One thing that schooling has taught me is that whether or not you have a good experience in class is often contingent on the teacher. This too applies to college. In this blog I’m going to share my first impressions of two professors teaching the same subject. Because I have respect for all educators and my intent is not to be personal, I won’t release the names of the professors or the subject they teach (as you already know I go to JMU). Instead I’ll use nicknames and tell you that the subject they teach is a science.
My experience with the first professor went a little like this. I walked into the class with my friend already a little apprehensive after reading some scary reviews on ratemyprofessor.com (if you haven’t used that website yet I highly recommend it. It saved my life). A few minutes before class began “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named” (that was a shout out to any fellow Harry Potter fans) briskly walked into class. When it was exactly 1:00 he began class. If I remember correctly the first words out of his mouth were “Welcome to my class. I am telling you now that you will have to work harder in this class than any other class you have.” Considering my over all schedule was pretty demanding, this was not something I wanted to hear. He followed this with bringing up Ratemyprofessor.com. He even went to the length of writing the website on the board. If you’re thinking what I did at the time and assuming he did this to defend himself against the claims, then you’d be wrong. He did the exact opposite and told us that every comment on there was accurate. Now these comments weren’t like “he’s a hard teacher” or “you’ll have to work hard to get an A”. They were like “He’s the worst teacher I’ve ever had and I had to work hard to get a D” and “get out while you still can!” This is never a good sign. He followed this with a lecture about at the least working hard enough to earn a “D” and proceeded to give us the deadline for dropping out. At this point I was already seriously considering dropping it, but once he started class my decision to drop was solidified. If you have ever been so clueless that you have no choice but to laugh then you will understand how I felt the rest of his class. Not only did his lesson come across as a foreign language to me, but I couldn’t read a single thing he wrote on the board. My friend and I spent the rest of the class debating if this little squiggle on the board was a “7” or a “Y”. Yeah. It was that bad. If I’m being completely honest it was probably the scariest class of my life. Needless to say I dropped this class that same day.
I switched into another class of the same subject but with a different professor. While the late time is inconvenient it was by far one of the best decisions of my life. This new professor, who I’ll call Eliza Thornberry because of her remarkable resemblance (a definite compliment because I loved that show as a kid) had a completely different approach to this class. The first thing she did was attempt to change the starting time of the class to accommodate all of us that had to rush from a class ending right before this one. Then she showed this amazing movie introducing all of the things we’d talk about in the class. After she was done with the logistics and explaining the syllabus, she broke us up into groups to play science themed icebreaker games. We did these the rest of the class, and each had a chance to talk to her on a more personal level. I could not be happier about my decision to switch into this class.
The moral of the story in that at the end of the day it’s your education and you should get everything out of it that you can. If you feel like a certain professor doesn’t have a teaching style that will work for you then don’t wait to find one that will better suit your way of learning. Follow your gut, and for God sakes never take a class where the goal set for you on the first day is to work for a D.
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