Professors

*WARNING: This post is full of extensive ramblings and brain spews. You may or may not have aged several years by the time you reach its conclusion.* 

The end of my fourth semester lies only a few weeks out, and junior status is on the near horizon.

At a rate of six classes a semester, and with only one professor overlapping across two different classes, I have studied under a total of twenty-three different professors since beginning my college education. Not all of them have been incredibly memorable, a few of them were less than stellar, but every semester I am amazed at some of the stark differences between some of the educators at my university.

After coming back from a ridiculously short and wintery spring break, the last two days I was particularly intrigued by the way my different profs jumped back into the swing of things (or didn't as the case may be), and since I am severing as a supplemental instructor for a seventh class, I actually got to see seven different approached to an after break return to the routine. Comparing these different approaches, and thinking about the way professors from semesters gone by have done things, I was inspired to write a post about my experiences with college level educators and their varying personalities.

As a disclaimer, I should point out that I'm going to a relatively small school with somewhere between seven and eight thousand students (last I heard), and I'm sure that has some kind of an impact on the type of people you end up getting as professors. I know a lot of the professors at my school are actually adjuncts who have spent their lives working in or training in the field they teach about on the side instead of being indoctrinated PhD's conducting research on the side, but you can just think about that as adding a bit of flavor to the mix. It might also be worthwhile to note that since I was educated by my dear not-so-old mother (and a few close family friends), the number of strictly student-educator relationships I had prior to college is somewhere around 0. My least favorite teacher in middle school happened to also be my favorite and the person who made me supper so I never talked to great lengths with friends about the qualities of my educators up until joining the ranks of the collegiate masses.

Anyway, (I just noticed that the last four paragraphs of the post started with A... I will either need to try and continue this trend through to the end of the post or break it immediately.) when I first came into contact with a half dozen different people whose responsibility it was to fill my brain with useful (ideally) information for sixteen weeks. Since then, I've actually gotten pretty used to the idea of sitting in a desk staring up at a more thoroughly trained and accomplished individual distributing vast(ish) amounts of interesting(ish) information to me from behind a desk or podium. Despite the handful of rebellious professors who attempt to break from the traditional mold and make it harder to adapt by making everyone participate in one kind of communal nonsense or another (like sitting in a circle), there are a lot of things that I can actually predict about the way a class is going to be taught simply because certain trends start popping from one to another.

For example, in a math class you are going to spend something like fifteen minutes (max) on the syllabus and you better be ready to start learning new number stuff the first day whereas your first day of a paper based class is probably going to be devoted to sharing "your name, major, and one interesting fact about yourself" after a roughly 45 minute review of the syllabus. Obviously, there is variation even within those generalization, but I think we all know how enjoyable it is to stereotype things and education styles are no exception.

 The four different math professors I have worked closely with are a good example I think however of the way in which professors and their teaching styles can vary drastically within even a single subject. My first semester I had Professor Bubbly teaching me Finite Mathematics. Finite was a significant class for me for a number of reasons, and Professor Bubbly was a significant professor for essentially the same reasons. It was in the class that I realized that I not only didn't dislike math, but I was actually pretty good at it and found it very enjoyable. A goodly portion of the credit for that revelation is due to Professor Bubbly and they very enthusiastic and energetic way she taught the class. Professor Bubbly is  more interested in making her students happy and interested in her class than almost any other professor I've seen so far. Her smile was infectious and, to be honest, her material was a lot easier than most other professors teaching the same class. I never needed to visit her in her office, but she was constantly encouraging students to stop by and meet with her, and she was one of the most optimistic and pleasant people to talk to you could possibly imagine.

Oh, and she also got me my job with the tutoring center so that's cool.

After Professor Bubbly I had Professor John. Professor John was a great professor, and I found his class very helpful even though about 95% of the material was stuff I either knew already or was able to catch onto in the space of roughly ten minutes (in case I sound like I'm bragging, wait until I talk about my English classes...). Professor Bubbly got her codename because she was a very energetic and enthusiastic, Professor John's codename is just simply his first name because while he was a very good and enjoyable professor, he was also incredibly... uninteresting. That isn't an insult or a criticism at all, and I actually prefer the straightforward, black and white approach to learning math so I thought he was awesome, but he was definitely one of the more monotone and flat professors I've had. He wore a plaid button up shirt or a polo with some kind of lighter color slacks every day, spent the entire class sitting at his desk writing on a piece of paper projected onto a screen, and moving from example problem to example problem. Again, this isn't a criticism at all. I found it great... others did not, and it was an incredible difference compared to Professor Bubbly.

From Professor John's Pre-Calc class I moved onto Professor Coffee's Calculus class. It should be noted that Calculus ranks among my favorite classes taken so far at the college level based on the material alone, and Professor Coffee gets her name simply because every time I see/saw her she has/had a mug of coffee in her hands. Anyway, Professor Coffee was like a cross between Bubbly and John. Professional, kind of quiet, and straightforward, she had the qualities of a math professor that I really appreciate for the subject matter, because I've given the material as it is in a chalkboard to notes to brain fashion that I find very helpful, but she also had an interest in students and in being a friendly/engaging professor that Professor John didn't have in his class. I actually felt kind of bad for Professor Coffee because there were a lot of... lame people in that class. By lame people, I mean people who, for example, flipped over their desk, shouted at her, and stopped out of the room before slamming the door shut behind him because she called him out on copying another person's work. While not everyone in the class went to such extremes, there was a lot of grumbling about her and the class that was totally undeserved simply because some people are incapable of taking the derivative apparently...

The last math professor I've worked with closely actually happens to be my boss. I can't remember if he's come up in any previous posts, but I think his codename is going to Professor Pascal because he really likes that mathematician to the extent that he named his dog after the guy. However, that is besides the point... mostly. Professor Pascal is a pretty stellar boss, and an incredible person to talk to, but strictly from a teaching standpoint, he is an incredibly enthusiastic, energetic, and colorful (quite literally) professor as far as math educators go. Pascal pretty much always wears button up shirts in bright teals, purples, ad blues combined with ties/bowties with exotic and equally colorful patterns on them. I haven't ever been a student of his, but this is the second semester in a row I have served as a supplemental instructor for a class of his. Almost every week students have an in-class exercise that involves using the match concepts from lecture. Some students hate them, others love them, but they involve everything from using graphs to solve logic puzzles to being given a handful of slips of paper with equations/answers on them and trading with other students until all of your slips of paper are connected to each other somehow. Reviews include Jeopardy style mathematics, competitions where you try to eliminate other teams of students by answering enough questions correctly, and trying to come up with the most creative math related team names (like the pi-rates, e^xcalibur, and the x(factor)). While it may sound like more class time is spent goofing off than learning anything, Professor Pascal actually also is one of the most thorough profs I've seen. Working with him, I've actually learned numerous creative ways of solving problems that I never learned elsewhere, and those of his students that actually put the effort in say that he is one of the best educators they've ever had. Truth be told, I think I prefer Professor Coffee and John's more chilled, laid back, and straightforward approaches when I'm on the student end, but at least for those who are not really into math, he seems like just about the perfect fit.

So, four completely different people all teaching essentially the same stuff (just different levels of difficulty and complexity) in extremely different ways. As a naive student registering for classes without any kind of outside recommendation or knowledge of the  Rate My Professor website, it is a total toss up as to what kind of professor you're going to get. You really can't take a math class at my school and just assume you know what kind of a prof you're going to get because, well, they're a math professor. The crazy thing is that I don't think I could even say any of those four professors is that much better or worse than any of the others, because in each class there have been students that loved the way things were run and those that hated it. One professor was perfect for a handful of students while the other would have been much better for the rest, but going in blind and without insider information, how is a student supposed to know which professor they're actually going to learn the most from?

One of the most fascinating things, I think, to look at in a professor is how they take criticism from a class or deal with  problematic situations. I think my English professors (this is the part where I admit to not being a genius), serve as good subjects for consideration when it comes to dealing with obstinate or difficult students.

My first English professor I had during my first semester, and going in I knew I was a terrible writer and would probably struggle in the class. When I got a D back on my first paper though I was utterly distraught and questioned whether there was any good in the world at all... OK, well, no it wasn't that extreme, but it was still pretty terrible. Apparently, however, I was not the only one who received a wake up call after that first paper and my professor position was basically this "Well, I'm sure a lot of you didn't do as well as you would have liked. Something like seven of you got a passing grade on that paper and no one got more than a B, but you know what? That's OK. We're going to move forward from here, we're going to focus on what you all struggled with, and you're going to leave this class being better writers than you were when you wrote this paper." Professor Reallylonglastname was definitely a no nonsense prof who wasn't giving out favors just because you tried hard, but she was actively involved in trying to help out anyone that wanted help. She didn't like whining, but she encouraged students to work with her and gave the impression that success in the class was going to be a team effort between her and the students.

My second English professor, Professor Hellboy (named so for the dozens of Hellboy action figures dotting his office. He could also be named Professor Batman for this reason, but even though I liked him, he still isn't deserving of such an extraordinary title) was not really so big on the team leader and pep talk idea. As I said, Professor Reallylonglastname didn't like whining, but her response to complaints about inability or excuses was something like "Well, how are you going to fix that? You need to find a way to take care of it, because that won't excuse you in the end." Professor Hellboy's approach to whining was more like "Suck it up, and actually do the work. I'm not listening." Now, he was perfectly willing to work with students if they came to him with legitimate concerns or questions (I found working with him one on one very helpful), but he didn't see it as his responsibility in the slightest to work with a student who made any attempts to push their work off onto him. After the first paper when most of the class got a failing grade (not including me thankfully), instead of giving a speech about how we were going to make it through the semester his speech had more of the tone "Y'all need to get your act together, and actually follow the instructions or you're going to fail this class. If you need help, ask, but you just gave yourself a lot more work."

I learned a lot from both of my first year English professors, but they were extremely different people with extremely different views about how to deal with difficulties or challenges in class. One felt like it was her job, as the prof, to lead the way and carry the class as far as possible as long as we did the work, and the other felt like it was his job to provide the tools necessary and then to point out mistakes when they were made. "Students float to the bar you set. I believe that, and I practice that." he said during one class.

Then my third English professor, Professor Italy, who taught business writing instead of gen-ed writing, was completely an oddball... and I say that in the most affectionate way possible. She was, quite honestly, the strangest professor I have had. Every class began with "Hello people!" in her thick Italian accent, and when we, as a class overall, didn't perform well her reaction was something like: *chuckle* "You guys have no idea what you're doing. Hopefully you'll figure out before you hand in your final drafts." Saying she made an effort to remove people's training wheels and get them off on their own is an understatement. I think her goal was more along the lines of "puncture everyone's tires, and steel the handlebars and then let them go off on their own." Maybe that's an exaggeration, but she told us numerous times that she made things more confusing and difficult than they needed to be, because she wanted us to learn how to be problem solver and creative thinkers as much as she wanted to know how to write a Resume. Go figure.

I actually learned a lot from her too, but she just showed another example of the way that professor see their role in the education of their students. Are they team leaders? Are the supervisors? Or are they the people setting the obstacle course and standing on the sidelines laughing manically as we attempt to navigate a maze full of Will'O the Wisps?

As I get ready to make the transition from gen-eds and pre business-core classes to 300 and 400 level concentration classes and try to think about what kinds of professors I want to see next year, I have realized that I can't really pin down a particular teaching style that I like the most or a "kind" of professor that I want to see. What I want, more generally speaking though, is a professor who is clear and thorough, but also blunt. I want a professor who lays the groundwork and hands me the tools to do what I need to, but then actually forces me to learn how to use those tools and put things together myself. I want my professors to be honest, and I want them to communicate well (preferably quickly) about grades, changes in schedules, upcoming tests, quizzes, etc. and professors who are tough but who don't look for ways to complicate things unnecessarily.

The vast majority of my professors have been good ones if not great ones. Most of them I don't have any great complains about, and I count myself blessed because of that. I know plenty of my classmates wouldn't say the same, and I don't take for granted the fact that I'm learning from some pretty smart and talented people, but they certainly have been pretty different and varied people as well.

The main reason I was prompted to write this post was because I found over the last two days that a couple of my professors actually had pretty terrible spring breaks, and they broke that news to my classes in different ways. My own professor's great-grandfather died toward the end of break after she spent most of our time off in the hospital with her sister who is fighting her third bout of blood cancer and was in critical condition for almost the entirety of last week. This professor, had us all sit in a circle yesterday when we came back and explained to use all what was happening with her family, and she actually was really blunt and honest with us, but in a way that made me feel like she didn't see herself as just our instructor but as a friend to us as well. She told us some details about the extent of the danger associated with her sister's illness that I wouldn't typically expect someone to share with a person outside of a close group of friends. I could tell it was an emotional discussion for her, and she asked us all to bare with her as we finish out the semester and promise she'd do her best.

Another one of my professors informed us today that his mother had a stroke over break and is expected to pass away at any time now. He also delivered this news very bluntly, but he delivered it in a very matter-of-fact, this is way things are way. I can't exactly articulate the major difference between the two announcements, but I sense a kind of guardedness and reservation about my professor today as he shared news that was clearly difficult and painful for him. His announcement was short, professional, and for the sake of letting us know why our papers were not graded instead of for the sake of keeping us in the loop about what was going on with his life.


Hearing these announcements from my profs over the last two days was helpful in reminding me that they are people too, and that in the same way that professors differ in their teaching style and education methods, they also differ in what's going on in their lives, how they deal stress and life problems, and who they are emotionally and mentally. As Professor Pascal says quite frequently "People are complex beings," and professors are included in that.

So as I look forward to the upcoming classes and semester I have left to finish out this whole college thing, I would like to see a lot of things in my future professors, but I know they'll all be different and that I'll like and dislike things about all of them.

Mostly though, I think the best thing I can get in a professor is a personality that cares.

Even though they were delivered in very different ways, both of my professors with grave announcements this week clearly cared, and not just about their family members struggling, but about their class and the way they personal struggles were going to impact us.

When it comes down to it, I can teach myself just about anything I need to, the internet is a wonderful place after all, but college is a heck of a lot more enjoyable when you professors actually care.

Pax