Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Fuck Don Asher (continued).


If you can't beat him, join him:


  • A savvy professor wants to earn as many as possible, as few as possible, and avoid at all costs. So how do you engineer your score on ratemyprofessors.com? Student-shop at the beginning of each semester. Recruit many more students than you can possibly take, and drop or drive away boring, difficult or stupid students sometime in the first two weeks. (It won't show up on their transcripts.) If a bad student fails one of your quizzes, ask them if they really need your class, or if they can drop it and take any easier version, or repeat it at a later date with a professor who gives lots of extra credit.


  • Students are people, too. They worry about being liked, whether they're gaining a few pounds and whether or not they're good at texting. So go visit them. Ask them for clarification of some point they made in class. Try out your paper or lab ideas on them to see if they plan to do any work or not. Ask them the best way to catch cheaters before the exams. It's probably not a great idea to focus on cheaters only, as in "What do I need to do to make it impossible for you to cheat in my class?" Get your students to help you be a better teacher. And maybe ask, "Have you lost a little weight?"


  • Study a broad in her sophomore year, not junior. The junior year is a time to concentrate on her major and get the most out of your department. If you're a broad, you can't do that, unless you’re at Bryn Mawr. Plus, some students get distracted by drinking with their peers, or that cute French guy or gal JYA at your school, and blow their peers instead of using that suction to garner your favor. Grad schools and employers care most about student’s GPA’s in the final two years of college, so if you can’t get any sophomore tail, make sure your upper class students know that, and go lecture a broad in her junior year about those grades. Finally -- and don't tell anyone -- but most sophomores aren't 21 yet. In most of the world, the drinking age, official and unofficial, is much younger than that. So... always keep a case of wine on hand and offer it to students you can lure to your home to “review data” and "discuss papers".

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