gruel sandwiches
When I make it to the halls of academia in the role of a professor, I will be sure to reinforce to students the value of education, not only in the gateway-to-the-future sense but also in financial terms. One professor I had in my sophomore year gave every student, on the last day of class, a breakdown of what it costs per hour to attend Virginia Tech. In-state students pay roughly $53 per hour, or that same amount per lecture.
One professor I have this semester is known for being absent a lot - for conferences in Orlando, for some research competition, for whatever. I knew this would happen once again, but I’ve thus far kept up the naïve hope that he may value his graduate students in class as much as his funding sources. Alas, he has now suddenly disappeared and we have no lectures this week. Great. I hear he’s a wonderful professor to have with your own research but he’s received the second lowest teacher evaluation I could ever hand out. The story of the lowest evaluation is painful to recall and will be done at another time.
Plus, the “recorded and posted” lectures are nowhere to be found. Unsurprising, really. I could foreseeably continue griping about this outrage until the end of the regular course period, but will instead soothe myself with some quick cycling and acoustics books.
Let this be my great thanks to the many engineering professors who are both timely and prepared for class. Exactly as you would wish for us.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
It is wonderful to get a professor that is passionate about his/her discipline who is effective in communicating without letting their ego get in the way. Years later you will look back and have an even deeper sense of respect for their skills and how they positively influenced you.
On the other hand, I had a brilliant Thermo professor that was full of himself. He was more excited about talking about his real estate investments at the beginning of the lectures than the technical material. He was extremely wealthy and really did not need the money from teaching. He owned over 1000 apartments in Washington DC.
One day when the professor failed to show up, the department Dean walked in to announce his classes for the week were canceled. It seems the professor was in jail…. apparently he was a slumlord and a judge had thrown him into jail for failing to fix required repairs in many of his apartments. Looks like things caught up to him. Now that was a day when the class discussion and laughter can be remembered almost verbatim.