devRant - A fun community for developers to connect over code, tech & life as a programmer

Still at uni, last semester of junior year. Required to take Intro Python II course, which is still language basics + intro to OOP and a thing called "graphing". Been coding in Python for 5 years, hold job at uni coding Python, can't skip. It's whatever. My friends and I coordinated our schedules to take it together because they aren't coders and wouldn't have passed Intro Python I class without me.

Instructor is foreign, thick accent, English is a bit broken, only second semester here. It's ok. I know the instructor who helped design the class and she's good. We'll work through the speech. As long he can teach kinda decent and we have good assignments, we'll be good. I'm staying positive.

We were wrong.

Not only can he barely teach, he can't explain anything. He only knows one way to explain something and it's barely correct. Everyone is lost on day 1. The first two lectures were reviewing the 15 weeks of material from Intro I that we just finished literally a month ago. Doesn't actually finish the review by end of second class.

He gives us PowerPoints! Except he's modified them. Syllabus says that ppts are "not enough to study with. You must take notes in class and be here for every class or you will fail." Ohhhh... kaay. I understand note taking and the importance of class attendance, but setting it up to make students fail if they don't learn like you teach? *raises eye brow*

He opens PyCharm on the projector! He says "these are the notes you take. Once I type and run, I delete and not put back. If you don't have, oh well." He runs as much code as possible in the interactive prompt, once. His explanations are poor and don't make sense. We can't understand much of what he's saying because the accent and broken words is making it so much worse.

He pulls up the ppts on the projector! His copies have more slides, aka, the very thing we as a student would like to have to, you know, study well! But he goes through them quickly so ahaha so long note taking. Don't you dare have your phone out! He'll call you out if you try to take a pic of the screen. He'll walk back to your seat, stand over you in an intimidating manner, and stay there until you delete it.

Did I mention the class atmosphere? Silence. Suppressing. Almost suffocating. He's in control. He's demanding, snappy, short, rude. "OK, what about [this thing]? I give you five minutes then I call name." (Literally a minute and a half later. We timed it). "[Name]. Do you know why [thing]? Why not. I explain it. You should know." Don't dare ask for an re-explanation. Even if you're polite and genuinely confused. He'll be even more short with you. He'll be visibly annoyed. You should have already understood it. "Check your notes!"

As for assignments, he took the assignments the other (good!) instructor made and was modifying them to the point of literal technical impossibility when read literally. I had to come up with some creative solutions to solve a few of them. He didn't seem to run most of the bi-weekly submitted code, though, so most people got 100s on everything.

I had the foresight to make a GroupMe group and send the link to both sections. Overwhelmingly negative. Nobody understands at thing. They ask after class, no help. Office hours, no better. People are going to fail. I'm ok only by virtue of experience. By class demand, I'm known as Professor in the group all semester. They even call me this before and after class when he's not there. Most of the class passed because of the countless explanations I gave in 15 weeks, be it one-on-one, group, or in chat. Good thing I've been a tutorial writer and tutor.

Class continues, never gets better. To shorten this already long story, 75% of the class ends with a C after a curve administration forced him to apply. Other instructors were informed of the issues and got involved for our saked. Someone began filing a formal complaint (unknown if finished). It was really, really bad. We had people graduating that semester who were in danger of graduating. And it wasn't the class' fault. Literally every person was doing their absolute best. They passed Intro I with an A or B and same for all their other courses (which were much harder than this class) but were failing this one class.

He may or may not have been fired, currently unsure. Dept is already understaffed, overworked, and been jilted of funds and resources (another rant!). We lost a (good!) instructor a few weeks ago. We 're adding new classes and programs and still trying to work out classes involving the "new" campus. Some people dropped the class and will retake. They may just get him again.

And yes, all of this 100% happened. There is no exaggerating or making this class up.

There's many more rants and stories from this class. Take your pick and I'll write it next.

* Exam 1
* Post Exam 1 review
* Exam 1 results fallout
* Assignments
* Pop quizzes
* Final exam
* Databases
* Graphing