Home › Forums › Archives › Community Center › The BigBlueBall Lounge › Time to rant…
- This topic has 7 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 19 years ago by m3rcy.
-
AuthorPosts
-
April 13, 2005 at 7:02 am #17846TigerbladeParticipant
I don’t normally go off on rants like this, but this time I had to.
I have to start off saying that right now I’m a junior in college, majoring in General Management and minoring in Psychology. this semester I have a class called “Learning and Conditioning” which is all about behavior, conditioning, learning, etc… it’s the one class in my whole schedule that I really enjoy going to; I look forward to that class.
That said, I also have a night class (2.5 hours long one night a week) called “Organization and Behavior.” last class period, the professor was lecturing about different theories and styles of management. One of those theories was “Skinner’s behaviorism.” For those of you who don’t know, Skinner was a prominent behavioral psychologist back in the earlier part of the century… thus, he’s the first thing you learn about in any behavioral psychology class. she gives us an exercise to show us the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction (terms from behavioral psych). of course, she got the terms horribly wrong and confused, meaning she was teaching the class wrong information. me knowing all about this topic, i felt i had to correct her mistake, and raised my hand.
i go on to explain the differences between the different kinds of reinforcement and punishment, etc etc. she completely blew me off as though i knew absolutely nothing about what i was talking about. “i’m right you’re wrong” was basically the argument.
now… correct me if i’m way off base here, but shouldnt teachers (especially college professors) be able to recognize that they may have made a mistake? ESPECIALLY if that mistake is in a field that they clearly have little to no experience with?? she’s been out of the real world for years, and has the nerve to tell me that i’m wrong about something that i have a great deal of interest in and a great deal of knowledge about??
anyone else have this happen to them with their teachers, etc…? what did you do, if anything? am i wrong to expect her to realize her mistake?? i want to email her and rip her a new one after explaining IN DETAIL why exactly i’m right and she’s wrong, but i think i’ll wait until after my grades are finalized.
April 13, 2005 at 9:35 am #119306m3rcyMemberThis has never happend to me before but I have seen it happen to others. I think your in the right personally. If shes going to mislead the class, she should be corrected.
All to their own but thats my opinion.
April 13, 2005 at 6:56 pm #119305gossipingraeMemberi hate profs like that. Just because she already has her degree and you don’t, she thinks you should kiss her ass, even though she’s clearly in the wrong.
My roommate had a psych prof. who was talking about slogans and stuff, and the prof went on a tirade about how “Be an Army of One” was not really effective. So my roommate, who is in the Army Reserve, raised her hand and explained to her why it is effective, blah blah. This prof wrote her off too, and my roommate basically wrote her an email going on about it.
All psych profs are crazy. Why do you think it is required of them to do a residency and go into counseling before they open up their OWN practice?
April 13, 2005 at 8:27 pm #119302TigerbladeParticipanthaha not all psych professors are crazy, rae. some, definitely. all, definitely not. the majority of my psych professors have been really cool people, which helps towards me liking those classes better than my business classes.
i guess overall my whole point was that professors are overly arrogant and don’t realize that their students aren’t mindless blobs that dont know anything about what they’re talking about.
April 13, 2005 at 9:50 pm #119300OreoMemberNot to nit pick…but BF Skinner was most prolific in the 1960’s 😉 But your point is well taken. I, as a teacher, have had off days where I’ve been confused and switched things around (being sleepy, having taught for hours on end and teaching the same thing….) I have had students correct me…and I THANK them. The worst thing is to teach things backwards…it was only one or two days (so far…hee hee hee) but I was pretty happy they gave me the head’s up.
April 13, 2005 at 11:24 pm #119303TigerbladeParticipantso Oreo… at least you welcome corrections. i realize it may be somewhat embarassing to her to be corrected by a student when she’s supposed to have command of her lecture material, but by correcting her i’m helping her teach class more effectively.
i guess another concern of mine is that if she tries to test us on that material (which would probably only be one question anyway…) and marks me off for a question that i got right when she thinks she’s right. i wont have a chance to argue it in class, since our only exam left (out of two exams…) will be the final.
April 13, 2005 at 11:37 pm #119301OreoMemberWell…usually my students…instead of saying “YOU”RE WRONG” say “Is is this way or that way?” I would say it correctly…then they say “HEY! You just said the opposite thing!!” Then I apologized, thanked them…and that was that. The best thing to do is to go to the prof….ask her to explain…you may have caught her off her guard and if she’s been challenged all day by “young upstarts” she may have been a wee bit defensive. ALSO, double check in books and on the Internet. If you write it correctly and SHE marks you wrong for it…you’ll have your proof. 🙂
Now stop freaking out about finals…there are MUCH worse things waiting for you after graduation 😉 Hee hee heeApril 14, 2005 at 12:00 pm #119304neo_ny_23MemberProfs doing mistakes have taken place all my life. They make more mistakes than I do yet, they blow off my grades like HELLLL!!!! My psychology prof didnt teach me a word except gave us “quizes” every day (4 days a week) and we learnt nothing but were fortunate enough to get an A and get out of that class.
Tigerblade, if you are sure that you are right, get well armed with all sources and notes, go to the class, and start explaining her during the class only if she raises the same issue. If not, then talk to her after the class FACE 2 FACE. Such professors hardly care anything about email, and its important to know her reaction right at the same time.
I had this “hot” Russian Maths professor for my Calculus. She looks more like a model than any Maths Professor. She was new and infact the class she was taking was the first class in her life. And as usual, she was damn nervous for the entire quarter and did about 8438349283792892832 mistakes. About tiny winy mistakes, I didnt care. But about the major ones, I just felt its right about my part to correct her. Sometimes she did so many mistakes that I just sat there and looking at her than her mistakes 😛
and then after filling the whole white board with 123232 lines of calculations when she arrives at the result, and compares with the right answer, she realizes that her answer is wrong and she is all heart broken. Awwww. then I just raise my hand and point her that she did a small mistake in step 2 itself 😐 She initialy hated me badly for correcting her (i mean inside her heart.. outside she was smiling and all) but latter on she was in great terms with me..:P And guess what? Even if she was a terrible professor, she always had more than 100% attendance. Students not only in my class attended the classes but kids from other classes also attended our classes to “see” her… She obviously got our attention with her outfits and all. But she is a nice person. Gave us all an A 😛 but offcourse made us work hard for it.About my roomie, the poor fellow suffers more problems than me. His professor once asked them in the class “Whats the defination of this term “. Then one kid raises his hand and says “Its in the book.” Then there is this professor who made them write 4 essays of 6 pages each and in the end made some grading changes.. and as a result the essays were worth of only 2 % of the entire grade. So the students were like “Prof, so it means we dont have to do the essays any more? ” and prof was completely caught off the gaurd to this question. I wonder what was he thinking when he changed the grades.
p.s. I shuld hv asked my maths prof for a date 😛
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.