My professor is a kook!

[The Shrike]

This woman speaks broken English and is in the English Department?

 

[AvalonXQ]

"Oh yeah? I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. Record the genetics of other species -- tag 'em and bag 'em -- and let's get on with dominating the universe."

I actually hold this position.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

This woman speaks broken English and is in the English Department?

She speaks it with a heavy Jamaican accent and makes grammatical errors here and there. She even sometimes makes errors on the instructions for written assignments!

Since the official language of Jamaica is English, her first language must be English...but I'm not sure.

 

[AvalonXQ]

The fact that the average English major at my university knew less about the language than the average engineering major is yet another piece of evidence supporting the proposition that college English departments are crap.

 

[FramerDave]

I assume students are all asked to fill out course and instructor evaluation forms at the end of the semester?

 

[Senex]

I assume students are all asked to fill out course and instructor evaluation forms at the end of the semester?

That's true. Honestly, more than once I helped future students not having to experience a bad teacher I trashed on that evaluation form. (I know for a fact I helped sack a graduate psychology teacher.)

It's given the powers that be know what is going on. They need student feedback to fire her. If you can provide dates and direct quotes she made you may help relieve her of her job.

I know you feel it may affect your grade EMM, but they only let the teacher see the comments after grades are handed in. I would clock her as articulately as I could if I were you.

It's the right thing to do.

 

[Christa]

Hi, everyone. This is my first post on JREF, but I've lurked for ages.

Eeney, I am truly sorry for the experience you're having, but it's totally working for me! This is one of the funniest threads I've ever read.

I disagree that she's a plain bad teacher. She is most definitely a fancy bad teacher. Do you ever learn anything about literature?

I don't think she speaks broken English. From what you've posted, it sounds more like Black English Vernacular (the dreaded Ebonics) with some Jamaican English thrown in.

Her grammatical errors concern me more. People have their dialects, but a prof needs to write Standard English.

Is there any way you could film her? While I'd like to suggest uploading to YouTube for general merriment, my point is you could go to the administration and, as English teachers always say, "show don't tell" what's been going on.

Actually, scratch that. That's a bad idea. Well, the administration part. I'm all for YouTube, but you should probably wait until after that diploma is hanging on your wall.

The reason I suggest a video is that sometimes people do this kind of crap because they face no consequences. 500,000 people ridiculing you on YouTube is a consequence. Although she's probably past all hope.

I really don't know what else to say. For a prof to not only stray so far from her topic, but also to maunder on and on about her private life and odd ideas-- I've just never heard of anything so extreme. Is she a complete narcissist, or does she actually think she's engaging in the the teaching of literature?

Also, she doesn't sound like someone who, shall we say, values critical thinking. Isn't that kind of the opposite of being a PhD?

Please continue to post little vignettes of what happens in class. Someday you'll look back on all and laugh. Not about the waste of money, time, and the opportunity to study great literature, but about encountering this loon.

 

[Paul2]

There's bound to be a professor as crazy as this one is is all of academia. What are the odds?

My post #55: problem solved. Well, OK, not problem solved, but definitely the first step in potentially solving the problem.

 

[The Man]

Well, is he still alive?

got no idea, I tried doing a search to see if there is some achieved obituary on the web but got nothing (much as I expected). So either he is long dead or still hooked up to his machine keeping him alive someplace.

 

[Elaedith]

Doesn't sound that much different to some postmodernist anthropology lecturers I had in the past. There was one who told us that the seats we were sitting in don't actually exist but were constructed through collective discourse.

 

[John Jones]

Doesn't sound that much different to some postmodernist anthropology lecturers I had in the past. There was one who told us that the seats we were sitting in don't actually exist but were constructed through collective discourse.

The Postmodernism Generator:

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

 

[Accidental Martyr]

I've actually thought of getting my cousin to do a talk at SkeptiCamp about how Black skeptics deal with these cultural urban legends.

Aside from the genocide plots, there are thousands of much more mundane myths. One example is the widespread belief that Tommy Hilfiger doesn't want black people to wear his clothes. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this was started by a competing clothing company (a la AMWAY vs Proctor & Gamble). But there's no getting this myth back into the bottle.

Anyway, there are plenty of black people who know this stuff is bunk, but I think that it's more difficult to debunk ethnic myths from within the culture in question.

Are you familiar with this book? It came out in the mid 90s but I remember it was very interesting.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/I+Hea...+Rumor+in+African-American+Culture-a018372108