Flame Free Confession III: Even More Flame Free (Part 1)

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Sonofabitch, I can’t read. But yes, my experience says the same.

Humanities profs let late work slide with no penalty, passed everyone, and coddled the shit out of everyone beyond what any of my high school teachers did. Granted, I think they pass everyone just to get them out of their sight. But the other points are of unknown (to me) origin. I would imagine it gets a little more serious the further into the major you get, though. Basic humanities isn’t a “weed out” class like Calc/Physics/Chem. When they know you’re committed to learning, rather than just checking the box, they probably hold you to a higher standard.

Engineering/math profs had a very “tough shit” attitude, which bodes much better for real life. My favorite anecdote for that was from the worst prof I ever had - an older dude that was way beyond caring about anything but a paycheck. I bombed a test (like everyone else did - a 35% was good for a B) and he graded in red pen. When I got it back, covered in red, I said to my buddies, “Damn, I don’t like that”, kinda being a smartass and acknowledging that I sucked. He overheard and responded, “Holy hell, apparently I didn’t either. Better luck next time.” :skull_and_crossbones:

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exactly!

Yup.

My “hard science” courses were affectionately deemed “rocks for jocks” and about as basic as it could get to help graduate my political science degree having behind, whereas my 400 level Poli science classes were brutal.

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As I’ve gotten older I’ve kind of adopted that assumption. At the time, though, I was definitely a cock about it. Ahh hindsight.

Edit: I will say, I took a Chinese studies class my 2nd year of college, with 2 of my buddies. We half-assed it harder than most humanities classes, yet were still part of the 10% of the class that turned things in on time and completed the tests. It was so bad the prof thanked us at the end of the semester for making him feel like he was actually teaching something. Maybe the issue isn’t the class/prof, it’s the students.

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Well
 I’ve asked my friends who are juniors and seniors, and it seems that the workload doesn’t increase significantly. I’m not complaining- less school work = more sleep+more time for research

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Humanities aren’t a walk in the park either. My friends in English, history or poli sci have hundreds of pages of reading

My major happens to be in a sweet spot between humanities and sciences so I neither have the computation of harder sciences nor the reading/writing load of humanities

Your friends have hundreds of pages of reading ASSIGNED. You learn to skim pretty good, haha.

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Meanwhile my professor apologized for assigning a “long” 40page research article :joy::joy:

I think it’s the price of poker going on. If the three engineers here screwed up with some novel work we did: (1) the plant would break, and something like 3-4% of Texas’s natural gas would go offline (which is rather critical right now) or (2) it would blow up, we’d all die, and something like 3-4% of the natural gas would go offline.

No do overs.

I got to go to a real house and real bed today. Not mine, but it’s warm and I got to poop without people looking at me. Also eggs and a burrito.

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I had a material science professor that would give negative points to wrong answers. I shit you not someone got like a -6 on an exam. There is no coming back from that one. It would have been better if he had just skipped the whole test.

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I hate this shit. Do some teachers get off on watching their students fail?

My favourite — and really, the whole school’s favourite — teacher ever was my highschool Comparative Civilizations and History teacher. He was super curmudgeonly, gave out a LOT of reading and work material to cover everything he needed to, and had students sweating towards the end of the year. However, he would also bend over backwards to make sure you understood the material and passed. His students frequently had the highest grades on year-end provincial exams, and almost always went on to high-end universities.

He was a proper teacher. He never coddled us (and would frequently verbally eviscerate students who treated his classes like a joke), but made sure that, if tests were being failed and assignments struggled with, it wasn’t that we weren’t understanding the material.

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Sounds like he had a passion for what he was teaching and or just teaching people.

I would not say these characteristics describe this particular professor. He also had a policy that if you had an issue with grading on an exam that he would not take another look at the particular part you had an issue with, he would regrade the whole exam (and made sure you always did worse after regrading). The guy was a prick.

What the actual fuck.

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My HS AP lit teacher was like this. He was a “harsh grader” and got a lot of flack for it, but I never saw it that way. He was fair and I got what I deserved. Most of his students loved him

It was rough man. The professor seemed to get put on probation a lot. My university would let professors fail a lot of kids, but his numbers were not rookie numbers if you combined the students who dropped the class with the ones who didn’t pass.

He was the worst, but only by a tad. I had a fluid mechanics professor that did not curve test scores. Just went by a fairly standard grade table (80-90 is a B, 90-100 is an A). The issue is that average scores would be sub 60 generally. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I got the high score out of about 100 students on 1 of the 3 exams. I did well above average on the other exams. I did the homework. Basically I tried pretty damn hard, and got a C in the end. Not sure if anyone got an A. I think a few got Bs.

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Feels good to be the smart meathead once in awhile, doesn’t it?

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I actually did want to toot my own horn.

That is my confession.

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I think outside of the bad grader dude, the worst I had was this woman that would purposely assign one homework problem per semester whose solution in the solutions manual was wrong. She’d then report every single one of the students with the solutions manual’s answer to the engineering dean demanding the students be kicked out of the program, or at least fail the class. The dean would laugh and say they failed that homework and wouldn’t be punished unless they messed up again. She’s done this for 20 years with the same exact results