I think every student can relate to me when I say that we all have that 'one' professor. You know, the one who makes your life a living hell and makes it almost impossible to pass their class. Their class is the one that you dread going to for the fear of what they have in store for you.
My biggest pet peeve about professors are the ones that don't make it possible for you to succeed in their class. The best is when you have an exam coming up, and you or another student asks "what should we study for the exam?" The question that everyone sitting in class is dying to know the answer to, but only a few people have the courage to actually ask the professor.
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The professor's response: "your notes."
I'm sorry, what?
So you expect me to study the 20 pages of notes that I have been taking every day in your class for the past two months and memorize every single term and phrase in them? How is anyone able to do that? What these type of professors don't understand is, their class is not our only class!
Most of us have another four classes on top of theirs and don't have the time to spend hours studying our notes and the 60 pages of readings that were assigned to us. It's not human, I mean we also want to have a social life too.
Oh and the best part about having that 'one' professor is they almost ALWAYS will ask a question on the exam that was not in your notes.
Like why did I just waste hours of my life studying my notes for you to ask something that was not even in them?! This is when the anxiety kicks in.
This is extremely frustrating because a student can spend hours and hours studying their notes and picking out parts that they think will most likely be on the test, and trying to identify the most important terms and phrases, and then are thrown a complete curve ball.
So if you're a professor and you are reading this and realize that you actually are guilty of doing this to your poor students, here is a solution: give us a study guide.
It will honestly make everyone's life so much easier if you just give us a simple study guide of the important points that we should focus on and know for the class. It does not have to have only the things that will be on the test, but at least it will help narrow down the information and help us be more efficient when studying. Also, I'm sure you will see an improvement in the class' test scores as well, so it's a win-win!
This is not us students being lazy and wanting to just be able to sit back and get a good grade in your class because most of us are willing to do the work, but you have to meet us halfway.
So, if you're a student like me and you are currently suffering in a class similar to the one I just described, I feel your pain. I hope that this article gave you a good laugh and helped you realize that you are not the only one suffering from this.
And if you're a professor and you just realized that you're actually that 'one' professor, please just make all of our lives easier and narrow the information down and stop assuming that we somehow have superhuman brains that can retain every single thing you say.
