College Crunch

There is a horrible fascination with rating things that we all seem to have. I don’t know why psychologically we feel the need to say that one person or thing is better than another in an arbitrary and personal rating scale, but we do.

Sites like RateMyProfessors.com have been around for a long time now, allowing students of all educational institutions to publish their own comments and criticisms about the men and women that spent time trying to teach them.

During my first year in College, I had some pretty horrible professors and complained loudly to my fellow students about my dislike of who the school had chosen to teach us, but I had never considered going to the next step and putting my criticisms online.

Some teachers are brutally rated, with small snippets of text that reveal the students distain for the teacher they had. Others are a mixed bag with teachers getting both lauded and hated. And then there are the special few that received nothing but approval from those that took their class.

During my second year, I had been able to select which section I wanted to be in, and in doing so, I was able to select which professor I wanted for the semester. Many schools will allow students to change teachers if there is the ability and you ask.

At my school, we had various members of the community as our professors since they were “experts” in their field. This can be relatively common for Community Colleges especially, and so it can be good to note which people have the ability to teach and pass ideas and which ones do not.

If nothing else, it can help you avoid the mines in the minefield that is the educational institution, or if nothing else, provide a bit of release when you get stuck with someone you just can’t learn from.