College Professors Are Revealing What Students Don't Understand About Their Work, And I Am Diligently Taking Notes
Warning: This post includes a brief mention of threats of violence.
College educators are valuable professionals whose work can, at times, be totally misunderstood by students. Now, it's time to let professors clarify common misconceptions.
Nicktoons Productions / Via giphy.com
I recently asked college professors to share the things that students don't recognize about their work. Here are some insightful responses we received.
1."Being nice to faculty can get you far. It’s not that faculty play favorites, but when you are friendly and polite, you establish a reputation with not only that professor, but with the others; just like students share their thoughts on professors, we talk, too.
"If you set a precedent of sending rude emails or attacking faculty over grading, that will get around. And it will come back to get you later, like when you ask for a recommendation letter, and everyone knows that you are a pain."
2."If the assignment was a 15-page paper and it was due at 11:59 last night and there are 60 of you, then no, I won’t have your grades ready by the time your 8:45 class starts this morning.
"I have no idea where Professor Smith is, whether she will be in her office later, or if she saw your email. If you want your degree to mean something, why would you come to me to ask for five more points on your exam? The rubric was published at the beginning of the course, we went over it in class, and you had a practice exam. If I added up the points wrong, of course, I’ll change it, but not because you came to class and did the reading.
"I should say with this that I am not American, and I don’t live there. Where I live, we don’t have grade inflation, and not everyone can expect to earn or argue their way to an A."
3."I do my best to make sure the material can be understood at a novice level, but I've been studying this stuff in depth for over a decade. So, my baseline is definitely skewed. If you have questions, don't understand, or need the material simplified a bit more, please ask!
"I know some professors are dicks, but I think most would be happy to try a different explanation that may help you understand the material better. Sometimes, it's hard to remove all the nuance and details we've learned when trying to describe the basic concept, but I'll do my best because I really do want you to truly understand."
—eell
4."It is an unrealistic expectation that if you email faculty past normal business hours or on the weekend, we will receive and respond to your email immediately. We are humans with lives outside our jobs, and we are not 'on call' 24/7. I, too, enjoy having a weekend, cooking dinner, and going to sleep at a reasonable hour. No one is purposefully ignoring you, but we also aren't obligated to write back at midnight or on a Sunday morning."
5."I’m not that much older than you, I know when you come to class high, and I know what bars your fake ID worked at. I don’t care if you partake in either, as long as you are not disruptive in class and try your hardest."
—R
6."Professors really want you to ask questions and engage during the lecture. It is really tough to talk for an hour, and part of your mind is wondering, 'Are they understanding this?' or 'Should I focus on this a little longer?' When you ask questions or ask us to slow down, it really helps us and helps your learning as well. Please don’t be scared to ask, because we are there in that moment to teach and help.
"Professors and lecturers are crazy busy. Teaching only makes up a small portion of my time, which is normally focused on research and experiments. But we also have lives outside of work. If you need an answer to a question at 9 p.m. the night before your exam, it’s not going to be answered. I promise.
"If you are considering pursuing a research project, master's, or a PhD, it is wise to approach a professor that you are interested in working with. If they brush you off or are rude to you, you don’t want to work with them. Your life will be miserable, and it’s not worth it. However, 90% will be pleased to have people interested in their work and will want to know more!"
7."If there is something happening in your life that will affect your course performance, please let me know as soon as you know. I have no problem working with students to change deadlines for assignments or tests but need some communication on their end in order to help. I can't do much about it if you tell me a month later when you've already missed deadlines."
8."Adjuncts and lecturers are some of the most underpaid and under-appreciated people in the whole higher education system. They don’t get paid time off, health insurance, and often can’t afford either on adjunct wages. They often have to work at multiple schools to make a living, and it is really difficult to go from one of these positions to a full-time or tenure-track position.
"The tenured and full-time positions require you to be advancing your field, which is nearly impossible to do if you are constantly teaching to make ends meet.
"I was an adjunct, and one of the comments I would often get on evaluations is that students wanted more feedback on their work than I was giving. I was in the fine arts, and when you are teaching nearly 200 students per semester who are turning in their portfolios of 10-20 pieces each at the same time, it is hard to give more than a few sentences of feedback to each student.
"And because we have so many students, especially if we teach online, it is sometimes hard to keep everyone straight. So, when you are emailing your instructor, it is always appreciated to include your full name and the class/section you are in. And please read your emails before you send them to make sure it makes sense! I can’t count the number of emails I received that required multiple follow-ups because the student would send a one-sentence email with little detail."
9."An online class doesn’t mean I can have infinite students.
"After we went back face to face, we had limits on room capacity (sometimes less than 15). This affected course enrollment numbers. But I was also teaching an online class and was inundated with requests to override into it. Students would say it 'doesn’t matter 'cause there’s no room capacity limit.' But it does. Every student adds workload for me. If I’m going to engage with all of you, read assignments, give feedback that is both helpful and timely, then I cannot have huge numbers. I’m only one person."
10."I have responsibilities for hundreds of students, some of whom have very urgent needs. I'm a university lecturer in nursing, and I absolutely did not ever expect to be dealing with as many serious safeguarding issues as I do. The level of entitlement in the past couple of years has made it absolutely horrific to be perfectly frank, and I cannot wait to escape higher education."
11."The misconception that your tuition dollars pay our salary; grant money (that we have to apply for and win) and the college endowment (of which tuition is a small fraction) pays our salary. Thus, going 'over the head' of your professor to the chair, dean, or provost to complain about your grade will usually not work in your favor (except in the rare case where a professor is violating university policies).
"Also, FERPA means that we cannot talk about your grades (or even the fact that you’re taking my course) with anyone except you or your advisor. If your parent or girlfriend emails me asking for an extension because you’re out sick, I cannot legally respond to that.
"Some students seem to believe they are the customers, and we (the professors) are customer service agents. This probably is due to the fact that college is incredibly expensive in the US these days. (Trust me, most faculty hate this and are still paying off our own student loans. I know I am.) But what we’re really there to do as professors is teach skills and knowledge in our areas of expertise. Sometimes, this means students have to learn uncomfortable or unwelcome information that challenges their preconceived notions. Sometimes, this means that students will have to work really hard to learn these new skills or internalize this new knowledge. Don’t expect learning to be an easy, pleasant experience. It should challenge you!"
12."There is a very good chance that you’ll want a letter of recommendation from a professor at some point. Talk to professors; get to know at least a couple. LORs from people who don’t know you are vague and not that useful.
"We don’t hate you. We don’t even think about you all that much outside work. The mythical professor who tries to destroy religious beliefs is just that: a boogeyman that some groups make up to keep young people from going to secular colleges. We hate grading."
13."I do not work for you, the student; i.e., this is not a service industry. I am employed by the university and as teaching is but a small portion of my job responsibilities, this is not some 'customer is always right' scenario. You have paid for the opportunity to learn from me, an expert in this field. That’s it. I don’t owe you a specific grade or immediate responses to 3:00 a.m. emails, or to tell you that your incorrect information is right in order to spare your feelings.
"Read the freaking syllabus. Before you send me an email, read the syllabus. 95% of the time, the answer is in the syllabus.
"You would be amazed how much easier many of your classes would be if you just showed up and paid attention. The number of students who come and sit and play around on their computer — 1) I know what you’re doing; 2) why bother coming?! (I don’t take attendance.)
"If you would just show up and pay attention, that is, like, 80% of the battle in many classes. You’d be shocked at how much easier things would be, I promise."
14."I work at the same college where I got my degree. It’s a science university, so all the teachers have to do research, and all the scientists have to teach. As a student, my professors always complained about having to do research, how all they wanted to do was teach, and they hated being obliged to produce research. Now, I’m working on a research project, and the scientists absolutely hate teaching. They are so stressed, and it takes them away from their work."
15."Book publishers have a lot of resources out there, and I know some professors will just take their slides and use it. I do not, and it is very clear that I'm developing my own materials (notes, homework, exams, check-ins, etc.). I've spent far longer than I probably should have trying to find a real world dataset that has the properties I want it to have. My notes routinely take several hours of work.
"Even when I have materials from a previous semester to build on, I'm not straight copying and pasting, but editing, adjusting to what worked, what didn't, what new idea I had that might be better.
"For my students to not even look at the notes (or even read what is on the board) is just so frustrating. Here I am dedicating time trying to find the best way of teaching you the material (which is math, so yes, it can be a little dry, but I'm doing what I can to make it interesting), and my students don't put in any effort to use the resources I've made for them (or just plain effort into their education).
Also, as others have said, we're human, and not just that — I have a life outside of work. My students have made me cry more than once already this current school semester. Think about how you talk to us."
16."I can't help you if I don't know what's going on. I've had students who just disappear from class or stop turning in work. I hate failing students, but if they just disappear on me, I have no other choice. Please tell me what's going on; I'll work with you."
17."A lot of us are struggling to deal with our elderly parents and our own children while teaching you. If we're frazzled, late, or out of sorts, it may be because we've just gotten off a phone call with a parent with dementia. You may not know we're going through a divorce or a cancer scare. Grad student TAs and young faculty may be dealing with fertility problems or pregnancy-related discrimination. Foreign profs may be worried about the political situation in their home country. It's hard to teach when your country is being invaded. Professors and TAs have all sorts of stuff going on in our lives, just like students do."
18."Read your syllabus. Professors work really hard on those, and they list all the important dates, assignments, policies, etc. It’ll also tell you the best way to get ahold of your professor if you need to — some only use email, some only use Canvas/Blackboard, etc. So many miscommunications can be solved by reading the syllabus."
19."1) For most professors in permanent positions, teaching is only a portion of their job and is not typically a large part of their job evaluation and promotions. They have many other responsibilities and deadlines for grants, articles, project management, and supervising grad students. Take a look at one of your professor's CVs sometime.
"2) Your professors might be adjuncts, which means they are typically part-time employees and paid pennies to teach the class. They are frequently not told if they will have a job next semester or next year, and have to cobble together jobs at multiple colleges. People with the title of 'adjunct' or 'lecturer' are typically in these positions, while those with 'assistant professor' are pre-tenure, tenure-track, 'associate professor' tenured, and 'professor' is a promoted tenured position.
"3) The racism and sexism that professors and adjuncts experience from STUDENTS is frequently worse than those from our coworkers or bosses. Read up on common sexist and racist comments in teaching evaluations from students, and really reflect before writing your teaching evaluations. I stopped reading my evaluations because it was useless to read students assuming I didn't know legitimate pedagogical practices because I'm a young woman."
20."I'm new to teaching college students this semester, and my class is all freshmen. There's this idea that high school teachers push that professors are super tough and demanding and strict...and while that may be true to an extent, we're also really approachable and willing to help when students need support.
"On the other side of the coin, I'm also a first semester grad student, and the dynamic is less student-professor and more peer-peer."
21."My parents were college professors all through my growing up. We had to leave town for the weekend on more than one occasion because one of them had received a credible death threat from a disgruntled student. This is my roundabout way of reminding all students that professors have families and lives outside of their jobs."
22."Professors are insanely busy; teaching is just a very small part of what they do, and their schedule is in general not very flexible. I’ve seen all these posts calling out professors for not being flexible with deadlines and other things in response to personal needs, but here’s the thing: They often cannot be, not as much as they’d have liked.
"They usually have their schedules filled weeks in advance, and they’ve already booked a specific slot with their TAs and grad students to grade the exams. Every extension or unscheduled makeup date means that they have to reorganize their entire schedule, oftentimes on account of other things."
Note: Some answers have been lightly edited for length and/or clarity.
