Worst professor ever

[Bibble]

Background:

I was supposed to have a take home test assigned today in one of my classes. According to the syllabus, this test would be e-mailed to the class at 2:45 (when class begins), which ensures that everyone would know it was in their inbox and not start on it until 4:00 (when the class ends). The syllabus also states that it would be due by Friday at midnight (56 hours later). We are bound by the honor code to spend only one hour completing the test, which is open note/book.

Today:
I check my e-mail at roughly 12:15pm and see an e-mail from my professor, sent at 11:54am, titled "Test Today." Crap. In the body he explains that he is ill and has lost his voice, so we will take the test in class today instead of it being take home. Crap. I could only study very little because I have another class before this one. I took the test, and I'm guessing I did very poorly, although I'll have to wait and see because 3 of the 4 questions were opinion questions. (and he doesn't agree with my opinions)

I, along with my classmates I imagine, are screwed. How can he give us less than three hours notice about a test which was supposed to be take home? I probably did poorly because I did not study, but I would have studied tomorrow and Friday and could have gotten an A. I've read every word of the assigned reading, however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things, which made my answers shorter and not as good as they could have been.

Do you guys think this is ridiculous? Or did the professor have every right to do such a thing?

 

[BigJ]

Check with your school's academic policies.

Ours had a very strict policy on changing the syllabus, especially anything regarding tests. Basically the professor really wasn't allowed to do it.

Worse case scenario, take it up with the head of the department.

 

[TecHNooB]

Just remember that, no matter how terrible the circumstances, someone always aces the exam and you'll just have to live with being a failure

 

[MrPickins]

I read that as "heart" hours.

FWIW, I'd do what BigJ recommends.

 

[Bibble]

Originally posted by: TecHNooB
Just remember that, no matter how terrible the circumstances, someone always aces the exam and you'll just have to live with being a failure

Oh I know someone will ace it. I bet the class average won't be that bad. The test was not hard, but I wasn't planning on taking it until Friday and had not studied, and therefore did poorly.

The issue here is assigning the test on such late notice.

 

[ColdFusion718]

That sucks, but that's life sometimes. Just go out and celebrate after you finish all your exams. Hook up with a girl. After that, you won't even remember this measely test.

 

[axelfox]

make sure you contact the dean or dept head BEFORE your grade comes out.

 

[D1gger]

Take it as a learning experience. I can't count the number of times I put off doing something work related, knowing that I had time in the days to come, only to have that item become and immediate issue and having to deal with it in a very short period of time. This is real life. Not everything is fair.

 

[mooglemania85]

Originally posted by: axelfox
make sure you contact the dean or dept head BEFORE your grade comes out.

But what if he's on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!

Zero point two... Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. Mr. Hoover, president of Delta house? One point six; four C's and an F. A fine example you set! Daniel Simpson Day... HAS no grade point average. All courses incomplete. Mr. Blu - MR. BLUTARSKY... ZERO POINT ZERO.


Seriously though,

Originally posted by: BigJ
Check with your school's academic policies.

Ours had a very strict policy on changing the syllabus, especially anything regarding tests. Basically the professor really wasn't allowed to do it.

Worse case scenario, take it up with the head of the department.

Problem solved.

 

[Jeff7]

I don't think that's legitimate either. Some people don't check their e-mail at every single possible opportunity. Some people might have been in class, or off campus, or otherwise unable to check e-mail.
One professor of mine talked about modifying the syllabus, but said that he was unsure of it, because he viewed the syllabus as a contract between himself and the class. If anything is going to be modified, especially with such high value gradewise, there needs to be advance notice of it, at least a week. Some semesters, I had difficulty with certain classes because the professor would have homework due every single class. There were some times of the week where I really didn't have time for it - weekends were the best time for me to work in time for homework. Doing so let me meander around on the work and really know what I was doing, rather than just hurry through it so that it's finished in time, without learning much of what was going on.

 

[DrPizza]

Wait a second...

Prof was going to give you a take-home test, and by the honor code, you were bound to only spend one hour working on it.

Instead, prof gives you the test in class, and still allows you to use your notes/book/whatever ("however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things")

Apologies for stereotyping you with 99% of the college students I've ever met, but you weren't really planning on studying before you even looked at the exam, right? You were planning on looking at the exam and seeing what you actually needed to study.

As soon as you see the test questions, any "studying" you do is actually working on the exam. So, either you were planning on violating the honor code, else you wouldn't have done any better than you did in class on the exam. I don't believe for a minute (apologies again for stereotyping you) that a college student wouldn't look at the take home test before studying material to prepare answers for the take-home test.

p.s. I've been the victim of 2 take home exams. I know better than to say "sounds great to me, bring it on!" Except neither time was I limited to 1 hour. One of the take home exams was "we don't have enough time in the course to cover ABC-XYZ, so we're going to cover A-Q and your final exam is a take home exam on R-Z. You have a week. The second time, it was a math final exam. 4 questions. How hard could 4 measly questions be?? Ohhhhh, a little over 50 pages worth of work, that's how hard. Well, actually, it was easy, just very very time consuming. Thank God I was allowed to use Mathematica and a couple other software packages for most of the work - by hand, it'd have been 100 pages of work.

 

[Tiamat]

changing syllabus without giving out new ones is a big no-no. Go as a group and schedule an appt with your dept. head.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Wait a second...

Prof was going to give you a take-home test, and by the honor code, you were bound to only spend one hour working on it.

Instead, prof gives you the test in class, and still allows you to use your notes/book/whatever ("however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things")

Apologies for stereotyping you with 99% of the college students I've ever met, but you weren't really planning on studying before you even looked at the exam, right? You were planning on looking at the exam and seeing what you actually needed to study.

As soon as you see the test questions, any "studying" you do is actually working on the exam. So, either you were planning on violating the honor code, else you wouldn't have done any better than you did in class on the exam. I don't believe for a minute (apologies again for stereotyping you) that a college student wouldn't look at the take home test before studying material to prepare answers for the take-home test.

From what he says in the OP, he had an additional 55 hours to study for the test. I don't know about you, but an extra two days of studying is pretty nice to have.

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: Bibble
I've read every word of the assigned reading, however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things, which made my answers shorter and not as good as they could have been.

so it was still open-book anyway.... why didn't you say that in the OP? are you just trying to say that you weren't going to follow the honor-code?

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: sniperruff

Originally posted by: Bibble
I've read every word of the assigned reading, however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things, which made my answers shorter and not as good as they could have been.

so it was still open-book anyway.... why didn't you say that in the OP? are you just trying to say that you weren't going to follow the honor-code?

Guys, he had an extra 55 hours of studying he could've done. I for one typically put my shit off till the last minute due to a couple of circumstances. So even with open book, if you move the test up two days on me I'd be fucked.

 

[rocadelpunk]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Wait a second...

Prof was going to give you a take-home test, and by the honor code, you were bound to only spend one hour working on it.

Instead, prof gives you the test in class, and still allows you to use your notes/book/whatever ("however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things")

Apologies for stereotyping you with 99% of the college students I've ever met, but you weren't really planning on studying before you even looked at the exam, right? You were planning on looking at the exam and seeing what you actually needed to study.

As soon as you see the test questions, any "studying" you do is actually working on the exam. So, either you were planning on violating the honor code, else you wouldn't have done any better than you did in class on the exam. I don't believe for a minute (apologies again for stereotyping you) that a college student wouldn't look at the take home test before studying material to prepare answers for the take-home test.

p.s. I've been the victim of 2 take home exams. I know better than to say "sounds great to me, bring it on!" Except neither time was I limited to 1 hour. One of the take home exams was "we don't have enough time in the course to cover ABC-XYZ, so we're going to cover A-Q and your final exam is a take home exam on R-Z. You have a week. The second time, it was a math final exam. 4 questions. How hard could 4 measly questions be?? Ohhhhh, a little over 50 pages worth of work, that's how hard. Well, actually, it was easy, just very very time consuming. Thank God I was allowed to use Mathematica and a couple other software packages for most of the work - by hand, it'd have been 100 pages of work.

what class was the 50 page thing for?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

He isn't following the syllabus so I'd go ahead and see someone higher. Maybe wait for your grade though. He might give you some grace.

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: sniperruff

Originally posted by: Bibble
I've read every word of the assigned reading, however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things, which made my answers shorter and not as good as they could have been.

so it was still open-book anyway.... why didn't you say that in the OP? are you just trying to say that you weren't going to follow the honor-code?

Guys, he had an extra 55 hours of studying he could've done. I for one typically put my shit off till the last minute due to a couple of circumstances. So even with open book, if you move the test up two days on me I'd be fucked.

i doubt that the entire class will succumb to the prof if that really happened.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk

what class was the 50 page thing for?

It was a mathematical modeling class with a heavy emphasis on differential equations (IIRC - I'm positive of the prof, not 100% positive of the course.)

 

[Analog]

I'm a prof, and I would never do such a thing. That being said, there is nothing in our academic policy that says the syllabus is written in stone. In fact, my syllabi specifically state that changes can be made to the document - and distributed to the students. In 8 years of teaching, I've never changed a syllabus while a class is running though...

 

[rocadelpunk]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: rocadelpunk

what class was the 50 page thing for?

It was a mathematical modeling class with a heavy emphasis on differential equations (IIRC - I'm positive of the prof, not 100% positive of the course.)

sounds like fun.

I wish the linear algebra course I took would've been worth a damn and that I would have taken it before diff eq.

I went through both of those classes, got A's, got very little out of them :/

 

[Whisper]

Check the syllabus to see if there's the typical, "syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the professor" blurb. I'd say that yes, the prof generally should've given a bit more notice than he did. However, expecting the class to be at least somewhat prepared two days before a test is due isn't entirely unreasonable. That being said, I hope the prof either altered the test given the circumstances (i.e., made it easier), or is planning on curving.

 

[Bibble]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Wait a second...

Prof was going to give you a take-home test, and by the honor code, you were bound to only spend one hour working on it.

Instead, prof gives you the test in class, and still allows you to use your notes/book/whatever ("however most of it was not fresh in my mind, which made me waste time looking up things")

Apologies for stereotyping you with 99% of the college students I've ever met, but you weren't really planning on studying before you even looked at the exam, right? You were planning on looking at the exam and seeing what you actually needed to study.

As soon as you see the test questions, any "studying" you do is actually working on the exam. So, either you were planning on violating the honor code, else you wouldn't have done any better than you did in class on the exam. I don't believe for a minute (apologies again for stereotyping you) that a college student wouldn't look at the take home test before studying material to prepare answers for the take-home test.

As BigJ has so kindly been saying, I would have no reason to violate the honor code with the huge amount of time I would have to study. I would have needed only 2-3 hours to study, which I would have done Friday morning/afternoon. During this time I would just go over what I highlighted so I would have a general idea of important ideas and where they were if i needed to quote them. Not knowing where things were in the text really killed me.

Originally posted by: sniperruff
so it was still open-book anyway.... why didn't you say that in the OP? are you just trying to say that you weren't going to follow the honor-code?

Yes it was still open book/note in the class, I apologize for not making that clear. However, being open book does not help unless you know where things are in the text, which I would have known had I had time to study. Additionally, there is not nearly enough room on the desks in class to have a book, notebook, and test booklet open. I have never had any intention to break the honor code.

I'm going to send the professor an e-mail expressing my concern that I did not perform as well as I could have because of the short notice on which I was informed of the change in time of the test. Hopefully he'll help me out. I'm not going to go over his head unless he refuses to address my concerns in some way.

I looked through my school's academic policy, and it doesn't seem to say that professors have to adhere to syllabi. The only thing even close to my situation was that if a professor wants to change a time of a final he has to let students know a week in advance. It seems that if I have to make an appeal it will have to be for common decency and fairness.

Originally posted by: Whisper
Check the syllabus to see if there's the typical, "syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the professor" blurb. I'd say that yes, the prof generally should've given a bit more notice than he did. However, expecting the class to be at least somewhat prepared two days before a test is due isn't entirely unreasonable. That being said, I hope the prof either altered the test given the circumstances (i.e., made it easier), or is planning on curving.

There is no such blurb on the syllabus. I agree that expecting the class to be at least somewhat prepared two days before an exam is reasonable, and I would say I was somewhat prepared. That is why I will probably get a 65%-75% and not a 25%. He curved the last test, so hopefully there his a huge one this time.

 

[Skeeedunt]

Agreed, that's pretty out of line. He should have made it clear in the beginning if he expected you to be able to take a pop-midterm, few if any normal people would try to pull that. I'm not sure why he didn't just cancel class and email out the test as expected, or even put it off for a week if necessary. Moving it up just to fill time just because he can't lecture makes no sense.