Have you ever had a terrible professor who was also completely unorganized ?

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sillymetodaynow

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My physics II professor this summer is skipping portions of almost every chapter we are covering. When he is asked why he is doing that he says there is simply too much material to cover and that noone covers all the material for physics II. The problem is that he wastes half the class talking and bad jokes. He wastes so much time talking to the class and asking the class stupid questions then we have a 15 minute quiz every day that also takes time from the class.

I am just concerned that I am going to have to teach myself half of the physics content on the MCAT because he is skipping so much material.

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sillymetodaynow said:
My physics II professor this summer is skipping portions of almost every chapter we are covering. When he is asked why he is doing that he says there is simply too much material to cover and that noone covers all the material for physics II. The problem is that he wastes half the class talking and bad jokes. He wastes so much time talking to the class and asking the class stupid questions then we have a 15 minute quiz every day that also takes time from the class.

I am just concerned that I am going to have to teach myself half of the physics content on the MCAT because he is skipping so much material.

I had a professor like this. He also taught physics. He looked like Gollum. No lie. He had quizzes every Monday. Most people didn't attend class the other two days of the week, but they got hit when he factord in their attendace grade (he never took attendance, but he only taught physics and thus knew when people were not there often; he also taught all the labs). I just took my physics book with me to class and read it while he lectured. That way I was there (and got bonus points for bringing the book) but I didn't waste time listening to him talk about monkeys in boats.
 
Hey, are you sitting next to me in Physics II?

Aren't all physics professors this way? Think about it. University Physics as a career offers 2 options;

1. Research. Now, anyone who has a PhD in Physics is academically brilliant no doubt, but there are very few research spots available and so only the very sharpest get these spots. (I put medical physics here too)

2. Teaching physics to slackers. If I had to teach a class full of know-it-all premeds and 20 something kids who don't have a clue, I would lose my mind also.

Physics for the MCAT should be studied in an MCAT prep course. Yes, we are learning in Physics II, but nothing beats reading and tackling similar problems to what are on the MCAT. Learning about Georg Ohm isn't going to help out on the MCAT.

So, get the best grade you can, learn as much as you can and then go buy Flowers and Silver if you haven't already.

:)
 
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Yes, I've had really bad, disorganized professors who waste a lot of class time. Unfortunately, you can't really change the professor, so what you get out of the class is in your own hands.

If it's that bad, honestly, the best you can probably do is learn enough on your own to do well in the class and then think about the MCAT separately. Does your school offer a peer mentoring/tutoring program? If it does, you can take advantage of that.

Other than that, I agree with Sporky. The physics questions on the MCAT are pretty basic, and everything you need to know can be learned through an MCAT prep course or MCAT study materials. In my opinion, it's somewhat useless to sit down and LEARN for the MCATs...all you need is a quick review of class material and practice, practice, practice. But if your class sucked, then it would be best to spend extra time reviewing/relearning physics, do a quick review of your other classes, and do a *lot* of practice exams (preferrably the AAMC ones, which you can get on ebay).

I took the MCAT in August 2003, and at that point, the best review book I found was the Kaplan book. Barron's and REA were absolutely awful, and I chose Kaplan over Princeton Review (+ class notes). Didn't take a course.

The worst part of the MCAT, really, is learning to sit still and think for 6 hours.
 
Sporky said:
Hey, are you sitting next to me in Physics II?

Aren't all physics professors this way? Think about it. University Physics as a career offers 2 options;

1. Research. Now, anyone who has a PhD in Physics is academically brilliant no doubt, but there are very few research spots available and so only the very sharpest get these spots. (I put medical physics here too)

2. Teaching physics to slackers. If I had to teach a class full of know-it-all premeds and 20 something kids who don't have a clue, I would lose my mind also.

Physics for the MCAT should be studied in an MCAT prep course. Yes, we are learning in Physics II, but nothing beats reading and tackling similar problems to what are on the MCAT. Learning about Georg Ohm isn't going to help out on the MCAT.

So, get the best grade you can, learn as much as you can and then go buy Flowers and Silver if you haven't already.

:)
Actually no not all physics teachers are that way lol. I had a great experience with physics (both the "slackers" version and the calc-based majors/minors version). And my teacher for both series "only" has his masters (he did the coursework for the PhD but ran out of funding to do the dissertation). He still tells lots of jokes and makes the class fun, but he never had trouble getting through all of the material, let alone actually teaching us the material. He actually chooses to teach the "winky physics" as we call it at my school (not the lib arts physics tho), and I took calc-based physics I over the summer and we still had no trouble getting through it all (still either an 8 or 10 week class vs. 4 weeks tho) and actually learning it.

But the types of profs you mentioned are definitely out there. I was tutoring a girl in calc-based physics II last spring and her prof sucked. He fits the first category - brilliant mind, can't teach lower-level classes to save his life. He basically taught them upper-division E&M instead. I ended up going to the teacher who taught me just about every week to figure out her homework problems so I could actually help her lol.
 
I had a great calc II teacher, but she lost one of my tests. Luckily, she saw that my previous 2 test grades were As, and my final was an A as well, so she gave me a borderline A for that test. Even luckier, I didn't know that test's subject so well, so I thought I bombed it. :D
 
sillymetodaynow said:
My physics II professor this summer is skipping portions of almost every chapter we are covering. When he is asked why he is doing that he says there is simply too much material to cover and that noone covers all the material for physics II. The problem is that he wastes half the class talking and bad jokes. He wastes so much time talking to the class and asking the class stupid questions then we have a 15 minute quiz every day that also takes time from the class.

Yeah, my OChem professor putzed around as well... one day he spent 10 minutes talking about his alma mater's football team. Then he put up the athletic merchandise section of the school's website on the overhead and asked us to support the team by buying the merchandise (for a school in another state, no less)

My Physics I professor was all business. Straight and to-the-point. Absolutely terrific. My Physics II professor asked weird questions that stalled the class all the time. "When we see this light, what do we see here?"
 
taylormade44 said:
I thought all university professors were lazy? isnt that why they go into a professor position?
lol

I totally agree with you on that but most of them think that they have the busiest lives in the world. As a former grad student and now a research assistant I still have yet to figure out why they think their lives are soo busy. Half of them aren't even here during the summer and when they are here they're chatting it up on the phone and taking long @ss breaks!
 
Wait...you guys had profs that were organized...??
I thought that's what they needed TA's for.
:laugh:
 
jackieMD2007 said:
Wait...you guys had profs that were organized...??
I thought that's what they needed TA's for.
:laugh:
At least you GET TA's. :laugh: For the most part at my small lib arts school we got the prof, and not much else. For chemistry labs we got an assistant to make sure we don't blow the building up, and some courses have students who previously did well in the course who run review sessions before exams. That's all.
 
Maybe you should try going somewhere that's better staffed. :)
That sucks dude.
 
It is very rare to have a professor who is well-organized and a good educator.

I have had several terrible professors who were completely unorganized. I am sure we will all have terrible professors who are completely unorganized in medical school, too.

You don't have to have any idea how to teach effectively to be an instructor at the vast majority of schools.
 
I had Great cal-Physics Prof after all he had his Phd done at Yale in Physics Education. o_O
 
Every semester for 2 years.....I can't escape the woman. She is a nice lady but she can't teach and randomly springs assignments on us without even telling us till it is due.
 
sillymetodaynow said:
My physics II professor this summer is skipping portions of almost every chapter we are covering. When he is asked why he is doing that he says there is simply too much material to cover and that noone covers all the material for physics II. The problem is that he wastes half the class talking and bad jokes. He wastes so much time talking to the class and asking the class stupid questions then we have a 15 minute quiz every day that also takes time from the class.

I am just concerned that I am going to have to teach myself half of the physics content on the MCAT because he is skipping so much material.
are you in my class?
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=425397
on second thought mine never tells jokes
 
sillymetodaynow said:
My physics II professor this summer is skipping portions of almost every chapter we are covering. When he is asked why he is doing that he says there is simply too much material to cover and that noone covers all the material for physics II. The problem is that he wastes half the class talking and bad jokes. He wastes so much time talking to the class and asking the class stupid questions then we have a 15 minute quiz every day that also takes time from the class.

I am just concerned that I am going to have to teach myself half of the physics content on the MCAT because he is skipping so much material.
Profs don't live in the real world so they can get away with these kinds of things. Self-sufficiency is best.
 
There's one at every school.

I had this prof who never anything prepared for class and just walked in a "talked" about random stuff. I say talked in quotes because he was very quiet and mumbled...even people in the first row a meter away from him couldn't really understand. Board skills were horrible. "Then this glucose *draws a line* is convert to this *draws another line*" Good thing the book was somewhat good...managed to salvage a B.
 
i've always had to teach myself in all my science classes :confused: i thought this was the norm. i guess not! pretty much all of my professors have just talked, given some basic examples of stuff, and then told us some cool application.. not really teaching. and if something is not taught that will be on an exam and is in the book, well it was our responsibility to read the book anyway. hmm didn't know there was any other way to do it!! guess i've been getting the shaft!
 
jackieMD2007 said:
Maybe you should try going somewhere that's better staffed. :)
That sucks dude.

Eh, the school was great in other respects. Just no graduate students to make do that kind of stuff. All the profs had t ograde their own exams/homework. :scared: Besides, who thinks that medical school profs will be any better? It's good to get that practice in early! :laugh:
 
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