Turns Out Professors Want You To Learn

After nearly seven months of struggling through the new medium of lecture classes, accelerated learning curves, and grades comprised of two papers, a midterm, and a final, I’ve discovered something very important: professors actually want you to learn.

Yes, yes, I know. Of course they want you to learn. But the fact I’ve come across is they want you to learn. Learn, as in get the nuggets of information they pez dispense three times a week and insert it in your mind for your neurons to chew, suck and crack in their little dendrite teeth until they’ve lost their sugar rush and are ready for the next dispense. However, not everyone eats their pez the same way, and its up to us, as students to let our teaching professionals understand how do dispense it best.

Let me explain.

The other day I was in my philosophy class, blandly transcribing my teacher’s blackboard notes and lecture voice to my notes on John Locke. Typical day, typical class: I was just ready for it to be over. Then my teacher stops her lecture and completely switches gears. She goes into a maniacal fact vomit on the state of the prison system, practically yelling at us to agree with her sweeping general statements on how “This is the civil rights issue of our time, GUYS!” and how this is a terrible travesty, and how, oh, yea, John Locke talked about liberty and this pertains to liberty as well. Okay go ahead and leave ten minutes early.

Wait, what?

Okay, first I am forced to regurgitate mundane basic facts about a reading wrote four hundred years ago in thick archaic diction, then listen to fact after fact about an issue I am unaware of in an attempt to connect the basic facts to our lives today, and THEN without giving me a chance to discuss or ask questions you boot me out of a class I am paying $200+ for?! Not okay.

By the time I had walked ten feet from the door, I was livid. Obviously there was some disconnect between the way she was teaching and the way I was learning- how can I be getting anything out of that class period?

So I decided I needed to let her know in some way how I felt about her teaching practices. I wrote her a polite but firm e-mail explaining my frustration at class being cut early and the disconnect between contemporary issues and the topics being discussed. I also suggested a few alternative options to the way she was approaching the material. Then I signed my name, proofread for grammatical errors (she is my professor), and hit send.

Though I was slightly nervous about her reaction, I felt glad I sent the e-mail. Even if she didn’t agree, at least I would have felt like I did something to change my academic life for the better in a class that could pertain to my eventual major/minor.

Thankfully, she was more than happy I wrote her the e-mail. She said she normally doesn’t get this sort of honest feedback from a student and had noticed a decreased level of interest in our class. Apparently she had also just finished grading our papers and wasn’t too pleased about those grades, starting off the class on a sour note. However, the next class period we spent the entire time discussing how we could make the course more relatable and beneficial for everyone. It was probably the liveliest discussion we have had thus far. The class since then has been going much better, for both students and teacher.

So here is my advice to students everywhere: if you don’t like something that is going on in your class chances are other students feel the same way and your teacher is noticing. We only have four years of college (and maybe two-four years of grad school) to prepare us for the rest of our lives. That’s pretty intimidating once you think about it. So if for any reason something isn’t working for you, take some initiative and make it change. You’ll likely help yourself, and probably a few other students and professors along the way.