<p>One of my friends has felt extremely bored in our intro psych class last semester, since she felt it was way too easy for her, and she felt like having something more of a challenge would be a good idea. I kind of felt the same way and we figured something challenging would be better for us. So for next semester she signed up for the next psych course in sequence with a hard professor, and is trying to get me to join her. The catch is that everyone I've asked about the prof gives off mixed reviews about him. I've heard things such as "no one can understand him because he mutters a lot" or "everyone fails his class but don't worry he curves at the end of the semester" or "he's a nice, old guy" or "class average is in the F's; we can't even ask him for help because no one knows his office hours," and it's making me skeptical about taking him next semester.</p>
<p>Anyone has ever done something like this before and found it worth it? Or is it always better to be safe and take a professor with a slightly better reputation?</p>
<p>There’s nothing useful about doing that. Nothing at all. Take two courses instead of one if you’re looking for more work, but don’t intentionally take a bad professor if you can avoid it.</p>
<p>Nothing can be gained from it. You will wear yourself thin doing extra work to get a subpar grade. Your other classes will suffer also because of the extra time lost. Your gpa for the semester will most likely be hurting. You will be kicking yourself in the ass for following this chick.</p>
<p>Instead take the easy professor. If you want more work, do research or join an academic club. If not I hope the feeling of self accomplishment is well enough to justify your decision. Actually I don’t really care.</p>
<p>If you want a challenge, take an additional class or do research or something. That’s just making it intentionally more difficult for yourself - not difficult in an intellectually stimulating way, but in a frustrating way that won’t teach you anything except how bad of an idea it is to intentionally take a bad professor’s class.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between a hard professor and a bad professors. That’s a bad professor and not worth it. </p>
<p>A hard professor is someone who has high expectations and gives you a reasonable chance to do well, if you take advantage of it (and most people don’t). That would be a challenge, this is just a ticket to misery.</p>
<p>Based on your description, this sounds like the bad kind of “hard professor”. If you’d been told “he’s nice but he really expects a lot” or “don’t miss a class, because he moves along at a breakneck pace” then I’d say go for it if you like the subject and feel froggy. That kind of professor will actually give you better results for your trouble. A professor who is hard merely because he is bad at teaching won’t help you at all.</p>
<p>yeah, sounds like a bad idea. if you want a challenge, take a hard class with a good professor. that’s a challenge - you have resources available to you and a knowledgeable, eloquent professor, but still have to struggle to get a B. take a class like that.</p>
<p>This last semester I had a choice - choose a economics senior seminar with a teacher who is much harder and has a “bad reputation” but has the topic that I’m really interested in or choose a senior seminar that is in a topic that doesn’t interest me at all (but get a “better”/easier prof). I went with the harder prof but more interesting subject. </p>
<p>I soon found out that my professor is rated horribly because she grades mercilessly…she tells you what she expects (100 criteria) but then infers that you know the next 100 criteria (and will mark you down for just about everything). As a well-above-average student expecting 80s or 90s, I received between 50-60% on my first 5 assignments that I turned in (no matter what effort I exerted on the project). BUT at the end, since I spent enough time in her office hours (which I did - going in multiple times a week) she was nice enough to give me enough tips to actually do well on the very last final project (which I must have done well on, because it made up for my awful starting grade in that class). </p>
<p>My semester was awful work-wise and I was miserable because of this class…but I learned A LOT- the professor was actually super nice and interesting so it was hard to hate her even after seeing my grades. In the end after I saw my above-passing grade in that class I would say that taking the “challenging” class with the “bad professor” was worth it. But overall I have mixed feelings…not everyone would be up for the challenge, persay…and I literally spent more time working on this class’ assignments than the work for my 4 other classes combined. After all this rambling…I’d really just tell you to take the easier class. If you really want a challenge, self-study, do an independent study or get a job/research position in your fields of interest.</p>
<p>I took an abstract algebra class last semester with one of those really bad professors with a terrible reputation. He probably had the worst reputation in the entire math department at my school.</p>
<p>My reasons for initially taking it were basically that I needed to take the class now rather than wait a year, and I didn’t think a professor could really be that bad.</p>
<p>Turns out he was - he skips all the details he thinks are trivial in class (but are not trivial to someone seeing module theory and stuff for the first time), and then wonders why none of us understand him. He also covered about a year’s worth of algebra plus random things he found interesting in one semester.</p>
<p>I feel like now I came away with a lot of things from that class. However almost nothing I know now I learned from the lectures. His lectures were more like “hey guys here’s all this cool material that I’m going to talk about and you guys go and learn about it yourself.” The actual learning came from spending 20-30 hours on weekly problem sets. </p>
<p>I think the experience of having a bad professor for a hard class, at least once, really teaches you how to teach yourself a lot of material in a short period of time. For me, that’s really good to have since I’m heading for grad school where I’ll have to do a lot of that. I would not take something similar again (he’s teaching a continuation of the class next semester, and I think there’s like 2-3 people signed up for it), but nonetheless it was a useful experience.</p>
<p>im not in college yet, but why challenge yourself if you don’t need to? why not just get a good grade in the class and have a great GPA?</p>
<p>I was always tough to challenge yourself in high school to get prepared for college, and in college do whatever you can to graduate with your degree and a high gpa</p>
<p>There’s a difference between taking a hard class and a bad class. A hard class might have a great teacher who still challenges their students. At the end of a hard class, you’ve learned a lot. A bad class has someone who does a bad job of teaching and asks moderate questions, which no one can answer because they don’t understand the material. At the end of a bad class, you’ve learned nothing.</p>
<p>Honestly, a freshman/sophomore-level psych course should not be tough enough to earn an “F” unless you attend no classes and turn in no assignments. If students really do fail at those numbers, then he is a bad prof and not a challenging one. I agree with other posts, take an additional (5th, or 6th) course rather than risking your GPA with a bad prof who curves in a course that really should need no curve.</p>
<p>Better safe than sorry. DONT DO IT. There is a difference between a difficult proffesor which teaches good and one who cant apparently as reviews from your peers he cant. I’d say no.</p>