#bad profs

[allthebestscreennamesaregone63]

Real Talk:

Anti-intellectuslism in academic spaces is RISING.

At least, as of 2019, possibly in later years. (It is 2023 as of this writing.)

I saw a post to the effect of, "if you interrupt the lecture from a phd professor, with an opinion you formed based on a five minute google search, I am going to break your kneecaps, uwu."

Y'all, I get a person coming up with an incorrect opinion via google, but you gotta wonder, if the prof's argument can be decimated with a five minute search, if the prof actually knows what's up.

Google isn't always reliable, true, but I have had BAD profs.

Most were in the "intro to x" classes/just starting to teach, to be fair, but some were tenured.

Like, I could RUIN their arguments without even pulling up Google/an academic search site, in under five minutes, without breaking a sweat.

Exhibit A:

My Intro to Media Studies professor. This is the same prof who had us watching Citizen Kane, The Graduate, and Mount Rushmore, in their ENTIRETY, and only played a teeny clip from Psycho. (Shower Scene, to examine "match on object" camera tricks, no further analysis.)

For those unfamiliar, the last one in particular strongly does, "women don't have the right to say no" and pedophilia. Kane was the most boring shit I've ever seen, and the less said about The Graduate, the better. (This movie made me HATE Simon and Garfunkel. Do you know how hard it is to hate those guys, if your friend groups like alternative music AT ALL?)

Further, on Kane, the woman said, and I quote, "This is the first time we have ever seen a tracking shot-" LIKE, BITCH WHAT?!

So, I, media illiterate, raised my hand and went, "uh, no??? Tracking shot was literally invented in 1931 for Tod Browning's Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi??" I had LITERALLY just seen the behind the movie featurette, and having seen the movie, you can TELL there were tracking shots. Kane wasn't released until the 1950s. That's 20 years later, bitch!

She tried to hum and haw, that, "yeah but it combined a tracking shot with a deep perspective shot, that's what I meant!" Like, that is NOT what you said. At all. When I said as much, all I got back was a, "well I don't like horror movies." Which, ok, not everybody likes them, I get it, but you are literally teaching INTRO TO MEDIA STUDIES! Literally, the "movie class". if you're gonna sit there and preach to us, do your FUCKING research!

She proceeded to talk over me, and my classmates were all like, "shush!" Meanwhile, I am actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing, questioning that which seems factually incorrect, and actually thinking for myself!

And you're gonna tell me, *I'm* the bad guy? To the point of wanting to "break my kneecaps"??? No.

[anjellicles]

modern au lesbq💕 prof sqq caught out on a date w her college aged gf 😳 (she doesnt realize its a date or that she has a gf lol)

[eltsia]

don't pay too much attention to how metallic that metal looks. I iust wanted to draw their Russia reconnaissance outfits and Erik with white hair....

[cpericardium]

Student wrote "I have no interest reading about bad people doing bad things" in their response to the book

[amygdalae]

Talk abt second hand embarrassment u ever see a "No stupid questions" professor attempt to navigate a question that is in fact pretty stupid

[ketto-art]

Amit getting a B+?? aintnoway.

comms | prints

[the---hermit]

oral exam tips

I have at least one other post on exam tips, but they were mainly focused on giving tips on history exams. To me oral exams in academia have been the norm since high school, but I know that in other countries that might no be the case, so I decided to write down a list of advices coming from someone who is quite used to this kind of tests.

If you aren't used to having oral exams, you might need to change your study method, or at least add a few steps. I recently made a post entirely dedicated to my study method, which might be useful for this, but what I suggest is to add a step in which you review things out loud. What I would do is to just sit down with your notes or your materials and pretend to give a lecture on everything. Even better if you have a friend or family member to listen to you, because by having an active listener you will be forced to not skip stuff and have clear explainations, and they might ask you questions or clarifications. Those are always good because that might happen during the exam as well, but also it will help you memorizing those things. I recommend reviewing out loud multiple times. This way you will get more comfortable with the exposition of the topics you will be tested on, and you'll have a chance to find your own "voice".

by finding your own voice I mean finding a good compromise between using your own words to explain things, while still using the correct specific vocabulary of whatever topic you'll be tested on. This is fundamental. You are not there to recite a poem by heart, you are there to show you have understood the topic, that you sat with it and made it yours. You have to show you know how to clearly explain things but also reflect on it, making links with other things, and so on. At the same time there's some academic and specific vocabulary you want to include, because you are not in fact discussing the topic with a friend. So practicing out loud before the exam is good to find a good compromise between these two things.

I kind of mentioned it already, but it is absolutely fundamental to show that you understood the topic and not just memorized it. Whatever you do do not learn things by heart. It's better to be slightly insicure about a specific date, than to repeat your book word by word. And if you practice enough, and are comfortable enough with the informations in general believe me you can work around those things you can't remember perfectly well as you are being tested. Moreover your mark on the exam will be much higher than if you just learn things by heart.

on the very delicate topic of not remembering something specific you have been asked. Don't panic, you can still kind of save it. Whatever happens do not stay silent. There are several things you can do depending on whatever the question is, and I will later tell you a very specific example of something that happened to me. As I said do not panic, surely you will remember about some context on the topic so start by talking about that. As you are giving the context you might start to remember additionals informations, or you might build up enough informations to be able to logically guess whatever you are not remembering correctly. If you are half sure about something go for it, even if it's the wrong info if you contextualise it well enough you'll show you knew about that and it might just be read as a slip of you confusing two things. Now there might be situations in which the question is so direct that you can't do much, it happened to me once during my Greek history exam. I was asked the specific date of an event, and I could not for the love of the gods remember it. You know what I did? I told the professor, I cann't rememebr the exact date, but giving certain informations (that I then explained) I can tell you it was more or less in this half of this century. What I did was admit a fault, but while doing that I showed her that I knew what we were talking about it, I had enough informations on the matter to logically place it on the chronological line and contextualize it, and showed her that I can in fact work with the informations I studied. And at the end of my exam the professor complimented me on those exact things, saying she appreciated seeing me use my brain instead of midlessly memorizing informations I didn't understand.

So whatever happens do not stay silent. Anything is better than that.

Another potentially bad thing that might happen, and believe me it happened to me multiple times, is panicking so bad that you cannot get the words out, or confuse things. You know what happened everytime I found myself in that situation? The professor clearly saw me panicking, and told me to calm down, wait a couple of minutes, get my ideas in order and try again. And I got good grrades despite that in the end. You are under a lot of pressure, because you are giving an exam, and you have to be quick and ready instead of being able to reflect like with a written exam. Professors know that, and they keep it in mind, and they can tell when you are mixing things up because you are nervous, and not because you don't know things. I once had a professor look at me in the eye after i mixed up numbers on two dates twice in a row, and told me I know you know them take two deep breaths and try again. And I did. I have so many personal stories from my previous degree in which professors saw I was nervous and told me that it was okay I just needed to take a minute and breathe, and honestly that was exactly it. It was okay and I really needed to breathe, and then the exam when well.

The best tip I can give on answering questions is to balance the actual answer of the question with additional informations. You want to give context and add more infos to whatever has been asked to you, but you should also try not to lose focus on what was being asked. My personal way of doing this is to structure the answer in three parts: 1. general context that works as an introduction to the actual direct answer 2. the actual answer 3. further additions like more context, comparaisons and links with other topics or informations you had to study. This way you show off you know things, you make sure to show the professor you are not just rambling because you don't know the answer, and finally show you are comfortable enough with the informations to reflect on them and link them to other things. Ideally the professor will stop you while you are speaking, that in my experience is the best possible sign, because they are satisfied with your exposition and want to move onto other things.

So always build up on the answer to the question you have been asked. Never stop at just the information that serves as an aswer. You studied, it's your time to shine and make yourself proud.

Contextualizing your informations is absolutely fundamental no matter what, again because it shows you have a clear idea about what you are talking about. This can mean making a small introduction on the time and place, if you are an historian like me, or maybe give an introduction on the person you are talking about (whether they are an historical figure or a scholar you are talking about). Adding the little informations you weren't asked about is great. You are briefly mentioning an even and know the date? Add it in. Everything is a good addition.

Again I have definitely already mentioned in previous points but showing you are capable of reflect on the topics you are talking about is always a bonus. Make sure that when you are giving personal options or personal reflections you are stating this is your thought, but that is usually appreciated. After a good exposition of a topic you might even get the professor asking you your opinion on certain things. It happened to me multiple times, often I was asked to give an opinion of books I had to study for the exam, and that always prooved as an oportunity to add more informations and as I said show that I could make reflections of my own.

Last thing, that again kind of came out from other points, is that you want to show you are comfortable enough with the topic to be able to jump from one point to the other while reflecting on things or making comparaisons.

I am pretty sure I have forgotten something, but once again if you have specific questions I am happy to help, my inbox is always open. I know people who aren't used to oral exams are very scared of them, but as long as you try to approach it like a normal conversation on the topics you had to study, and you have practiced, things will be fine. To be quite honest with you after years of experience I'd say I very much prefer oral exams to written ones, because you can in a way shape the conversation and bring it to the topics you liked the most, know best. I hope this post was somewhat helpful to someone out there, and good luck if you are about to take an exam!

[mountmortar]

it IS kind of funny to me how professor oak is constantly framed as this great benevolent amazing professor to the point where they were even like "let's give this guy a cousin in alola who looks almost exactly like him because THAT'S what everybody wants to see in the games right" and then you pick up r/b/y or fr/lg and see how he treats blue and it's like Wow. This old man sucks. Somebody should kill him for sport. is he as bad as, say, ghetsis or lusamine? no. but he is DEFINITELY objectively awful. the games and professor oak framing blue as a bad trainer and person when he quite LITERALLY did NOTHING wrong (r/b/y has as many examples of blue being genuinely helpful towards his childhood friend as it does of him being an arrogant little twat, which is fine because. hello. he's 11. have you ever interacted with an 11-year-old) is soooooo irritating sometimes because like. in the VERY NEXT GENERATION you have a very clear example (silver) of what a kid mistreating their pokémon looks like (to the point where npcs are quite literally commenting on it left and right) and absolutely none of that is there with blue. glad to see he's flourishing now that he's fully moved to alola with red to run the battle tree and i hope he's blocked professor oak's number

[river-gale]

i think non-STEM people beat themselves up too much for being bad at math. partially i think this bc shame will never help you learn and everyone is capable of improving at math with patience and practice

partially i think this bc i’m still grading these applied calculus exams from a class of 3rd-5th year engineering students and several of them have said 1 - 6 = -4. two of them have said it’s -7

[rapidhighway]

i haaave to do my assignments.... i haaaaaveeeee to do them or ill have to drop out or something..... im behind on so much ive literally been ignoring everything cause i cant bring myself to do anything for uni rn but i have to....

[lilacandladybugs]

hey mathblr does anyone know why math textbooks explain things using the most convoluted language known to man. im out here rewriting passages in my own words so my brain doesnt explode cant they just talk normally. who writes this stuff

[ggghoulish]

the Hermaeus Mora pendant and chain I made for metals class ! made from brass with sculpted polygel on the cover

[ketsunamae]

i present elongated muskrat

[froggtogs]

sketchbook shadow that i lined today

[okartichoke]

au where godot gets therapy and becomes a math professor after getting out of prison

no cuz i had so much fun with this

he either teaches 13ish year olds Algebra 1 or OR he teaches adults who are learning mathematics later in life! He’s trying to lay off the coffee at his therapist’s insistence. He’s gotten down to only 3 cups on a good day.

Pearl/Maya channels Mia the day before his very first lesson, and he practices the whole lesson plan on her because he’s actually nervous. </3 That’s the last time he’s seen her.

ngl i really love math teacher godot HAHA im genuinely so endeared to this idea???? putting many more hcs in the tags >:3

erm uh yeah but then i doodled squirrel godot and had fun with that too so here’s him HAHA

and yknow what sure here’s some cat lawyers from like 3 weeks ago that i’m never gonna post otherwise. epic post, artichoke, you’ve done it again. 😎😎😎👍👍

[definetelynotavampire]

Williams emo brother Milliam Loriarty 🫶