 B) 235,000 C) 399,000 and so on…
Unless you say, “THIS DATE or THIS NUMBER WILL BE ON THE TEST,” you have offically done us dirty but putting it on there. If the class is centered around concepts, we will probably assume we have to remember the principle behind it and not the number.
5. Taking forever to put grades in… or not putting grades in at all.
I’ll give it to my teachers this semester. They graded everything in a fairly reasonable amount of time. I just wish every professor knew that as the days go on, we are thinking about that grade. People like myself are checking D2L anticipating the grade posting probably a couple times in one day. It is so agonizing to think… oh I have no idea how I did. I needed to get an A on this test. Has it posted? No, not posted. No, not posted. Etc. Our grades are important. Some need a certain GPA to keep Hope or Zell. Some plan on going to law school.
Also, as a professor, why would you choose not to use the grade posting function? I get that it’s an additional task, but then you don’t have students hovering over you wondering what their grade is. And everyone can be on the same page about what we got on things.
6. Making us bring our own scantrons
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Making me bring my own scantron is like bringing you a sword to stab me with. Except the sword costs a quarter. Still. Now I not only have to force myself to study for this test, but I also have to remind myself to buy a scantron before it. My brain can only remember so much. Plus I might need that quarter.
7. Assigning homework and not taking it up.
Some classes are meant to be heavy in homework, and I get that you can’t grade every single one, but can’t you just take those few as completion grades or something?! Nothing makes me “ughhhhh” more than busting my buns to complete an assignment and then be told it isn’t being taken up. During busy weeks I have like every hour of my time accounted for, and knowing those 30 minutes were essentially wasted- drives efficiency freaks like me crazy.
Overall, I've had good professors. My general view of them is definitely positive; they serve an important role in our community. That doesn't mean that a few of them do not make our lives as students more difficult though.
