It's an unjust world, and nowhere is that more apparent than in a high school, college, or university classroom. Assigning a letter or a number to someone's intelligence is part of a flawed system, as these students can surely attest. Teachers hold all the authority, but they're not always the smartest person in the classroom. We asked pupils from around the world to share the stupid reason a teacher gave them a bad grade.
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41. Always accept the challenge.
I got a bad mark because he didn't read my paper. It was a university class where a TA was responsible for grading the papers; he was clearly overwhelmed and just reading introductions and grading based on them alone. I had a two-part introduction that fully addressed the prompt, but as he only read the first part I got my paper back with a big "C" at the top. I ended up getting full credit after I challenged the initial grade.
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40. Too smart to be talked down to.
As a high school freshman I think I was too intimidated to challenge this really bad teacher I had. I regret not making a bigger deal about it at the time, it really hurt my confidence with some teachers in the following year.
Literally the first day of school she went around the classroom and asked how many books each of us read over the summer. I said six. She asked “seriously? But really, how many?” Six. Why is that so hard to believe?
I don’t know exactly why, she just didn’t like me, I never really had an issue with any other teacher and I was a pretty good student. I have my suspicions of why she didn’t like me. A class most students breezed through with an A and reading sparknotes was a class she micromanaged me like a hawk in. Still baffles me to this day but it is what it is.
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39. Qué happened?
Not a bad grade, but I remember I was so close to being the first person to ever score a 100% on my 10th grade Spanish final. The one question I got "wrong" was:
Qué típo de comida es el pescado? (What type of food is fish?)
a. El carne (meat)
b. La fruita (fruit)
c. El pan (bread)
d. La verdura (vegetable)
I of course picked meat, and got it wrong because my teacher insisted that fish isn't meat (she's a Catholic and eats fish on Fridays during Lent.) According to her the correct answer is fruit, because fish are sometimes known as "the fruit of the sea."
What the actual what? Cram your 99%, Señora.
38. Written in ink.
I've got dysgraphia, which is basically a medical reason for absolutely terrible handwriting. I got a special allowance to use a device that was basically a digital typewriter. It amounted to a keyboard with a simple black and white lcd screen. You could hook it to a computer or printer to easily print stuff off it. It didn't have internet or even a calculator, it only functioned to type.
One teacher wouldn't let me use it, despite her legally not being able to do that. Little 6th grade me didn't know she was literally breaking the law, and went with it. We had a test and I got marked down for poor penmanship. My mom asked me why I didn't use my typing device, and I told her the teacher wouldn't allow it.
She. Went. Nuts. She destroyed that teacher, and for the rest of the year, despite my teacher's objections, I was allowed to use my device any time I wanted.
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37. Stuck behind the Iron Curtain.
I come from a post-Soviet country, so Russian is kind of an unofficial second language for me, therefore, I am able to speak, read and write a lot better than my German classmates. Knowing this, I usually tend to not have high class participation, so that I don't impede my classmates' chances of learning. Also, while my actual, practical knowledge of the language is pretty good, I struggle a bit with the grammar side, as in, I am not able to argue why a certain grammatical rule should be applied, I just know it does (a common occurrence with native language carriers in general as far as I know).
My professor grades me as if I were a native speaker, despite the fact that, officially, I am not. So if one of my classmates answers a question and makes a couple of small mistakes that they then independently correct, that classmate will get the maximum grade. If I do the same thing, I get penalised, with the professor's argument being that I should know better, since I'm at a higher proficiency level (I only had to take the a1, a2, b1, and b2 classes for my Russian minor).
It's really infuriating and it doesn't make me want to work more to improve, quite the opposite. Even being in my 20s in uni, it still to see people doing much worse than me get a better grade.
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36. Spell it out.
Back in school we were offered an optional class to learn 10-finger typing. It would be done on typewriters in the school, but we would also get homework assignments. My parents didn't have a typewriter or a computer, so I signed up for that course hoping I could talk my parents into getting a computer.
Of course they got a typewriter instead (which they had no use for). At the end of the class I was the only one who didn't get the best possible grade, because my homework assignments would have typos in them.
The rest of the children had computers at home and would use Word with auto-correct to type out the assignments, so everyone besides me got full points on all assignments. I have no idea how the teacher didn't notice this, but I was not one to tell on others.
35. Stickler for the facts.
I had a religion professor back in junior high school who was a real piece of work. She lowered the grade of another student because they had written in the exam that when Moses got the 10 commandments there was lightning when the correct answer was thunderbolts.
34. A cut above the rest.
Fourth grade, the day before Thanksgiving break. There was no work to be done of course, so we had a busywork art assignment. We were all handed graph paper and told to color each of the squares either yellow, orange, red, or brown. And once we finished, we were supposed to cut out corn shapes to make Indian Corn decorations.
I already thought this waa stupid, and filling in all the squares was tedious. So I traced the corn shape on the graph paper and only filled in the squares that would end up as part of the final product. This meant my decorations looked the same as all the others, but I didn't waste time filling in squares that would just get cut away.
When the teacher saw what I had done, she gave me a 50 for "skipping work."
33. Following it to the letter.
I was taking a 1-week online class. In the syllabus, the teacher said you must post 6 times throughout the week. So...I posted 5x on Monday, 1x on Wednesday and felt I was good to go.
I get my grade / teacher comments and the teacher wrote You had some good posts early in the week....but then you stopped posting, so I had to mark you down.
I was annoyed by this, but then realized it was the last online course in the program and frankly I didn't care. I still graduated and that certificate is "proudly" sitting in my junk drawer for all to see.
32. Leveling the playing field.
We had weekly spelling tests in my 11th grade English class, which I thought was a bit remedial by that point and probably said so in a not completely diplomatic way. The teacher even made you write any words you got wrong five times and hand that in to her by tend of the class.
I would typically get perfect scores on them, but one time I got a test back with no actual errors marked as a 0%. My teacher's explanation was she saw me talking to someone in our free period before class who ended up doing poorly and that was my fault because I distracted them from possibly studying.
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31. No excuses.
When I was 16, in the middle of doing my GCSEs, my dad got into a serious car accident. He was in intensive care for about two months. During that time, we were told that he would probably not survive. Thankfully, he pulled through. But in the meantime, I hadn't been doing any coursework or going to school.
This happened in January, my exams were in May/June. I managed to do enough revision to pass my exams. But I never managed to finish my coursework for art class. The quality of my work was worth an A, but I hadn't done enough of it. I applied for 'mitigating circumstances' meaning that if granted, my work could have been marked on quality rather than quantity.
But for whatever reason, the school refused, so I ended up getting a bad grade. That was 10 years ago and I'm still angry about it.
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30. That's a big word.
I was accused of plagiarism because I had an above average vocabulary. I got a grade in the end but I was ticked. It was a group project where nobody did anything. I had to do the whole thing and turn it into a teacher who usually works with the special needs kids. She didn't think "pre-emptive strike" was a term an 8th grader should know so obviously it was plagiarized.
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29. Happiness is not a letter grade.
I had a teacher downgrade my paper because it didn't make her feel "happy." It was an analytical writing course designed to teach how to write a thesis, the teacher was one of these super hippy artsy people and most of the "curriculum" involved just reading articles she failed to get published, so we had to do this analytical discourse on someone's work and it was trash, so I picked it apart. When I got a F, I went to her saying "I followed the rubric to the T" her response "oh well the paper was good and all but it didn't make me happy, it was kind of mean and I don't like mean" I was like "the assignment was to find flaws in the paper it had countless" she replied "yes but it didn't make me happy so you get a F" I went to the chair and it turns out her father was on the board of directors and she had sued the school several times, so she was bulletproof and got to do whatever she wanted.
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28. Green with envy.
I got 10/10 on a test, but my teacher took points away from me because she didn't want my classmates to be jealous of my grade. This was English class in a Dutch school, so English is a requirement. I was the only native English speaker in my class and this was a course for adults only.
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27. Ceci n'est pas un pen.
I had a high school French teacher who failed me on a written test for using pencil, he claimed his eyes only saw pen, my family was outraged and called the dean, the dean was like "Oh well he's getting them ready for standardized tests" my entire family had masters degrees and were like "what standardized test is in pen, it's always pencil, this is a school" Years later I have my doctorate and not one test ever was pen only standardized or otherwise.
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26. That's not a good reason.
I had a teacher start to give me bad grades because I got pregnant in high school. I took my exam with my friend's exam to her and showed her that my answers marked incorrect were the same answers my friend gave that were correct. Yet I got a C-. Teacher said I didn't deserve an A.
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25. Too smart for your own good.
I failed a lit exam in college because I answered a question too well. We were supposed to write an essay comparing and contrasting one of the books that we read that semester to a modern concept or ideal. We had known about this particular question for weeks, so we had had plenty of time to prepare. Apparently it's possible to be too correct, because the response I got was that, though it is clear I did not plagiarize, none of my thoughts were original and matched too closely with the author's interpretation of the work. I was the only person in the class to not only fail but to get less than a B. I got no other bad marks on the rest of the exam, either, he failed me based on just that one part.
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24. So unfair.
I did a presentation in biology. The teacher told me she wanted me to do a creative introduction instead of just opening it with the standard "today I'll be presenting..."
So I did. I invented a short story about an old lady going to the supermarket and worked in some early symptoms of Alzheimer's (the topic I was presenting). I was so invested in that character, she had a name and a backstory, I even drew up a few comic panels so that everyone could follow along easily, then at the end of my presentation I asked my class which symptoms the old lady in the story had and hence what stage her Alzheimer's was.
I get my grade back and the teacher deducted points for the intro since she "told me to do a creative intro so it wasn't an original idea." Like what?! I came up with the story, I drew the comic panels, all of that was me. I felt so betrayed. If I hadn't done a creative intro she would have deducted points so I did one and she deducted points anyway?! And after all that work... Still grinds my gears. I was 15 at the time.
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23. How were you supposed to know?
My whole class got our philosophy papers back at midterms to find out everyone had been given mainly D’s and C’s with some F’s sprinkled in with a Handful of B’s floating around but no more than 5. When we were audibly upset and asked what happened, we were told the rubric each week was based on C work, and we were supposed to go above and beyond the rubric to get a B or an A.
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22. Gotta protect that reputation.
I got a F the first semester in chemistry, and I was really pushing myself to get a better grade for the next semester (needed a good grade to study what I wanted). Then we heard that another teacher from another school would make the test, but the teachers in our classes would grade it.
So I have been doing all in my power, read everything, written summaries, did the math, watched documentaries etc... And I get the final grade, D, and I was very happy with that! Then my teacher takes me aside, and tells me that I actually got a way better grade (C, could pass as a B), but if he gave me a C it would look bad for him (since I got a F on his test the semester before). So I was pretty mad after that, but he left before I could say anything - it was my last day of school so I never did anything about it.
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21. Time's running out.
When I was in college, I had a professor walking around collecting a homework assignment that was ~10% of our grade. Being the unorganized person that I am, I'm digging through my folders trying to find which one has it.
She walks by me as I'm still looking and meanders toward her podium. Before she even gets to the front of the class, I find it and run up to her to hand it in. She looks me dead in the eyes and says "That's late, you get a zero."
I called her a string of horrible things (she really was, this was just the final straw) dropped the course, and took it again with an amazing Prof the next semester.
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20. The bigger the ego, the smaller the person.
Not me, but a 7 year old student I coached for a public speaking contest. She is a child prodigy, a self-taught fluent English speaker in a country where very few people speak good English. She also has a natural sense of how to structure a speech, and gives all her speeches impromptu instead of memorising.
After she finished her speech, the first response from the judges was "Do you think you speak better English than us?" (spoiler alert: she does, I spoke to them and none of them were truly fluent). They then gave her the second lowest grade possible. She got a bad grade for being better than the person grading her.
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19. It's a trick question.
I got screwed for actually answering a question instead of regurgitating a stupid rule word for word. This was 9th grade bio. The question asked something to the effect of "explain this table" and had table showing a plant that was weighed after it was watered and and a short period of time after that and I knew it was a "conservative of matter" question but what I noticed was that the weight of the plant right after it was water was more than the weight that was taken later. So I answered that the weight changed because some of the water evaporated but the teacher wanted "the rule of conservation of matter states matter cannot be created or destroyed" which makes no sense because the rule doesn't "explain the table" the question wasn't "what is conservative of matter". My answer actually USED the rule because even though I didn't regurgitate it word for word I explained why the weight would be different (as per the table) even though matter cannot be created or destroyed.
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18. Red, white, and blue.
When I was in school, a teacher refused to accept our assignment (two people). He had specifically asked for it to be printed. We completed it the day before it was due and had to print it in blue because we had run out of black ink. After we got our grade (bad grade) my friend’s mom came to the school and made a scandal because she couldn’t understand why we had failed, only to be told (by the teacher) that he hadn’t even looked at the content because the ink was blue. She took it to the headmistress who then forced him to accept the assignment because it really wasn’t a valid reason, funnily after that I printed another assignment in red ink, just to mess with him.
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17. Agree to disagree.
This is not me but a friend of mine. I go to a Catholic high school and in my religion class we had to create a presentation around socially just situations and ethical issues. Seeing how euthanasia had just been legalised in our state of Victoria she decided to create her presentation around that. She produced an above average presentation and obviously produces a well researched and thought provoking project but revived a poor grade on it. When she questioned the teacher about it the teacher had the audacity to say that she disagreed with euthanasia (it’s against the catholic social teachings and the dignity of human life in the church) therefore deemed it fair to give this girl a low mark. After some complaining she raised the mark slightly but c’mon that cannot be fair. The whole assignment was based around commenting on social issues in the community. I’m still mad for my friend even though she’s over it.
16. Looking for literary.
It was a creative writing assignment with no guidelines for style, genre or content. I got a C because my story was 'too unrealistic.' We were given the start of the story. We were staying at our grandparents' farm, running across a field. All of a sudden the ground gave way beneath our feet as we fell down a hole... then we're instructed to continue the story. No other directions. So my fantasy story wasn't real enough. I guess she wanted our characters to just collapse in a pit and languish.
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15. The teacher who hates kids.
I had a teacher that didn't like me. Second grade teacher who didn't like kids, hated boys, and despised me. She'd make fun of me in front of the class, would give me extra homework for no good reason (but never graded it), and generally made my life a living hell. For a short time, I refused to go to school and was a second grade drop out. When I got the chicken pox, I was happy. Itchy, hurting sores covering my body for a week was preferable to dealing with this teacher.
Not exactly a grade, but this teacher told me that I'd never succeed in life because I couldn't color and cut in the lines properly. I haven't had a single job interview where they handed me paper to prove my coloring/cutting prowess.
Years later, I returned to the school to rub it in her face that I was succeeding in school (all honors classes and A's/B's), but she retired a year or two before thus preventing me from even having this win. I did find someone online who had her also and confirmed that it wasn't just me. This teacher was just that bad.
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14. Draw it how it looks.
I thought my design teacher had it in for me as he kept giving me Ds for what I considered pretty good artwork. So to prove it I had my professional graphic designer father do my homework, another D. Then I had my professional illustrator mother do it the following week. D. When we called him out he didn’t really have an excuse on why he considered professional standard design work only to be worth a D in a grade 10 project but we enjoyed calling him out in a meeting with the head of year.
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13. Sing your heart out.
I got 78% in my CHORUS class. I got every solo in every song, I even went all the way through to all county chorus, and several singing groups in my school that were audition based only.
Granted we didn’t do a lot of paperwork because, ya know, singing and all, but I think we had four paper assignments and I got a 75 on ONE of them (they were only four question quizzes 25 pts a pop, meaning I only missed O N E question) which ended up screwing up my entire number average in that class. I swear they were just trying to find a way to give me a bad grade.
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12. The classroom is a battlefield.
I knew more about computers than my computer teacher when I was a Freshman back in 95. She didn't like this, and assumed everything I did was "hacking". Opened clip art that she didn't recognize in MS Paint? Hacking. Bypassed her "lock" on Solitaire by pressing the Tab key to select it? Hacking.
So when people did legit cruel things to her, like bring in a salt lick and leave it on her desk, she just assumed I did it. I wound up yelling at her in front of the class, because I was already a student who got picked on and I didn't need it from a teacher with low self esteem.
I got a D for the final project of the year in that class even though it was well worth a better grade. I took it to the principal, guidance counselor, etc. and when confronted she said she made a mistake and gave me the B+ I deserved. That woman could hold a grudge.
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11. You're kind of young to be committing fraud.
We were moving into a new house and I was starting out 6th grade in a new school. Some time during the first couple of weeks I needed to get some paper signed by one of my parents. I forgot to have my mom sign it so the next morning while taking me to school my step dad signed it. Long story short, his signature looks like crap and my teacher accused me of forgery. I had to have a meeting with the school principal and my mom with the teacher. My mom told them that it was indeed my step dad's signature and I wasn't in trouble. Needless to say my teacher hated me after that and everything I did was wrong. She would tell me my answers were wrong and I'd show her it says the same thing in the book and I was still wrong. Before her, I had wanted to become a teacher. After her, I hated school and pretty much stopped trying. Because of her, I failed 6th grade and was held back. This school had four 6th grade teachers. Want to guess which one I got the second time? Screw you Mrs. Lopez!
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10. The participation award.
Had a teacher who had, what appeared at the time, to be the most transparent grading system ever. It was fourth grade, there were no averages. Just a point total. If you got 92-100 points, you got an A. So an assignment would be worth, say, 5 -10 points. A test, instead of being graded with a percentage or a letter grade would be worth, say, a max of 25 points.
The idea was that you could know your grade at any point by just adding your points. I thought this was amazing. I had a folder with all of my assignments. As we neared the end of the year, I was coming up close to the A. Then, one day, I knew it was cause to celebrate! All of my numbers added up to 92!
Report card comes, B+. What? I go to the teacher, surely she miscounted. Nope, she deducted one point for "participation" thus dropping me a letter grade.
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9. Small smile still burns.
Nearly 20 years later and I'm still angry about this one! We had an in-class quiz, teacher said anyone caught talking would automatically get a zero.
I was finished, had my pencil down, arms crossed and was just quietly looking around the room, another girl in my class who was across the room had also finished and was also looking around the room, we made eye contact, smiled at each other for a split second and continued to sit in silence.
The teacher saw our "interaction" and gave us both zeroes. Had to take the test home for parents to sign.
Thankfully, I was always a well-behaved students and my parents know I wasn't exactly best mates with this girl so it's not like it made sense that us two would be fooling about in class anyway, and the grade didn't count towards anything really, it was just the principle of the thing.
But like... Seriously? I smiled a classmate and got a zero!?
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8. Bilingual but not bulletproof.
I was either in 5th or 6th grade. I'm from Quebec, so the main language at school was French. One day, our English teacher went on leave for a few months, so we had a substitute filling in. I was probably the most fluent English speaker in the entire school and the English level taught was really basic. The new substitute was pretty awful. She made numerous mistakes, and me being a wiseacre, I corrected her often. Her exams were easy too. I completed them in around 10-15 minutes. I ended up with a 46-ish in my report card. Man oh man were my parents mad. I had never gotten a bad grade in English. I had to explain to them that situation, and boy did my mom scold the substitute at the parent/teacher meet. After that meeting, my grades went back way back up.
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7. B- leads to major revelation.
In 6th grade English, we were given agendas to keep track of all of our homework. Our teacher said she would be doing agenda checks to make sure we were all keeping up on our due dates. Used it a bit but usually found it unnecessary as I always got all my homework done whether or not I wrote it down in my agenda. At the end of the year, our agenda were collected for our final agenda checks, and I recieved the first failing grade of my school career, for not keeping track of all the schoolwork I managed to complete. The F tanked my final marks, landing me a B- on an otherwise pristine report card. I honestly don't think I ever fully recovered from how immediately jaded to the entire education system I became after opening that report card and reading the comment about how I failed to use my agenda. 12-year-old me realized the truth, that they don't give a crap about your actual education, we're just livestock being processed by a system that doesn't know what better to do with us. I truly believe recieving that grade was a crossroads in my life, I wonder what kind of man I'd be today had I not felt so slighted by my teacher, and the system at large.
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6. Movie trivia fail.
I had this insane English teacher in high school. There were always rumors that she drank in her classroom. For whatever reason she really disliked me. I know this because I was just minding my business walking to class one day and I heard her say to a parent "I like your child a lot. Not like this one." and pulled me over.
My greatest injustice in her class had to do with Last of the Mohicans. We were watching the movie and taking a quiz afterwards. My parents loved that movie and I had seen if several times so I thought it was in the bag. There was a multiple choice question on the quiz that was "How did Duncan die?" and the choices were like drowning, shooting, fire, or hanging.
I almost said fire and then thought, no Hawkeye shot him to save him from the pain of being burned at the stake. So I said he was shot and she counted it wrong. And then I pointed out to my teacher that he died when Hawkeye shot him in the fire she said "Well he would have died from the fire" and refused to give me credit. I was so mad. Obviously I was paying attention. Still bitter.
Jen Batler
5. Blame it on the sub.
We had a small oral presentation every year that we had 5 days in class to work on, I worked fast and finished on the first or second day and my teaher knew this, she then was sick so we had a substitute and we were told to hand in our projects to the sub if we were finished so I handed it in and just doodled the rest of the days, most kids held on to theirs to work on it at home on the last day.
Well when it comes time to present the teacher returned and handed everyone their papers but mine, my name gets called up to present and I asked her where my papers where and she said "you should have them" I told her I handed it in to the sub, most of the students were backing me up and saying that I handed it in and my teacher just stopped caring and said go up and present so I can give you a grade, I only remembered about 40 seconds worth of material and stopped. She gave me an F.
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4. He looked it up.
"A boy your age doesn't know these kind of concepts."
For an ethics class we had to design a city and showcase the morals and ethics of the place. To give a better idea of what life in the city I designed was like, I decided to include data like the city's land area, population, population density, GDP and more.
The teacher told me that the exercise could only get a 7.5/10 because it was impossible that I knew those concepts as a 14 year old and I must have plagiarized it. Even though I gave her a definition of the concepts, she wasn't convinced.
Thankfully, this was the first and last time a teacher was angry at me for going the extra mile. And the irony? This woman also taught geography at 7th grade. If you think 8th graders don't know geography then you're not doing your job, m'am.
Jen Batler
3. They hold all the power.
My first large college paper (for a pre-civil war history class) freshman year came back with a giant red 'D' written on it with practically no feedback. I was in a writing program and I had always excelled at essays, so I was sort of shocked. Went to the professor and asked him about the grade and lack of instruction. He sighed, looked down and said, "Well, maybe I just don't like you." He went on and on after that with some "reasons," but apparently the big issue came from the first week of class. He was talking about Manifest Destiny and said something like, "Now you have to remember, back in those days there were 50-100 miles between towns out in the Western USA!" And I raised my hand and said that there was STILL 50-100 miles between towns in the Western US. He said I was exaggerating and I told him I wasn't because that's where I grew up.
That paper was 40% of our grade. He refused to change the grade or even re-read it. I scraped a C+ in that class and I was so proud of managing that grade even though it was the worst grade I received in my life. At the end of the semester, I decided to ask him for his grading documentation to see if I could challenge the paper with the school, but he claimed he had already thrown it away. I found out later that was a lie too, but I didn't press any further.
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2. Instant payback.
My first year of architecture, I had a 7:30am studio class that was 4 hours long, 5 days a week. I also had 2 part time jobs, one of which was stocking groceries so, a couple days a week, I got off work at 2am, ran home, got 4 hours sleep, and went to class. This meant that I was sometimes late for that class, never more than 10 minutes but, according to that prof, it was 13 times in one semester.
I always came in quietly, but he always made a big show of being interrupted. Once he asked me after class what my “problem” was, why couldn’t I be on time? I explained I needed the job to stay in school but he didn’t care, said that I should get a different job as if they grew on trees.
Anyway, at the end of the semester, during reading week, we had a portfolio review where 4 other instructors looked at your work for the year and each assigned a grade based solely on the work presented. I received 4 grades of “A” from those professors. My professor gave me an “F” because of my attendance - being tardy. He then “averaged” the grades to a “D” grade.
During our review he announced the grade and his reasoning was so that I “would learn the importance of being on time” or some such crap. THEN, he had the nerve to ask if he could retain some of my work for his instructor’s portfolio? I said, “No, I wouldn’t want you to have “D” work in there, you should only have “A” work.”
He tried to back peddle and say that it was A work, he just couldn’t give me an A because I was tardy. Then, when that didn’t work he said, “Let me remind you that, the work you do at school is the property of the school just like the work you do is the property of the firm you will later work for.
To which I responded, “Well, let me remind you that my tuition pays your salary, you work for me." I then gathered up my stuff and went to the Dean’s office to file a complaint. Yes, my grade got changed but he put up a fight over it on principle of the matter of tardiness and his interpretation of the school handbook.
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1. The prof that time forgot.
The worst class I ever took was called "Science Friction" and was supposedly about historical scientists whose ideas were viewed as controversial/heresy at the time and how society reacted to them (Galileo, Copernicus, etc.) Sounded interesting so me, my girlfriend, and a few of my friends signed up for it together. Turned out the professor was a lunatic and absolutely senile. Here's some highlights:
He regularly displayed the entire class's grades on the projector without realizing it.
He loved to talk about his vegan daughter and how she thinks that drinking milk is like assaulting a cow. He told this story multiple times over the course of the year after learning that one girl in the class was vegan.
One kid obviously had really bad social anxiety, and the professor publicly interrogated him during class about why he doesn't participate more.
He once answered his cell phone in the middle of class and had a long conversation. We obviously couldn't hear the other side but it was very clear that he was speaking to his doctor about some test results and it was just super awkward for everyone.
All his lessons were unbelievably disorganized, we learned absolutely nothing in his class. Just a mess. He once taught the exact same lesson twice in one week without realizing it. Nobody spoke up because we all knew he would get embarrassed and defensive and start scolding them.
He had this absurd system where we each had a little nametag that we were forced to keep on our desks in front of us every class (presumably because his senile mind couldn't remember our names otherwise) and we had to keep track of our own participation points on them. You'd get points for different things like coming prepared to class, raising your hand in a discussion, etc. I participated a lot in class so my score was pretty high, when I handed it in for grading he told me I had made it up and added points that I didn't deserve. This drove me insane because I hadn't done that, though plenty of my friends had and he didn't realize.
His class was honestly super easy so I was doing pretty well in it. But one assignment I got a few points deducted on one of the questions. I compared it with my girlfriend's and she had responded nearly identically and gotten full points. When I quietly approached his desk and brought this to his attention after class he loudly scolded me in front of the class for caring too much about my grade and being nitpicky about my score. I don't remember the exact words he used but it was pretty insulting. I think he was just embarassed that he got my grade wrong, or he was salty that I was doing so well in his class. I normally wouldn't have cared because I WAS doing quite well in the class, but knowing what a lunatic he was I couldn't trust that he wouldn't flunk my final for some ridiculous reason and tank my grade, so I had to take every point I could get.
Anyways a few weeks before the end of the semester, to nobody's surprise, he announced that he was "retiring" at the end of the semester. But it was evident that the dean was firing him. Myself and some others had went to the dean to complain about him, and she said he was already on her radar. She came unannounced to audit one of his classes and it did not go well. It was honestly kind of sad being in that class every week because he just came across as this lonely senile old man. But god he was utterly incapable of teaching a class. I got an A so I can't be that salty but it was just utter misery having to sit through his class and really frustrating that I got absolutely nothing out of it, education wise.
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