Dealing with an arrogant/frustrating professor?

<p>My history teacher's is smart, but he's the kind of the guy who really unclear about stuff sometimes. He gives us an assignment, and at first it seems not too bad, but then after a while, our whole class realizes that we aren't sure what specifically he wants sometimes. I didn't think he was a bad teacher.... at least until later in the semester, where we had a research project, and our group came up to him for help asking what we can do. He suggested we add in a certain topic to our project to make it better and more well-rounded, so we did was he was told and thought we were good. And what does he tell us two weeks later when he goes to check up on us? That he doesn't think the topic he just told us to put in fits in with our project and that we should remove it, well after we did hours and hours of research already. The other frustrating thing is that we also had to write a paper for his class, and the professor told my friend to do certain things to help make her paper better. What did she get? An F on the paper saying it was too sloppy when all she did was do what he told her! </p>

<p>I really don't know what to do with this guy. He was tolerable at first, but now many of us in his class are angry at his guts. I feel like he's kind of a person where if you don't do it his way, he won't want it, but how can we even get a good grade in his class if he's being so confusing as to what the hell he wants on the paper? Everytime someone tries to ask him the question, he goes "I told you in class already you should've paid attention!". Any suggestions on what to do? I'm really scared that me and my friend may fail the class and have to retake it next semester because it is core education classes for us....</p>