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Why do college profs ask students...

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EngenZerO

Diamond Member
...questions that they have never lectured about? I am currently enrolled in Virology 649. I have attended every class and listen attentively to every lecture. Unfortunately, I havn't been able to take great notes because this prof flies through his notes like a supra w twin turbos. We have complained but, its just he doesn't listen. He recently assigned us this problem set. It contains 4 problems. We are to respond to these problems in short paragraph format. One of the last two involve manipulating the Hershey-Chase experiment to accept for positive sense RNA and how it does not bind or translate into another cell lineage. The other one asks about pulse-chase and radio labeled amino acids and how we use them to determine whether it encodes for early or late genes. What is funny, is that he has never, ever, mentioned these in class. The reason why I know slightly about the last two is because some guy works in a lab and has done experiments like this before. Even the mightly google, is baffeled by these. Why? Why do profs do this to students? I mean I just want to learn...but this is just ridiculous. I am pulling my hair out trying to figure this out...bah. I have also had this happen in other classes...is this just something they do?..just to piss us off? grrr....end of rant...nef post +1

engen
 
I find it annoying when they spend the whole lecture going "Does anyone know what object X is for?"... "Does anyone know why condition Y exists?"

And the whole time, you're thinking "Dumbass! If I knew all that stuff, I wouldn't be taking this class!"
 
It's because they are not good professors. A good professor will make you think, but if I wanted to learn on my own, I would buy a book and read it. I pay thousands of dollars so that professor can teach it to me, not so I can read a book. I also hate memory tests. They are the tests where they ask specific dates and names of like 50 times and 50 names, then ask random questions about them on a test. The only thing they are testing is the memory of the individual. The person who has a photographic memory is going to do well, the person who can't remember as well gets a poor grade despite the fact that they both worked their butts off and could easily find the info in a book or something if it were needed in real life. That's what college is about, right? Learning about stuff you will need in real life?
 
I don't mind teaching my self...but the book he teaches out of is very very expensive...200.00+ range. He made us buy this cheap 40 dollar book that has no relevent details that we could learn from. Shoot, I did not even see the book he teaches out of at our local campus book stores and the library doesn't have it in cause some one else already took it out. Another rant...why do we need crappy books that don't have nfo that we can use...gah?
 
Originally posted by: notfred
I find it annoying when they spend the whole lecture going "Does anyone know what object X is for?"... "Does anyone know why condition Y exists?"

And the whole time, you're thinking "Dumbass! If I knew all that stuff, I wouldn't be taking this class!"
Click to expand...
Agreed. One of my computer science teachers does that same thing all class just about. Granted, it's an easy class and between the 25 of us in the class, we can usually come up with the answer he's looking for, but it's a waste of time for the 30 seconds everyone is thinking about the question he just asked.

 
Take one of your cells and observe it under a very powerful microscope, maybe you will see it do what the professor is talking about.
 
dont do teh HW and tell your profressor this

"That you calculated its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe"
 
I wish I could tell him that, 🙂 Unfourtinatly this grade is worth 10% if my overall class grade...ah well, I could always get a C in this class, I got my A so far in Brit Lit, Calculus, and CIS. I guess it would balance out, :/

engen
 
Oh, you should have seen when I tried to tell a professor that she was moving too fast. I spoke out because other students wouldn't. Well, she marked me down. She wrote me an intensely mean letter and suggested we weren't compatible. LMAO! She attached a signed withdrawal form and enclosed in the envelop. Oh Lord! Drama. I was performing well in class, mind you. I spoke for a group who felt this way but weren't gutsy enough. And I felt so too, except I hardly depended upon a professor's lecture. My textbook tends to be my teacher. She was also the type of professor who always had at least one question out of scope.

There was another crazy Russian accented lecturer that I couldn't understand at all. LOL! I composed a letter to propose a dimissal since he was just a lecturer, not a PhD professor. It didn't amount to much, but it wasn't too long when I heard that he had been fired for good.

So basically, speaking up doesn't always work and isn't always advisable. If your professor was considerate in the first place, he or she would have tried toning down and wouldn't be that bad of a professor. Some people don't like their ego disturbed. If it's a reasonable professor, fine. But if it's not, peer up with fellow students and study hard.
 
oh man i had a profs like that.


my freshman year i took a computer class. it was just a intro (had to take it though ugh) class. it had to do with such stuff as what a CPU is and a mainframe is, what a hard disk or a disc drive is etc. well i have been working with computers since the 8086 came out (my mother is the head a large computer center) and even had a business of building and upgrading computers for people. Well this teacher did NOT have a degree in computers. She was a secretary that had a degree and knew a bunch about MS office and WordPerfect.

Well me and a friend of mine took the class. During the class we were going over what was the CPU. Well she stated the computer (the case the computer is in) was the CPU. My friend said No that?s the case the cpu is a small thing on the motherboard. Well she told him he was wrong. Latter we were talking about what makes a computer a computer. She asked for things that can meet the definition of computer. I mentioned a calculate and she said no. so I pointed out the page in the book that said it was and she said the book was wrong. So someone else asked why we used the book. She said the calculator is not a computer because it does not run programs. Another guy pulled out his TI-93 (I think the one that looks like a oversized Gameboy) and showed her that it runs programs and told her most in that line do.

She would also give us test on what the chapter was about BEFORE we covered the chapter. The stuff was easy but I felt that was nuts. Why have the tests BEFORE we covered the material?

She ended up getting fired a few years later. I guess she started missing so many classes one year that with it and having so many complaints they let her go.
 
well guys its the morning...safe to say after reading many articles last night I got all the questions completed. thanks for sharing your glum experiences as well, 🙂 made me feel a little better seeing that I was not the only one that this has happened to. I guess misery does enjoy company when working on a project that blows...

engen
 
Originally posted by: EngenZerO
...questions that they have never lectured about? I am currently enrolled in Virology 649. I have attended every class and listen attentively to every lecture. Unfortunately, I havn't been able to take great notes because this prof flies through his notes like a supra w twin turbos. We have complained but, its just he doesn't listen. He recently assigned us this problem set. It contains 4 problems. We are to respond to these problems in short paragraph format. One of the last two involve manipulating the Hershey-Chase experiment to accept for positive sense RNA and how it does not bind or translate into another cell lineage. The other one asks about pulse-chase and radio labeled amino acids and how we use them to determine whether it encodes for early or late genes. What is funny, is that he has never, ever, mentioned these in class. The reason why I know slightly about the last two is because some guy works in a lab and has done experiments like this before. Even the mightly google, is baffeled by these. Why? Why do profs do this to students? I mean I just want to learn...but this is just ridiculous. I am pulling my hair out trying to figure this out...bah. I have also had this happen in other classes...is this just something they do?..just to piss us off? grrr....end of rant...nef post +1
Click to expand...

Sounds exactly like my Virology class last semester. However we didn't have homework: these just popped up misteriously on the test. We had no book, no way of finding this stuff out on our own. He assumed we would have had experience with these in other classes/labs. However I had specifically talked to the professor before class started and he forced me to take his class (he is on my advisory board and said he wouldn't let me graduate without it) even though I didn't have any of the prerequisites - it was my first biology class. So I was SOL.

The flying through notes thing is so true for Virology. We had 75 minute lectures twice a week. For each lecture we had a minimum of 40 slides. These weren't simple slides - they were filled top to bottom with details, graphs, ungodly names to memorize, and formulas. That meant the professor had to rush as fast as he could in an attempt to read out part of each slide (of course the tests covered all the slide, even parts he didn't have time to discuss). No possibility of notetaking.
 
The best prof's(as an engineering student) i've found will teach you the simple cases and then assign homework that starts with the no brainer simple cases then proceed on to higher level more complex ones that force you to think and make conclusions which often takes a group colaboration but then also spends the next class explaining how and why you needed to make those conclusions.
 

IT's his way of telling, "I know you ain't got no clue about it, so go do your own research. For Pete's sake, this is 600 level course!"



 
Originally posted by: XZeroII
They are the tests where they ask specific dates and names of like 50 times and 50 names, then ask random questions about them on a test. The only thing they are testing is the memory of the individual. The person who has a photographic memory is going to do well, the person who can't remember as well gets a poor grade despite the fact that they both worked their butts off and could easily find the info in a book or something if it were needed in real life. That's what college is about, right? Learning about stuff you will need in real life?
Click to expand...


I'm sort of like that, or at least I used to be - if I'd read something, I'd remember it better. If the test used the same wording as the book, that was just easy - I'd remember enough of the exact wording to be able to answer the question. I could just recall stuff I'd read easily. Anything that is said to me, I will forget within about 10 seconds sometimes; I can forget what I'm talking about mid-sentence. So if I were in a class that was a lot of listening, I'd probably fail a lot of tests. All that specific stuff can just be because the prof (or the textbook company) doesn't really take the time to come up with good questions.
Ok, done now; I just miss the memory I used to have...3+ years ago in high school.
rolleye.gif

 
Originally posted by: TheEvil1
dont do teh HW and tell your profressor this

"That you calculated its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe"
Click to expand...



ROTFLOL! Taking Quantum Mechanics? 😀
 
Originally posted by: agnitrate
Originally posted by: TheEvil1
so you can learn how to teach yourself
Click to expand...

and so they get rich by doing jack squat.

-silver
Click to expand...

"rich" is a stretch by most people's standards, although most of the profs I know are living fairly comfortably.

I've ranted on this subject many times. It's time for schools to stop being educational institutions and start being businesses, and it's time for a student to stop being a student and start being a customer. You're paying for a service, there should be recourse if that service is not provided.
 
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