> > To be a college professor, you have to be smart.
>
> LOL!!! I'm guessing you've never been to college.
>
> I grant that many professors are smart, but it's not really a prerequisite anymore than "you have to be smart to be an engineer." Being smart is an important component of being a good engineer or a good professor, but there are incompetent, non-smart people in both areas. I would argue that a greater percentage of them are in teaching, but I can't back that up.
>
> Ste "Has had a few professors who were just *stupid*" phen

Have to agree there. That was another thing I was saying in the SOC. There is a belief, and in some cases a reality, that teacher's do what they do because they are not capable or smart enough to have the jobs that pay more. And as BG and Howard said, it is pretty pathetic to be a teacher. Why would you want a job that pays so little if you can do better? Of course, there's people like me who actually like teaching, but that's a small percentage.

I had and have some stupid teachers in college. For one my FYE instructor, but that isn't really a class, so it doesn't matter.

Also, my English professor last quarter was horrible. He consistently gave me low B's, no matter what I did, until I confronted him. I asked him what he felt I was doing wrong, and he talked in circles. Every time I tried to get any details he just skirted the issue.

Finally he agreed to relook the paper I was discussing with me, because he felt that he might have "graded it unfairly" or some nonsense like that. And all my papers after that were A's. I couldn't get a speck of pride out of it though, because the man obviously had no idea what he was doing. It irritated me no end, because I actually wanted to learn to write about film, and he had no interest in teaching me.

And I can't rant enough about my chemistry class, where the tests were consistently based on nothing we had covered in class, or that had been in the reading. The professor was accessible enough, but short of asking him what he was going to put on the test, that wasn't very helpful. I was so glad that I took two years of chemistry in high school. I only wish that I'd managed to pass the AP, so I could have gotten out of taking the class at all.

Well, that's rant number two in two days. I'm feeling liberated.