Was my professor out of line?

kimmyanne02 · Apr 22, 2015

Wow. Kimmy, you started a thread on a public forum. Then you hurl insults at people whose answers you dislike and tell them to get off 'your' thread!
You always have the option of requesting administration here to lock a thread, but it's their site, not yours.
Starting a post with "What's wrong with you" is not a good way to converse in a mature fashion.

And neither is accusing me of blaming my family for doing bad on a test. Yes, I do get defensive when someone says something that is completely untrue about my family and I will stand up for myself. I guess it's okay for that person to "hurl insults at me" huh?

Overland1, RN · Apr 22, 2015

The professor's questions were obviously "Gotcha!" questions and have no legitimate place in any sort of educational setting.

RNsRWe, ASN, RN · Apr 22, 2015

Maybe I can play mediator for a moment :)

Kimmy, I believe what lovinglife was trying to get across was that by telling your professor (with whom you were in discussions because of doing poorly in her class) that your Number One priority was your family (rather than the program), you were essentially saying that BECAUSE your Number One priority is your family.....you did poorly in her class.

You are seeing it as an accusation, but I believe all that was being pointed out was that YOUR OWN words resulted in this conclusion. Item #1: Student doing poorly in class. Item #2: Instructor asks student why she is doing poorly in class, why can't she spend more time on classwork. Item #3: STUDENT says that her family is her highest priority, therefore spelling out that THEY are taking the place of the time instructor wants spent on classwork.

So, you see....it is you who made the statement that your family is (in essence) causing you to fail (or do poorly, that point is not of consequence).

See it now? NO insults were hurled at you. It was a very simple conclusion drawn from what you provided as information, that's it. And fwiw....it was YOU who went into attack mode over the statement....not her.

lovinglife2015 · Apr 22, 2015

And neither is accusing me of blaming my family for doing bad on a test. Yes, I do get defensive when someone says something that is completely untrue about my family and I will stand up for myself. I guess it's okay for that person to "hurl insults at me" huh?

Wasn't the entire point of meeting with the instructor to figure out why your grades were suffering? What other reasons did you give beyond family being a "priority?" If you've made it clear that family comes before studying, how can one not infer that if your grades suffer, you're using(blaming) family as an excuse? You might not be consciously aware that you're doing it.

You may believe that you're putting yourself on a moral pedestal, but the truth is that you probably haven't figured out how to manage your study time wisely. As I said, my family is number one in my heart, but if I have to choose between studying or making dinner, I choose to study and my husband has no problem making dinner --because he puts our family first, too. We delegate responsibility depending on our schedules. If I have to study, he picks up our son, etc...We've paid too much money for me to fail out of school.

brandiep1982 · Apr 23, 2015

We can agree to disagree on that bit because I don't think it's "honorable" at all to essentially blame your family for your failings.
Had the comment been made in a different context, sure, family first, but using family as an explanation as to why your grades aren't up to snuff sounds a bit ignoble. You might as well add that the dog ate your homework.
As long as all of the kiddos are healthy and snug in bed or otherwise occupied, there's no reason to let your grades suffer from inattention. Hubby is a grown man and should be mature enough to do his own thing while you study, as often as necessary.

I would be with you on this if I actually perceived the OP as blaming her family for her failings. First, she hasn't told us she failed anything, only that she was struggling. And the professor didn't say "why are you struggling" to which the OP said "because of my family". The instructor asked what her priorities were, OP said family was first. The professor assumed this was why she was struggling, rather than asking what her study techniques were, or a number of other questions she could have asked that may have lead to big reasons why she is struggling.

I am afraid you seem to be making the same assumption.

brandiep1982 · Apr 23, 2015

Wasn't the entire point of meeting with the instructor to figure out why your grades were suffering? What other reasons did you give beyond family being a "priority?" If you've made it clear that family comes before studying, how can one not infer that if your grades suffer, you're using(blaming) family as an excuse? You might not be consciously aware that you're doing it.

See, this is lack of creativity. It is easy to assume that she is trying to blame family, rather than spend a few more minutes trying to come up with other things that could be causing it. I think I have shown "how one can not infer" that she is blaming family.

The instructor didn't say "can you think of any other things that may be causing this?", as I have seen many excellent instructors do in the past. Maybe this instructor was really tired and didn't have the energy to really put much thought into this, or maybe she really isn't very good at thinking beyond the most obvious assumptions. In the end I see no logical way a person can place any fault on OP for saying what she said in her original post. Unless, of course that post is not entirely honest, but we could say that about any post on here.

lovinglife2015 · Apr 23, 2015

I would be with you on this if I actually perceived the OP as blaming her family for her failings. First, she hasn't told us she failed anything, only that she was struggling. And the professor didn't say "why are you struggling" to which the OP said "because of my family". The instructor asked what her priorities were, OP said family was first. The professor assumed this was why she was struggling, rather than asking what her study techniques were, or a number of other questions she could have asked that may have lead to big reasons why she is struggling.
I am afraid you seem to be making the same assumption.

I'm using deductive logic based on Op's responses. OP didn't offer up any other explanations in her posts. She said that she was struggling and then argued that her family comes before school, so yes one could conclude that OP is unconsciously using family as the reason why she hasn't done her best work.

How do we know that the instructor didn't ask more questions? For the instructor to bring up "guilt" OP must've looked or sounded visibly rattled or why would the instructor go there?

Anyway, only OP truly knows what's going on and it's up to her to rectify it. All any of us can do is add conjecture or food for thought.

Sun0408, ASN, RN · Apr 23, 2015

Word games, ugh

lovinglife2015 · Apr 23, 2015

The instructor didn't say "can you think of any other things that may be causing this?"

How do you know what other questions the OP asked? OP only focused on feeling insulted by

one particular question.

See, this is lack of creativity. It is easy to assume that she is trying to blame family, rather than spend a few more minutes trying to come up with other things that could be causing it.

Creativity? What did you come up with? I asked you to provide OP with some study techniques mentioned in your other post and you came up vague. I did offer several scenarios from my own life where I let my man handle it and don't feel the least bit guilty.

I understand that family can be needy and demanding, it's taken me 30 minutes to type this comment because I keep being pulled away, lol. We have to learn to put our foot down when it comes to studying and block out time for ourselves.

babynurse101 · Apr 24, 2015

I had a meeting with her because I was struggling in class. She asked me what my priorities are and I said #1 is my husband and kids and #2 is nursing school. She was not happy with my answer and said I need to move nursing up on my priority list, meaning nursing school should come first and not my family. I have 2 young kids and they and my husband will always be number one no matter what, and I told her that. She seemed displeased with my answer and said school will only be 2 years of my life. Anyways, ever since I went against what she thought my priorities should be, she has treated me differently.

This reminds me of one of my instructors. I never had a problem with her, but then I was a cookie-cutter traditional student. One of my friends in the program was a single mother my age of 2yr old twins, and this instructor hated her. I don't say that lightly, either. We went to a fairly well-known nursing school, and I remember one day the instructor pulling her aside and saying that she "wasn't really [that school's] material" and that maybe she should consider a community college as a "better fit" for her. I'm not saying community colleges are "slumming it" for nurses or anything like that, and if that were the only incident between the two, I would've brushed it off as genuine if slightly misguided advice.

But then she criticized my friend about her uniforms in our psych clinical, saying her khakis were inappropriate at that she should be in skirt. Only her, none of the other girls in the group (who all wore khakis) were ever told to do otherwise. And then she made allusions to the fact that my friend was a single mother; snide things like saying her "husband" (though she knew there wasn't one) should have been supporting her more. There were also all sorts of snide things implied about her race, because my friend was black and just about everyone else at my school was white or Asian.

I realize all of this sounds petty and whiny, but I promise you, in context - especially day after day for two semesters of this - it was extremely wearing, and I wasn't even the one she tormented. Good news though was that my friend eventually tired of taking it, and reported the instructor to her superior. There was a brief investigation, and she was fired.

My sister also went to private Catholic college for nursing and two of her instructors absolutely made it hell for her. They ridiculed her in class in front of the others, changed rules daily as it suited them, and finally pulled her aside to threaten to kick her out of the program "for her own good" because she "seemed to be struggling." Then they randomly, flat-out "diagnosed" her (a 21yr old honors student, who came from a medical family and had never had a minute's trouble outside of these two) of being mentally retarded. Unfortunately she's still dealing with them.

Long story short (TL;DR), there are instructors pretty much everywhere that let the idea of training future generations of nurses go to their heads, I think. They start picking and choosing which ones they think "deserve" to be a nurse, and start tormenting those they find lacking. But then there are people like that everywhere, and I guess it's just something we all have to deal with at some point. Hope it gets easier for you!

RNsRWe, ASN, RN · Apr 24, 2015

Then they randomly, flat-out "diagnosed" her (a 21yr old honors student, who came from a medical family and had never had a minute's trouble outside of these two) of being mentally retarded.

Wow, this really made me laugh (although I know it's not funny, it just struck a chord with me)!

I can imagine what that well-adjusted Honors student must have thought at being found to be mentally retarded----at the age of 21! Too silly.

NicuGal, MSN, RN · Apr 24, 2015

It is very hard to shift those priorities, but sometimes you have to do it. I did my BSN classes when my kids were 1 and 2. I have no idea how I did it, but we made it they and they survived being cared for by their dad...oh and I was working 32 hours a week on top of that. Push forward to ages 5 and 6, I entered my Masters program. It was really really rough, again they survived my husband lol They ate a lot of chicken nuggets and Mac and cheese while I was in my program and still working 32 hours a week. I went to school things and soccer games and softball games when I could. We all worked on our homework together. It was hard, but we survived those years.

School should be your priority. I don't know how old your kids are but they will survive. It is a small portion of their lives, just prioritize what you do with them and make daddy take videos and pics of what you miss.

Now, the religious thing. Blow it off. People are and can be stupid. Chalk it up to that.