The WORST TEACHER EVER

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I apologize if this is a little lengthy, but I'm looking for some advice. Just some background I am a 27 year old pre-nursing student in NJ. I have a B.A. degree and currently work in social services. I just started taking pre-requisites at my local community college to enter into their nursing program next fall. This has been a great experience thus far with the exception of my AP I lecture professor. She is absolutely horrible. In all my years of school, I have never had a professor this bad. She's disorganized, unclear, rude, and condescending. After asking a question in class one day, she humiliated me in front of the entire class. Long story short, it resulted in me reporting her to the dean. Since my report, she has been a little nicer but still she is HORRIBLE when it comes to teaching. Thank God for google, YouTube, and my lab professor because that's how I've been learning. We have our first lecture test this week and I'm just nervous because I don't know what to expect. Not to mention one of the chapters on the test she hasn't even lectured on saying "we should have learned cells in lab." Any pointers anyone could give to succeed in this class would be awesome!

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Just push through it. Not all professors are good and not all of them are nice.

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Yes. You've already reported her. If nothing was done about it she probably has tenure.

I would just muddle through as best you can, and also document anything really off the beaten path that this Prof does going forward.

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Muddling through is horrible, unfortunately it happens to a lot of students.

Does your school have a science resource center or tutors? I would be spending a lot of time there.

Look up Khan Academy, look on Quizlet, use your book! Mine has practice questions at the end of every chapter.

If you study better with other people form a study group of people who WILL STUDY. Yes, that needs emphasis.

Good luck!

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Never depend on your instructor to explain and discuss everything you need to know.. you will get high grades when you read the chapter write notes and reread your notes over and over .... professors don't usually discuss everything.. and don't worry how she would treat you.. always ask questions after reading the chapter required.. don't stop just because she has an attitude... she will have to answer to questions whether she likes it or not.. and don't be overly sensitive.. :) ... always read ahead... finish chapters ahead of your classmates.... Our instructor doesn't discuss everything .. I noticed because after reading a chapter I take.. detailed notes.. he would go over info and try to finish explaining the chapter in an hour. and I noticed he would skip over a lot of important info.. - I advise you to write your notes and take them in with you and whatever she mentions include in your notes or underline/highlight.. if you do this,,, you will already know everything needed to be understood from the chapter/s...

Good luck :)

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Muddling through is horrible, unfortunately it happens to a lot of students.

Does your school have a science resource center or tutors? I would be spending a lot of time there.

Look up Khan Academy, look on Quizlet, use your book! Mine has practice questions at the end of every chapter.

If you study better with other people form a study group of people who WILL STUDY. Yes, that needs emphasis.

Good luck!

Yes, we do have a resource center. I definitely plan on utilizing it. Fortunately, my lab professor has been awesome with explaining things that my lab professor has failed to explain. Quizlet has been my best friend, lol. She doesn't lecture. She babbles about nonsense for 50 minutes. Nothing even worth taking notes. It is quite horrible. I will continue to muddle through and hope for the best. Thanks for the great suggestions. I'll be looking into Khan Academy.

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Never depend on your instructor to explain and discuss everything you need to know.. you will get high grades when you read the chapter write notes and reread your notes over and over .... professors don't usually discuss everything.. and don't worry how she would treat you.. always ask questions after reading the chapter required.. don't stop just because she has an attitude... she will have to answer to questions whether she likes it or not.. and don't be overly sensitive.. :) ... always read ahead... finish chapters ahead of your classmates.... Our instructor doesn't discuss everything .. I noticed because after reading a chapter I take.. detailed notes.. he would go over info and try to finish explaining the chapter in an hour. and I noticed he would skip over a lot of important info.. - I advise you to write your notes and take them in with you and whatever she mentions include in your notes or underline/highlight.. if you do this,,, you will already know everything needed to be understood from the chapter/s...

Good luck :)

I definitely wasn't expecting her to explain everything. Her teaching style, or lack thereof, is quite hard to explain. I expected to be taking loads of notes during her lecture, it's an AP class for goodness sake. Not so much. The notes I take are primarily from my own reading and understanding. When I do ask a question, more times than not I end up more confused. It is the craziest thing ever. I'm not the only one complaining. Thanks for all your suggestions. Wish me luck on my first test. Lol.

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Yes. You've already reported her. If nothing was done about it she probably has tenure.

I would just muddle through as best you can, and also document anything really off the beaten path that this Prof does going forward.

She's actually new to the school. But that was the plan to muddle through. Mostly looking for advice to succeed in the class without assistance from her. Thanks so much for your advice.

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I had a similar experience with my professor and I also reported her to the dean. I ended up with an A in the class because I studied my ass off. She sort of lectured from PowerPoints and her exams had questions that weren't even covered in lecture or the book. I used the process of elimination on those and toward the end of the semester the majority of the class was failing. I think she may have eased up a bit on the final, but anyway just study!

I looked up YouTube videos to supplement my professor's lectures. There are many videos from professors that go over every system in the human body. YouTube was super helpful. Sometimes I felt like I didn't even have to go to class because the videos were informative (but I still went anyway). I used flash cards to memorize everything. I used quizlet everyday to keep it in my brain. I studied on the bus on the way to/from school, waiting at the doctor's office, on breaks at work, basically every moment I could. It will be difficult, but just keep studying. Read the book and know the material. I used the practice questions at the end of each chapter also. I even purchased another anatomy book just to compare information. That may have been extreme, but since nursing school is competitive I didn't want anything lower than an A. Hang in there!

Did the dean offer to switch professors? If not, ask. I was given that option, but couldn't due to my schedule.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

This probably won't be the most popular response but if you aren't even in the nursing program yet and have already reported a professor it is going to be a long haul. Unfortunately there is a good chance this won't be the only disorganized, nasty professor you will encounter so it would probably benefit you to find other ways of dealing with or ignoring this type situation in the future.

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I had a similar experience with my professor and I also reported her to the dean. I ended up with an A in the class because I studied my ass off. She sort of lectured from PowerPoints and her exams had questions that weren't even covered in lecture or the book. I used the process of elimination on those and toward the end of the semester the majority of the class was failing. I think she may have eased up a bit on the final, but anyway just study!

I looked up YouTube videos to supplement my professor's lectures. There are many videos from professors that go over every system in the human body. YouTube was super helpful. Sometimes I felt like I didn't even have to go to class because the videos were informative (but I still went anyway). I used flash cards to memorize everything. I used quizlet everyday to keep it in my brain. I studied on the bus on the way to/from school, waiting at the doctor's office, on breaks at work, basically every moment I could. It will be difficult, but just keep studying. Read the book and know the material. I used the practice questions at the end of each chapter also. I even purchased another anatomy book just to compare information. That may have been extreme, but since nursing school is competitive I didn't want anything lower than an A. Hang in there!

Did the dean offer to switch professors? If not, ask. I was given that option, but couldn't due to my schedule.

Thank you so much for your great suggestions! I will definitely use all of these. I'm not afraid of the hard work and I'm doing extremely well in the lab portion of the class. As far as switching classes, I requested it in my original email to the dean. She didn't really acknowledge that request and just simple stated she would get to the bottom of my issue. I just figured it may be too late. Based on how the test goes, I will definitely be following up on that request.

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If you have iTunes, you can use iTunes U (University) and get free lectures. I love this option, it's helped me through a lot of classes.

You can also search YouTube.

I had an A&P I teacher a lot like that and it was a struggle. That was mostly pre-Internet goodies, though. I had to go through the book and learn it on my own. Luckily, the prof was REALLY bad and didn't write her own tests, so they came out of the instructor's version of the book. That made it a lot easier than it could have been.

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