like a fish needs a bicycle...

a few guidelines

how you know your professor is unfair:
when he stops holding classes 2 weeks before the end of classes and skips town a month before finals.

how you know your professor is blatantly unfair:
when he not only skips town, but he doesn't get even one TA for your 110-person class, and also doesn't give you model answers to the questions on the practice exams -- thus, you have nowhere to turn for answers when you're confused.

how you know your professor is blatanly unfair, completely aware of it, and doesn't care:
when the above facts are brought to his attention, he says that students should have no problems because they should've been studying the material throughout the semester.

it's funny, because if that were really a defensible answer, all professors would skip town a month before finals. but they don't, because the fact is that no matter how well you read, study, go to class, take notes, and go to office hours throughout the semester, there's no way to ask all your questions in advance. no one has that kind of prescience. when the end of the semester rolls around, and you're consolidating everything you've learned, outlining all your class notes, and doing practice exams, that's obviously when you're gonna have questions you didn't have before. that's the nature of a semester-long course where you're graded based on just one final exam.

almost all professors are aware of this dynamic, so they not only have TA's and provide model answers, but they also hold office hours after classes end -- right up until the exam. but my particular professor apparently fails to understand the fundemantal logic and fairness of this process. and then he somehow manages to believe that any difficulties that his students may encounter are of their own making. truly amazing. i wonder if he knows about the special circle of hell that's reserved for bad law school professors...

Posted by naseem at May 9, 2006 10:43 PM