Education – Page 18 – The Renegade Coder

As the semester winds down, I find myself back in that dark place I was just over a year ago when I struggled to find any amount of enjoyment in my day job. However, this time I have the worst professor ever to thank for that. The Struggle with Authority For the sake of context, I should mention that I've always struggled a bit with authority. Whether it's been teachers, mentors, family, class presidents, or bosses, I've always seemed to have a problem with someone telling me what to do. When I was growing, I was given a lot of autonomy which meant I had a lot of control over my own fate. I was able to make my own decisions about what I was going to do with my time, and I never expected that to change when I was an adult. As a result of my own autonomy, I've grown to have a strong work ethic which often puts me at odds with authority. Since I work so hard, I'm perceived as a conformist and that could not be further from the truth. Of course, naturally, that perception allows authority figures to walk all over me because they know I'll get the work done. I've seen this countless times in my short life. Whether I was being voluntold in college organizations or given too much ownership over projects at my first job, I've always seemed to run into a recurring problem: people think they can tell me what to do, and I hate it. The Worst Professor Ever Of course, in the latest string of people who think they can exert control over me is my data visualization professor. Before I dig into exactly what they tried to pull on me, I'm going to need to back up a minute to share just how bad of a professor they are. Insane Workload If you managed to read my recent article on underperforming, then you know that data visualization was by far my hardest class this semester. It had nothing to do with the difficulty of the material but rather the shear amount of work we were expected to complete. In one semester, we were asked to complete 4 paper/programming assignments, 4 presentations, 4 paper reviews, 1 term project proposal, 1 literature review, 1 term project evaluation, 1 term project, and 1 midterm exam. In case you're wondering when we'd have the time to complete all this work, we didn't. That's 17 assignments over the span of 15 weeks which is just asinine considering this likely wasn't anyone's only responsibilities. In no way was this professor going to get quality work from any of their students. To make matters worse, the professor didn't grade an ounce of the work. They had a grader who had a workload of 17 times the number students in the course (approximately 40). In other words, we didn't receive grades for literally anything that entire semester. Amorphous Requirements If having 17 assignments wasn't hard enough, it was the lack of concrete requirements that really killed me. Almost every assignment was given as a block of text that had to be deciphered. In many cases, these requirements were then interpreted differently by all three parties (grader, student, professor). As a consequence, it took way too long to get work done. In addition, the professor often shifted requirements due to student questions and wouldn't relay those changes to the grader. Naturally, grades were essentially pulled out of a hat. Throughout the semester, the person often asking clarifying questions was me. For instance, I once asked if I could review Hockey Viz for an assignment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they said no because it wasn't good enough. In other words, it didn't come out of a peer-reviewed research paper. This theme of gatekeeping continued throughout the semester. Ironically, the peer-reviewed paper requirement seemed to only apply to the students because the professor happily placed visualizations on the midterm from sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Don't you just love a double standard? Lack of Respect for Student Time To make matters worse, this professor had almost no respect for the time of their students. On several occasions, they shifted requirements at the last minute and expected everyone to make the adjustment. In addition, it was common for them to write arbitrary deadlines for assignments, tell no one about them, and shoot an email reminding everyone to complete the assignment the night before it was "due." Hell, they made us spend the entire second half of the semester presenting papers because they couldn't be bothered to write their own material. We were doing their job for them, and they were loving it. Did I mention that we had to do paper reviews? Once the presentations started, we were required to read and review a research paper once a week for some unknown reason. All of this was on top of the fact that we were supposed to be working on a term project concurrently. They literally had no respect for our time or mental health. The Last Straw All of this brings me to the straw that broke the camel's back. The only way I can express my frustrations is through a 4Chan meme: > Be me> Just finished watching the Stars and Pens game which ended 3-2 Pens> Be happy because Pens are closing in on Caps> Check my email> Notice an email from the worst professor ever> Subject reads: "Is the paper published anywhere"> Body reads: "I saw your paper selection and the paper on arxiv. Is the paper published anywhere? Generally we prefer TVCG papers to ensure the paper quality and I have shared a couple of papers with you. Please let me know."> Grow extremely frustrated as deadline is two days away > Respond: "The paper listed is the one you shared on the paper list. I do not believe it was ever published."> Await garbage response from worst professor ever> Receive response from worst professor ever which reads: "Is it possible to pick a TVCG publication instead? Did I share a TVCG paper before? Sorry about this? > Realize the professor may just be a bot who is trying to display emotions???> Grow increasingly frustrated to the point of belligerence> Respond: "I selected a paper from the original paper list from the course website. There is not a reasonable enough time to put together another presentation by Tuesday, and I don’t plan to do twice the amount of work as everyone else. Regardless, I think the paper is valuable. It covers a lot of great visual channel topics like Bertin, Munzner, and the Gestalt Laws."> mic-drop.gif> Await trash response from trash professor> Receive response from trash professor who concedes victory: "OK. That will be fine. I agree with you. Thanks for picking up all these principles and for the quick responses as well. This area is also quite new too and I really like your project."> GGEZJeremy Grifski, March 23rd, 2019 Need I say more? Grad School is Hard Enough As someone who is already fighting to survive grad school, I don't need professors like this intentionally making my life more difficult for no good reason. Do none of these people consider the lives of others before they start making outrageous requests? Seriously, the disrespect is astounding. At any rate, I needed to go on this rant for myself. If you liked it or you just want to share some kind words, feel free to do just that in the comments. Thanks again for the support!