Micro teacher from Hell

How badly do you need this credit at the end of the semester? If you need it to apply for nursing school, I'd hang in there and see what happens. If you don't need it, I'd drop it.

I would complain to the Dean, though. Even if it doesn't help, it can't hurt, right? I think that some teachers just shouldn't be teaching--I feel like some of them abuse their position of power to make our lives miserable. I'm not asking for them to just hand out A's, but professors should at least be required to give us an idea of what's on the test. Don't tell us to study chapters 1-5 if you're testing us on chapter 6.

Don't complain -- there's very little upside potential but a whole lot of downside. Despite the previous poster, it absolutely CAN hurt... by putting a big target on your back, perhaps being failed in the class, and developing a bad rep in the department.

Your time for complaining will be when you fill out your course eval. Until then, keep doing what you're doing since it seems to be working (94%, after all).

FWIW, I also had a hellish teacher for micro but I still made it.

Thanks to both of you. I talked to someone in my class last night and we plus a few others are considering the Withdraw option. We are staying for a couple more weeks and then may pull out so it doesnt wreck our GPA. If we wait and get a bad grade they will still include it into our GPA even if we take the class again. The GPA for the nursing program is an A- average.

Am confused by the "brand new material" part. Does the material fall into the chapter that you are being tested over, only it was not covered specifically in class? Or is the material for future chapters you haven't even started yet. If it is in your current chapter but just was not discussed in detail, then I would say you would be responsible for the material, unless your instructor specifically said, "You will not be tested over this". I find that self teaching myself ALL of the material in a chapter (even stuff we are told to skip over) helps pull the info we are to know together and helps me learn the material better.

Also, instructors like to think, "if I told them this in class, they now know this" and then will test on the lesser covered material in class to see if you read and "filled in the blanks" of what was being taught. Or the test questions will be application of what was taught in class....not necessarily the material itself, but its application to various scientific scanarios.

I agree with the previous poster that said complaining has a lot of downside. I would either withdraw and take with another prof or state your frustrations in your course eval.

I feel your pain....micro is not an easy class, but it sounds like you are doing fairly well.

Best of luck!

The only reason I suggest going to the Dean is because 1) the OP has already gone to the department head. If they are going to get a reputation, I'm willing to bet they already have one, and

2) Who here thinks course evals have much impact? I know once in a while professors will be scolded, but I've had some terrible teachers that have been terrible teachers for years. The department knows, people have complained, and they're still there. For example, one of the chemistry teachers can't have his name on the course schedule because no one will sign up for his class, but he's still teaching.

Maybe I'm taking a bit of an extreme stance because I'm stuck in the sociology class from hell this semester (test includes material we were never given; 8 days to write a 30 page paper but it was our fault for doublespacing the paper which made it longer than necessary; being told the test date 2 days beforehand). I don't feel entitled to a good grade, but I feel entitled to a fair chance.

From what I've observed and heard about, escalation's not likely to take you anywhere you want to go.

If the department or school doesn't give a rip about the course evals then why do you suppose that speaking up is going to help?

Regarding "terrible teachers for year:" If they're tenured then all the *female-dogging* in the world isn't going to change anything. Unless they cross some well-defined boundaries then they're going to stay... and they know darn well what those boundaries are.

Complaining up the line is not likely to solve anything, especially in the middle of the term.