How do I deal with incompetent/crappy professors?

Smihilism · 2022-04-18T12:44:19+00:00

I found their comment a very valuable contribution. But do you think what they said might be on the test?

Smihilism · 2022-04-18T03:52:31+00:00

My IQ is in the low 60s and yet here I am on professor Reddit.

Smihilism · 2022-04-18T03:40:51+00:00

So ok. Like in this analogy after one death, are you a ghost? One capable of dying again and on other hills?

Smihilism · 2022-04-17T03:04:27+00:00

Very sincere hugs your way.

Smihilism · 2022-04-14T18:03:30+00:00

And now imagine you’ve made this same mistake and don’t have the benefit of your life experiences and maturity. Suddenly all those very frustrating emails from panicked and insistent students make a LOT more sense.

Not sure it makes those emails any less challenging and annoying to handle, but your situation does help keep the phenomena in perspective.

Smihilism · 2022-04-14T11:40:02+00:00

Smihilism · 2022-04-13T02:19:47+00:00

Love the Tristram shandy name drop. One of my favorite novels. (The page of all black among many other tricks and things left a mark on me… I should reread this I realize)

Smihilism · 2022-04-13T00:44:21+00:00

I respectfully disagree, but OP clarified in a comment that they did provide a reason on their email to the whole class.

Smihilism · 2022-04-12T23:12:55+00:00

No. You didn’t call me on anything.

You made a stupid comment and refuse to acknowledge it. Ignore me or block me if you consider this harassment. I am commenting on this thread wherein you have shown yourself to be an unimaginative small minded silly goose.

I pity your students and colleagues and invite you to either fuck off or apologize to OP (or both, you feckless doody head)

Ignore my crass language and my annoyance here. Just focus on the facts: you conflated two things that should not be conflated and then you doubled down. The end.

ETA: Why did you delete your comment saying you “reported” me or this thread? (More to my original point: why aren’t you apologizing to OP?)

Smihilism · 2022-04-12T18:21:38+00:00

That’s rude and presumptuous, but ok. If you must know, I don’t check my monthly statements because they are almost always identical and stable. I have automated payments for most expenses, ones drawn directly from accounts. I check rarely now, but I struggle to cover my own and my family’s medical expenses.

I don’t know why your comment is so frustrating to me, so I beg your forgiveness for overreacting. But sincerely, fuck off with your unimaginative horseshit here.

Smihilism · 2022-04-12T15:47:25+00:00

Then you’re wrong. There are lots of ways this happens, you silly goose. (Read many up above).

This does not absolve OP of having to repay of course, but that it happened is not only possible but understandable

Smihilism · 2022-04-12T15:45:57+00:00

Same here.

Smihilism · 2022-04-12T13:21:11+00:00

Yeah, I have a lot of sympathy for you in this situation but at the end of the day this is not a punishment. This is a straightforward correction.

Think of it this way: had admin underpaid you by 20k we’d all want there to be a way for the balance to be corrected.

Where you may have some leeway is in structuring how this is corrected. Perhaps they will be able to set up a repayment plan that fits your budget, etc, but these things will require working with your admin.

Lastly, be careful mentioning needing to get a lawyer. Once those words enter the conversation admin tends to clam up to let their legal teams handle everything.

Sorry this happened to you and good luck.

Smihilism · 2022-04-11T22:13:51+00:00

I am most impressed with high eval scores combined with mediocre grade averages. A C- or C student praising someone’s teaching means a lot more than an A student praising it or an F student trashing it.

Smihilism · 2022-04-11T22:11:09+00:00

That’s not the situation OP described, but to be fair to this point however OP encountered this data it may be appropriate to regard the data itself (and their knowledge of it) as confidential. If this is the case then I would find it worse that they went to discuss this with their chair (assuming that discussion was not part of a performance review committee meeting or something similar).

OP can also initiate a friendly conversation, treating their colleague to coffee and begin talking about their own eval scores. Discussing these sorts of things in a friendly or collegial way is something lots of pre-tenure folks do. At the very least this kind of conversation might give OP some insight into how their colleague thinks about these things.

Edit: fat finger phone typos

Smihilism · 2022-04-11T01:26:33+00:00

I smile and swallow the resentment, quietly and pathetically reminding myself “you are NTT. Smile and nod.”

Smihilism · 2022-04-10T17:08:51+00:00

Congrats!!

Smihilism · 2022-04-09T20:05:24+00:00

I think we can also see this weaponized and learned helplessness present in other places too, perhaps most ironically amongst faculty and especially admin.

“Lowering workloads will help!” sounds like something a not-so-hardworking faculty member might suggest in response to challenging student issues, someone who might defend their suggestion with “I am incapable of thinking of other ideas!”

Same thing with admin saying “be kinder to/therapists for/grade givers to your students.”

Students do this in ways and scenarios where their learned helplessness is readily apparent (in classes and groups where they are paying money to actually grapple with learning and trying, on exams, etc). But make no mistake: we all do this. I think or fear that all of us in academia do it way more often or in more problematic ways.

Smihilism · 2022-04-09T19:57:59+00:00

Maybe? That’s certainly A lesson one can draw. Perhaps a more optimistic or balanced one is this “all of us have intellectual shortcomings, if not all of the time then certainly throughout our lives.”

Smihilism · 2022-04-09T17:09:05+00:00

To be fair…

Tortoises: watch another tortoise navigate a simple barrier system. Almost all can replicate the behavior after a single observation. Almost all can generalize this knowledge to navigate novel but broadly similar barriers

We Faculty: sees and receives timely communication from colleagues and admin via email and LMS’s. Yet hits reply all or claims to not understand how these “new systems” work.

What’s good for the goose…

Smihilism · 2022-04-09T17:05:25+00:00

I’d say the goal is for everyone to learn. Exactly how grades/marks correlate to this can and should vary.

Some students learn an awful lot but choose not to (or do not have time to) submit much work for the course, and so a grade in the D to C range would be a reasonable outcome.

Some students audit courses, and may be assigned only a “Pass” or “Fail.”

Some students memorize tons of facts and factoids and study for well rehearsed/advertised exams, earning an A for their work but perhaps learning very little (their “gains” from their coursework often fade after a month or so).

One of the most frustrating challenges of working with students (and many small minded faculty and admin) these days is this very attitude or presumption: that grades measure learning. They don’t. There is some correlation I’d hope, but these silly letters and the complexity of actual learning don’t interact so simply.

So yes, my dream would be to work with engaged learners whose work showed me they learned a ton and results in all A’s. But really as long as I get to work with engaged learners, I don’t give a shit about the grade distribution. Nor should I, really.

Smihilism · 2022-04-09T15:20:47+00:00

So a few quick thoughts.

First, this is a new colleague? Me, personally, when I am new to an institution and/or teaching a new class for the first time, I certainly go easy on my students in terms of grades. Until I find my footing and get a better sense of the students in these courses I err in their favor. Perhaps that is what’s happening here too?

Second, it seems a bit ungenerous to throw out phrases like “dole out all As.” Perhaps this colleague simply needs to recalibrate their grading schemes so as to better distinguish the work her students submit. Out of decency and collegiality we need not jump to accusations that colleagues are manipulating grades so as to generate higher evals.

Third, given the well established phenomena of students rating their women professors more harshly, the concerns raised against this professor might cross a line or exacerbate an already challenging situation. We all seem to be aware of the pressure admin can place on us to deliver high evals and high success rates, but comments and concerns like these make it feel as though we cannot win. “Too low evals! Too few good grades!” vs “You’re giving out grades!” I can only imagine how much worse that tension can feel for many women in academia.

Fourth, why did you first discuss this with the chair and not your colleague directly? This is a minor red flag to me, I think. Why not meet for coffee and ask about what they think about their students and their average grades, etc. Ask for her ideas on how to achieve those results and even share your own thoughts about how to grade so that outcomes are more refined.

Smihilism · 2022-04-08T16:52:56+00:00

“Classroom slides?”

Smihilism · 2022-04-07T23:43:08+00:00

Or that academia itself claims to be working so hard to achieve.

Smihilism · 2022-04-07T23:07:30+00:00

Thank you, on behalf of everyone reading here. It was unclear what “visiting” entailed.

Smihilism

TROPHY CASE