Smarter than your professor?

September 7, 2006 11:26 AM

How do you handle a college professor that you're smarter than?

I have an instructor for an "Information Systems" class that seems to lack a certain amount of expertise in the industry. I am not a know it all, but I do have a certain amount of experience in this field.

I have received low grades on assignments because he's never heard of the technology I write about (Ruby on Rails, Digg, SugarCRM).

What is the best way to still get a good grade, and get him to at least research a little before giving me a low grade?

posted by blueplasticfish to education (64 comments total)

Dumb it down a bit, write what he wants to read.
posted by thirteenkiller at 11:31 AM on September 7, 2006

What is the best way to still get a good grade, and get him to at least research a little before giving me a low grade?

You can't do both. He's a professor, why should he do research to give you a grade. You're the student, you do the research.

To get a good grade, you need to write what the professor expects you to. If that means writing about how the blink tag is new and exciting then you do it.

On the other hand, how important is this grade? You can possibly complain to the head of the department, but in my experience most schools, even technical ones, have horribly out of date programs. And even if there is a response from his superiors, it will almost certainly come after you're done with the class.
posted by Ookseer at 11:33 AM on September 7, 2006

Not an answer, but I had the same problem in a basic IT class once. We had to label the different parts of a computer, and I labelled the base unit / tower as the 'base unit' or something similar. Supposedly I was meant to write 'CPU'. Amusing since I was building computers at the time as a part-time job, and the teacher had never seen inside one.

The thing I found about education, and the reason I don't get involved with it anymore, is that it pays to study the textbooks and the curriculum for the course, and to answer 'from the book' rather than get clever. The 'be clever' stuff is best left for dissertations and PhD projects. So my totally uninformed advice is.. do it by the book.
posted by wackybrit at 11:34 AM on September 7, 2006

You're doing this strictly for the grade? Give him what he wants to read. Yes, you'll feel as if you're having to trot out crap you don't believe in order to keep him happy; on the bright side, that's perfect training for many work environments.
posted by holgate at 11:34 AM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Are you sure he actually knows nothing about the all the latest gee-whiz technology? He's actually said "I've never heard of Ruby on rails."?
Or is it possible the class is intended as a "basics" class, which would require an emphasis on tried-and-true tech?

In either case, suck it up and spit back exactly what's expected. Like every other class you've ever taken.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:34 AM on September 7, 2006

What I found when I was in college is that you have two options with that sort of instructor:

1. drop the class.

2. what thirteenkiller said -- turn in what the professor wants.

College isn't about learning -- it's about proving you can be a good little cog in the machine.

(I'm only being half-facetious -- I'm convinced most of college requirements are simply geared to weeding out people who are too independent or unwilling to jump through hoops to earn that piece of paper.)
posted by jzb at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2006

You could dumb yourself down a little bit on future assignments. Otherwise just talk to him without a condescending attitude to discuss ways in which you could improve your grades. I'd find it hard to believe that anyone could be totally in touch with everything IS related.
posted by JJ86 at 11:35 AM on September 7, 2006

Are you writing answers on these assignments in response to a specific reading assignment from a text or elsewhere? If so, your instructor may be looking for answers that come from the work you're expected to do. Does it make practical sense that your instructor is marking a viable answer to a problem wrong because it's not the one available in the reading you're given? No. Does it make college class sense? Possibly. Give the answer s/he's teaching you to give. You'll get a better grade.
posted by theantikitty at 11:36 AM on September 7, 2006

"He's a professor, why should he do research to give you a grade."

Because, if it were me and I had not heard of a technology, I would look it up (Wikipedia!) quickly before handing down a lower grade. That's the responsible, humble thing to do.
posted by blueplasticfish at 11:36 AM on September 7, 2006

Supposedly I was meant to write 'CPU'.

And the monitor was presumably the 'VDU'. Priceless. But wackybrit is right: at the undergraduate level, the basic principle is 'don't surprise the instructors with bright ideas'.
posted by holgate at 11:37 AM on September 7, 2006

I don't have an answer to your specific question, but if you think you know more than the instructor, why are you even taking the course? If you need the credits, isn't there a way to challenge the course via a test or other means to show you already know the material?

That being said, if you're taking any course (at a tech institute/undergrad level, anyway) you're the one that's supposed to be learning, not the instructor. If you already know the material the instructor is talking about, give the answers (s)he's expecting. It's all about parroting and/or applying the material that's being presented, not about showing how smart you are.
posted by cgg at 11:37 AM on September 7, 2006

It's not really the professor's job to have to research his students' papers. It would obviously be a good thing to have an instructor curious enough about his own subject matter to stay up to date, but it's not really a requirement his students should be holding him to.

Write about what he wants you to write about. I understand it's a huge pain -- I recently took a community-college intro-level undergrad course after graduating with honors at a big-name school several years ago, and the entire experience was immensely painful, mostly due to the instructor's lack of intelligence, let alone knowledge -- but to some extent you just have to suck it up and give them things they know how to grade.
posted by occhiblu at 11:37 AM on September 7, 2006

Definitely do not go in with the attitude "I'm smarter than you". Instructors have seen this before -- a lot of bright, overconfident young people think this on the basis of too little evidence -- and in general it will earn you scorn.

It may in fact be that this person knows less about specific technologies than you do. Let's suppose that's true.

If he's reasonable, talk to him in person about the specific examples of technology. Don't brag about how the new technology supercedes anythign previously made. Instead, be businesslike about how you are trying to fulfill his course requirements. Explain, stragihtforwardly, how they fit the requirements of the assignment or whatever. Be willing to do extra work here; show the guy you're interested and knowledgable instead of being a smartass who thinks s/he can screw off and impress people just by mentioning some new thing. (Or whatever; imagine a negative kind of student this guy might mistake you for, and avoid being that kind of student.)

If you have tried this, and you find the guy unreasonable, and you really want to make a federal case of it, the next step is to talk to the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies (this should be listed on the dept webpage), or if it's a small enough dept, to the chair. Meet with this person; come prepared with a brief explanation of the specific complaint you have, and what you have already discussed with the instructor. Act like an adult; present the appearance that you are not complaining, but rather looking for positive ways to work together with the instructor during the rest of the term so that your work gets marked fairly.

(I'm not suggesting that you're not acting like an adult... this is just advice about what not to do based on some grade-complaint sessions I have been a part of.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:41 AM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Because, if it were me and I had not heard of a technology, I would look it up (Wikipedia!) quickly before handing down a lower grade. That's the responsible, humble thing to do."

Yes, but you're not the one trying to teach dozens/hundreds of people who think they already know everything. If you were, you'd very quickly learn you didn't have the time and/or desire to research every little thing they babble about in their papers.
posted by cgg at 11:43 AM on September 7, 2006

Sadly, tragically, sometimes you have to dumb down your work for specific teachers. Horrible, I know, but it happens. And, worse yet, it can be a valuable job skill. You may find yourself having to do very similar things for certain bosses.

Either that, or drop the class and take it later with another instructor.
posted by browse at 11:43 AM on September 7, 2006

I had a similar problem with an instructor in a similar class. His method of keeping control of the class in his hands was to nitpick the first few assignments so your grade was contingent on dotting all his preferred i's and crossing all his preferred t's.

It pissed me off to no end because he was an old guy who had some loopy CP/M-era notions about computing. My strategy for dealing with him, however, was two-fold:

1. I reminded myself, as you have not so far, that knowing about newer stuff didn't make me smarter, just better informed. Adopting that mindset made my next step easier:

2. I assumed a more humble demeanor and took advantage of his office hours before the next assignment was due. It rankled to no end, because he went from being threatened to being a condescending ass, but I just told myself that any humiliation I endured during office hours would be more than offset by not having my GPA wrecked by a scared old man. I used the time to discuss with him my concerns about the assignment and my fears that I wasn't getting what he wanted me to get.

I got the A. And I learned a lesson that has worked in working life, too: No one likes the look in your eye when you think you're smarter than them. Humility goes a long way to offset their fear.

A few of the other people at my level of proficiency and knowledge who preferred to remain at loggerheads with him kept what they imagined to be their dignity intact, and they cost themselves their As.

Once you've got the degree or cert or whatever you're going for, that guy and what happened between the two of you doesn't matter anymore.
posted by mph at 11:44 AM on September 7, 2006

Professor here. Your professor is lame and is not doing a basic part of his job, which is to keep up with his field. But do you want to be right or do you want to pass the class? Do what he wants and get the grades. But afterwards, please write a brief, professional note to his boss (the department chair) with your concerns about his lack of knowledge.
posted by LarryC at 11:44 AM on September 7, 2006

Transfer to English Lit. They love it when you act smarter than they are. It's like a Sith Lord's apprentice doing something horrible even the master couldn't think of. They tent their fingers and smile.

(But seriously, just regurgitate the material covered in class.)
posted by cowbellemoo at 11:44 AM on September 7, 2006 [12 favorites has favorites]

I have received low grades on assignments because he's never heard of the technology I write about

It's your duty as the writer to understand your audience. Certainly writing for a college professor should (in theory) require less explanation than would writing for the general public. That said technology is a diverse field and you should assume that your professor may not be familiar with what you're talking about - adjust your paper accordingly either offering explanation or keeping it vague.

This is like one the fundamental rules of writing anything, btw...
posted by wfrgms at 11:45 AM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Focus on the philosophy and intellectual process of information systems, instead of on specific emerging technologies, to demonstrate your point when doing writing assignments. If you do discuss new stuff, link it to older technologies to demonstrate the progression/development of thought.

You're not likely to get him to do research on your papers before grading them. Out-of-touch professors are a well-known type in most fields -- you just see it less in tech than say, history or literature.

But try not to think of it as "smarter than" -- that way lies bitterness and frustration. And is he really stupid? Maybe this guy has something to teach you. (If all else fails, that something may be "how to spot ineffectual and out-of-touch teachers." But hey, did you google this guy to find out who he was before signing up?)

On preview:
That's the responsible, humble thing to do.
.
This sounds like "My prof refuses to humble himself before his obviously brilliant students." Seriously, this is not helping.
posted by desuetude at 11:45 AM on September 7, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

The whole premise of this question is wrong; how can you suggest that you are smarter than him? Can you compare IQ's? You happen to know more about subject X than he does, but that doesn't mean you are smarter than him.

It could also be argued that if you talked about Digg and Ruby and got low grades it was because you didn't explain your ideas fully. Prof's don't have the time to research what you write, you have to explain it all to them using references and graphs and shiny figures.

As all the above answers have suggested, just jump through the hoops. Prof wants to read about subject B, you write about subject B and move on with your life. Find a way to get motivated to provide what he wants.
posted by maxpower at 11:45 AM on September 7, 2006

"how can you suggest that you are smarter than him?"

You are right. I actually meant to put this in the original question. I know I am not actually smarter than him, just that I know about areas in IT that he might not and vice/versa.
posted by blueplasticfish at 11:48 AM on September 7, 2006

Based on all the above posts, I guess the ignorance situation might be worse in CS departments...

(The beginning of my post is based on seeing a lot of 18 year olds who have read a philosophy book or two in high school look down their noses at my colleagues who have been studying this stuff for years and are more thoughtful about it to boot. I don't mean it as anything personal at all.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:48 AM on September 7, 2006

Step 1. Talk to the professor about why you received low grades. It's certainly possible that the professor has never heard of Ruby and is grading you down because of it. It's also possible that the professor knows about Ruby and gave you a bad grade because you wrote a very bad assignment about Ruby, or because the assignment was to write a paper on python or some other thing that's not Ruby. It's also possible that the prof has never heard of Ruby, but that your bad grade is still a result of bad writing or something other than his blinkered ignorance. You will not know why you received a bad grade unless he has clearly and distinctly written "I have given you a C- because I do not know anything about Ruby" or unless you have had a discussion with him about this.

Step 2. Ask what he expects from assignments and how you can improve your grade. He will have advice that is 10000% better than anything any of us can tell you.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:50 AM on September 7, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

Consider also that the newfangled stuff you're bringing up is flat wrong given the context of the course.

If I'm teaching basic HTML and a student uncorks some tricky CSS and Ajax on me ... the student is wrong in this context of basic HTML. I'm teaching basic HTML. In your rush to move onto the advanced stuff, you may miss something basic and fundamental. This is why we teach a graduated series of classes that starts with the basics and then moves onto the advanced stuff, so we're giving our students a solid foundation.

Imagine this were a cooking class, and I'm teaching people how to boil water. One of the students drops a load of sugar into the water and starts making syrup. Great, I would say. You're on your way to making candy, jams, jellies and several other things. But we're boiling water so we can have hard-boiled eggs. We don't want candy just yet.

If it's really a problem for you, or if the professor is literally misinformed about what he IS trying to teach (e.g. the CPU vs. tower thing above), drop or challenge the class, as others have said.
posted by frogan at 11:52 AM on September 7, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

One belated realization that helped me do better in college was treating college as a game with its own set of rules. Rather than trying to win the game I thought I was playing, I decided to try to win by their rules.

That might help here.
posted by adamrice at 11:58 AM on September 7, 2006

Professor here. Your professor is lame and is not doing a basic part of his job, which is to keep up with his field.

Yeahbut, as a prof you should know that when a student says something like this, it's more likely that the student got a bad grade because he didn't complete the assignment, didn't follow the directions, made it appear that he hadn't done the reading, or just plain wrote badly than it is that the professor really gave someone a bad grade for referencing a topic he doesn't know about.

Which doesn't mean that it didn't go down exactly like bpf said. But out of ten students who think they got a bad grade because their prof is a dumb old poopiehead, I'd guess that no more than one or two actually did.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:59 AM on September 7, 2006

This class is not here to teach you technology; Its purpose is to teach you interpersonal skills. Here, you're learning how to deal with someone who has positional authority, despite having less knowledge in a particular area than you do.
posted by anildash at 12:06 PM on September 7, 2006

I don't know, there's something a little telling about you using some moderately popular open source CRM software as a litmus test of intelligence. That's aside from RoR, which really has only very recently become a viable platform for anything (as recently as 3 years ago Ruby was dog slow).

I wonder if you talked less about the specifics of the technology you happen to be familiar with, and more about the underpinnings. For example, discuss Ruby on Rails as an implementation of the MVC design pattern. If he's not familiar with that, you might be on better grounds for calling him uninformed.
posted by malphigian at 12:21 PM on September 7, 2006

Blueplasticfish... repeating the other comments... how are you so sure you're 'smarter'?

In my experience, smart is evidence by the quality of question, not the accuracy of answer.

He apparently suffers content limitations compared to your self assessment, but what, actually, have you accomplished?

Are you a professor of anything? Any publications? Patents? Other notoriety?

If he's a PhD, and you are a 20 y/o undergrad, I'd say he'd likely win the 'smarter' contest, regardless of his specific content. He learned how to ask questions, formulate a problem, research the material, develop an original hypothesis, explore and defend a position, and add to the body of knowledge.

By comparison, Ruby-on-rails seems a tad silly... this week's little technoid fad soon to be supplanted by something else.

If he's just an adjunct prof, maybe you can compete. If you're getting bad grades in your classes, it's not a partiularly good indicator of 'smart' though, to those people who are just going to see your transcript. I'd be working that issue.
posted by FauxScot at 12:41 PM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

I disagree with giving him what he wants if you do not yet know what he wants. All we know is that what he wants is not what the OP wrote. We do not know why. First thing I would do is go in to his office and ask what he missed and what he wrote is not appropriate. Then, I would write all the info I had even if higher knowledge than the class and include what he wants too. I would then, if it was a written assignement from home, add cites to the superior knowledge I had to make it easy on the teacher.

Or, better yet, if the OP is so knowledgable in the area, take a higher level class. If this is a required course, ask the department head for a waiver.

Don't just waste your time and money spitting back the text.

I was a Market Maker on the floor of the CBOE when I was taking night classes toward my MBA. I was tired and looking for a gut class. I figured, "Understanding Options" would be an easy class. Damn hardest thing I ever took. Derived the Black Schoales formula by hand at a time when I had an IBM XT doing it for me at work. It was a very theoretical class whereas I had only practical real world experience. The teacher knew theory inside and out, but when I took the whole class to the floor for a mock trading session, he could not trade his way out of a wet paper bag. While I could not keep up with the math, I won the trading contest over much smarter people. Maybe the OP and the Prof have two kinds of knowledge. Practical and theoretical.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:47 PM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

what does ruby on rails and digg have to do with information systems? isnt rails just an application framework that got some press because its so easy to pick up for people who dont know anything about programming? and isnt digg just sort of like a slashdot site for 14 year olds? correct me if im wrong..
posted by petsounds at 12:48 PM on September 7, 2006 [3 favorites has favorites]

Why not use the papers as a way to inform him? Don't dumb it down, but explain what each technology is in the paper in addition to explaining how great it is, or whatever. Samples would certainly help, but that way he wouldn't have to look it up, and he learns a little something along the way. What a great job that'd be. The articles you want to read come to you, like a real-life RSS feed...

notice how I didn't even bother to explain what RSS is
posted by hoborg at 12:52 PM on September 7, 2006

I once took a telecommunications class where the instructor was more interested in showing the class his taped appearances on television than actually teaching anything. And his idea of a great class project was a pathetically basic LAN diagram that I whipped off in 10 minutes using some ancient ancestor of Omni-Graffle. By the time that rolled around, I was already completely contemptuous of the man and it showed (to me) by the effort and the quality of the work I turned in. He held it up to the class as an example of excellence. I stopped going to the class and didn't turn in the final paper that was supposed to be 50% of the grade.

I got an A in the class, which actually made me furious.
posted by ursus_comiter at 1:01 PM on September 7, 2006

Don't dumb it down. Don't regurgitate. Why turn the class into something nauseating and mechanical if you don't absolutely have to?

If you use the class as an opportunity to learn, it'll be difficult to avoid a good grade.

If you are like me, you are in the very early stages of the semester so give the prof at least a few more chances to appreciate your "real" work instead of your "dumbed-down" work.
posted by Aghast. at 1:09 PM on September 7, 2006

When I read that blueplasticfish received low grades on assignments and attributes this to his knowledge of new technology, I think only one thing: expectations are not clear.

There is one way to solve this problem, and that is to go to the professor, assignments in hand, and ask how you can improve your grade in the course. Then engage in discussion with him-- you are both obviously interested in the same thing-- and work towards translating that enthusiasm into assignments that will earn you higher grades. It sounds to me as if you're much closer to this than you think you are.

And in the end, being 'smarter' than a professor is meaningless. Perhaps you are, perhaps you aren't. That's not the point. More likely than not, you're taking this course to further your career, to earn some credential that will allow you to do more of what you love to do-- use it as an opportunity to learn as much as you can without ever forgetting that there are deliverables you'll need to produce.

If you're so intellectually stimulated by the subject but are stymied by the assignments, make an appointment with this professor or another in the same department and see if you can structure an independent study class for credit. If you do this, you'll not only be able to go deeper into topics that you find fascinating, but you'll earn the respect of the people in your department, and you may end up with something that you'll be able to discuss at a job interview.
posted by yellowcandy at 1:21 PM on September 7, 2006

Are you just mentioning the technology or explaining it? Sounds like if you did a project about Ruby you'd be explaining, at least briefly, how it works. If you're just saying stuff "like Digg" or something he may not get what it is. Try dedicating paragraphs to that sort of cutting edge stuff.
posted by Napierzaza at 1:32 PM on September 7, 2006

I've always observed that teachers who don't understand your subject matter will give better grades than deserved, not worse. Regardlessly, I try to go through life with the philosophy that everyone has something to teach me, even if the lesson here is how to write for your audience, as opposed to, writing what you want to write.

That being said, maybe the professor graded you down because he felt that your papers were off-topic. If this is the case, all you have to do is approach him/her after class or during office hours and say, "I feel like my grades aren't reflecting my potential. I'd like to write the next paper about X, and my thesis is Y and I was wondering if you thought that was an appropriate topic to fulfill the papers' requirements? What suggestions would you have to do better on my paper this time with this topic?"

If he's an egomaniac, biting your tongue and humbling yourself for help will assure you that A. If he's inept, he can't really grade down a well-executed paper that he helped advise. If you wrote good papers but missed the purpose, he can tell you how to get on track. Don't assume malice or ignorance if you haven't even talked to the prof yet.
posted by Skwirl at 1:38 PM on September 7, 2006

This bears repeating. Have you asked him to explain your low grades? You should not assume that you know his reasons for giving you the scores that he did.

Further, a good writer (that is, anyone presenting information via any medium) is able to explain why his solution is better than the expected or popular solution. If you are truly presenting what is, for your audience, a novel solution to a problem, it is your responsibility to make them see things your way.

My student could turn in an essay consisting entirely of a brilliant idea expressed by a single sentence, I would fail him without hesitation. Students are expected to defend their ideas, put their ideas in context, compare their ideas to alternative positions, etc. .
posted by oddman at 1:38 PM on September 7, 2006

Skwirl's advice on what to say to your professor is great. I would love it if every single one of my low scoring students came to see me and asked those very same questions.
posted by oddman at 1:41 PM on September 7, 2006

You're in college and this is the first time you've had this problem? If you have a teacher like this, just tell them what they want to hear.
posted by subclub at 1:42 PM on September 7, 2006

If you really know the content before you take a course, try to test out of it. Otherwise, you paid for the course, and it's to your advantage to learn as much as possible. What does this guy have that you could learn from?

Ruby on Rails is hot right now, but you can learn a lot from programming in any technology. In papers, try to express concepts, and explain your ideas more fully. Learning to write well about technology is a very useful skill.

In my senior year in college, I had to take a course in my major with a notoriously terrible professor. I learned a fair amount from the reading and papers, and especially from some of the group work, but he was a detriment. Find out who the really good and not-so-good teachers are, and choose your courses accordingly.
posted by theora55 at 1:54 PM on September 7, 2006

Before I answer your question, are you sure you're meeting the criteria set out by the professor/instructor? Looking back 15 years, I realize now that, in some of the cases where I thought the instructor was a dolt, I had actually failed to meet all the criteria for the assignment. I might have had brilliant ideas, but I had overlooked some other points.

This isn't always the case, of course. I had other instructors who were, in fact, dolts. And I generally got very good marks, so I must have usually understood the assignment criteria.
posted by acoutu at 1:59 PM on September 7, 2006

Part of this will be reiterating what others have previously suggested but I am giving my opinion as former college prof and instructor. Sometimes I was assigned courses that were outside my specialty. Further, even after studying field A for numerous years, I could not possibly keep up with every single new paper and technology. However, I was thrilled when students became enthusiastic about a particular topic and brought me new journal articles on a particular subject they found interesting.

In your particular situation you do not know if you received a lower grade because your instructor was unfamiliar with the new technology or perhaps you failed part of the assignment itself. I would highly recommend scheduling an appointment with your instructor - to schedule the initial meeting state that you would like to discuss how you can best improve your grade on assignments.

When you go to the meeting, bring a copy of the sources that also include the info you are citing (in my field, a peer reviewed published article would have been great - but not wikipedia or a random webpage, so locate the appropriate source that will be respected for your particular field). Mention to your prof how much you enjoy the material and decided to investigate the newest and latest technologies to include in your paper. Then ask for suggestions as to how to improve your paper. Perhaps you are missing or did not understand part of the assignment and will then learn how to improve your future assignments. If your instructor gave you a lower grade because s/he is truly not up-to-date with the material, then you have politely pointed that out and future papers (and possibly previous assignments) may not suffer.

Best of luck.
posted by Wolfster at 2:03 PM on September 7, 2006

I just want to add in this:

There are a lot of adults in this thread telling you, "Give the professor what he wants," "Play their game by their rules," "Don't try to be clever." There's a good message in those statements about interpersonal skills, and about learning how to manage people's demands and expectations in order to progress to the greater goals in life, but I have to say for myself, and speak for the others here as well (I'm sure they forgot to mention it), that I understand how incredibly difficult it is to do these things the first couple of times you need to do them.

Kids are not used to expressing humility, as kids rarely need to do so. But adults simply grow accustomed to it because eventually you encounter situations where you can't be a smart-aleck without screwing yourself over. And then, after a while it's just easier (and sometimes deviously fun) to be manipulative than it is to be rebellious.

So in the end, I understand that you're not used to this, and you think it's ridiculous that you have to "conform". Well, it is ridiculous, and it's not easy the first couple of times. But this is a perfect situation in which to practice the art of "keeping someone else happy", because it should be effortless for you mentally. And eventually, you'll find this to be a skill that puts you ahead of naive people.

Also worth mentioning: CIS moves so fast that researchers quickly become "dinosaurs", and most significant research in the field does not intersect with modern technology in the purely practical form (and vice versa). End result: yeah, computer instructors often wind up clueless on their subjects. I laughed at the "CPU" test question mentioned above, since it's the 1970's way of labelling PC components. So, unlike in other disciplines (someone mentioned smartass philosophy students, who would indeed be too cocky for their own good), it's not uncommon to find students who are more up-to-date on the material than the professors. Also really easy to find CIS professors who are disdainful of the march of progress, since you get burned out on that almost immediately. (Related: all you Ruby programmers could be in for a rude awakening soon - it may go the way of Smalltalk, Pascal, and FORTRAN. Burnout is not necessarily the worst reaction to progress...) All in all, the CIS field is a clusterfuck and it's wise to give yourself some exposure to it before you make any career committments. One would hope that Google give this thread a bit of prominence when kids are searching the mostly rosy descriptions of the CIS academic community. (Yes, it is absolutely a waste of money to spend $100,000 just to learn Scheme and Java - theory or not)
posted by brianvan at 3:08 PM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

That's the responsible, humble thing to do.

Professors are not humble, they don't need to be. Being humble is your job. I had similar problems with two professors in college; one decided I was impressive and gave me good grades, the other couldn't stand me and gave me bad grades. It's not really a big deal. Either way, you'll survive and go on to other things. But losing the chip on your shoulder would be immensely helpful in your future endeavors.
posted by languagehat at 3:24 PM on September 7, 2006

This is starting to turn into a Roark commentary.
posted by blueplasticfish at 3:29 PM on September 7, 2006

wow, everybody in this thread keeps saying the same thing over and over.

when i was in college i had the exact same issue.. in almost every class. and i got this exact same answer from people over and over. it's a very depressing situation. here you are trying to make this stupid thing you have to do bearably interesting, and you get shot down, and everybody says "suck it up, that's life, duh."

well i just want to say that i truly sympathise. my approach was to just keep doing what i was doing and got C's and B's in easy classes that i was too smart for.
posted by amethysts at 3:42 PM on September 7, 2006

Respectfully, I'd suggest that you have no way of knowing that "I have received low grades on assignments because he's never heard of the technology I write about"

It may well be true that you get low grades and that he's never heard of the technology you write about, but I find it hard to picture a situation where you ask him "hey prof, why the low grades?" and he answers, "because I've never heard of the technology you write about."

Which isn't to say that it couldn't be the real reason, but I highly doubt a prof would admit that.
posted by juv3nal at 3:45 PM on September 7, 2006

I have always believed that succeeding in college was a good primer to succeeded in the "real world", especially corporate life.

I am in corp America and because I am so dispassionate about my job it is easy to say- "ok, I'll do it that way, no prob", because it doesnt matter to me. They make stupid decisions and it hurts my stocks. Big deal.

If i worked as a teacher, nurse or social worker I would have to stick up for what I knew was right or best. It matters.

If giving that prof what he wants is going to get you where you want to go- why not? I save my principles for when it matters to me -college and my stupid corp job...who cares. College isnt the real world.
posted by beccaj at 4:15 PM on September 7, 2006

see.. but college IS NOT the real world, and it's not some dumb corporate job.. so you shouldn't HAVE to do stuff like that. it shouldn't be that way. college should be about improving yourself, and giving the dumb prof the dumb crap that he wants is so unhelpful. not to mention a waste of money.
posted by amethysts at 4:18 PM on September 7, 2006

I would like to see what the actual questions are. Most short essay type questions are designed to evaluate whether a student understands a particular concept being taught in the class. My experience from dealing with students who think they are very smart (and many of them are!) is that they don't always have a good grasp on how to actually demonstrate such understanding, and that they very often mistake knowledge of a technology or tool we are using (for classes I have TA'd, e.g. knowledge of first-order logic) with knowledge of the actual concept we are trying to teach (e.g. how to formally model the meaning of a sentence using these tools, and what the meaning of a sentence is). The tool is just a tool. The way this question is phrased sounds like it might fit exactly this situation, except in the IT domain. If the paper doesn't demonstrate knowledge of the concept the assignment was asking about, no amount of extra material or references will help.
posted by advil at 4:23 PM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

I am pursuing my first bachelors in Informatics. I am starting late in life (I'm 35) taking a course, "Introduction to Informatics" that is probably similar to your course.

My shcool is a WinMac operation and I had some silly notions, being an open source zealot and being very experienced with technology, that maybe I could convert the people at school. I was quickly disabused of these notions. The purpose of the class is to learn about things like semiotics, syntax and semantics, not to show the professor that I am up with the latest trends and certainly not to show the professor that I think he/she is an idiot or a fossil.

I have realized that I will have to save things like my love of Python and preemptable kernels will have to wait until I take more advanced courses where, hopefully, there will be more room to explore the technology that interests me.

Since I am (I presume) older than you and probably have more years of work experience, perhaps it is easier for me to accept this. When I was young, I could not accept that other people might be smarter than me. Now I realize that there is a significant percentage of the population who are vastly more intelligent than I am.
posted by SteveTheRed at 4:39 PM on September 7, 2006

Because, if it were me and I had not heard of a technology, I would look it up (Wikipedia!) quickly before handing down a lower grade. That's the responsible, humble thing to do.

I think you've got it mixed up blueplasticfish. You're the one who should be humble if anyone should. One thing you could do would be, within the assignment, explain the technology you're talking about and suggest why it's important. Then you build in the knowledge the prof needs to be able to critically judge your work. He doesn't have to ask you what Ruby on Rails is because you've already defined it.

Any good prof will be really looking for how you, the student, justify your arguments.

I used to teach technology. I realized that the old hierarchical teacher/student world order was changing and I had to change with it. Some of my students were more knowledgeable than me (notice I didn't say "smarter than me," there's a differnce). So I devised a system to use when one of my students asked me what they needed to do to get an "A" in the course.

If you listen to what I say you will get a "C." If you do what I ask and learn something you will get a "B." If you teach me something you will get an "A." And when that happened I gave the student his/her due.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 4:39 PM on September 7, 2006

Sorry for the typo: ...there's a difference
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 4:40 PM on September 7, 2006

>Respectfully, I'd suggest that you have no way of knowing that "I have received low grades on assignments because he's never heard of the technology I write about"

I'm with juv3nal. That's one possible explanation, but you're not exactly using Occam's Razor here.

You need to go to the guy and say "why did I get a C on this paper?", or if you've done that, you need to tell us what his answer actually was. This whole question is fundamentally flawed.

There are a number of explanations for your low grades and I'd put your preferred one somewhere outside the top ten.

Could you tell us where you are in your college career? What your educational background was?

I had a friend who went to college after some years of homeschooling and auditing university classes, and was incredibly smart, but spent a lot of the first year trying to do things their way because it would be "more interesting". Unfortunately, that's not how it works.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:58 PM on September 7, 2006

wow, everybody in this thread keeps saying the same thing over and over.

when i was in college i had the exact same issue.. in almost every class. and i got this exact same answer from people over and over. it's a very depressing situation.

It's more likely that you and bpf are running up against different problems in higher ed and that the problem is not actually that a mean old ogre is giving you bad grades because he doesn't know anything.

One problem is that it's not always obvious why you got a grade, especially on things like weekly assignments or other things that are like problem sets. As others have said, all you know is that you got a bad grade, and you at least have a feeling that the prof doesn't know python or whatever. But it's more likely that you got a bad grade because you didn't actually write the bubble sort that the question asked for, or that your description of python was very bad, or that you wrote about python when the question asked "In fortran77, how would you flibble the grobble-wobbler?" It might also be the case that even though you gave a fine description of python or ruby or whatever, your description simply didn't answer the question or demonstrate the necessary skill that the question was trying to tap into.

Another is that professors in many schools don't do much teaching about how to learn, or about how to write good answers. We just nail you for doing a bad job. This is in part on purpose -- my job is not to know the first damn thing about teaching how to write a research paper, it's to teach the material I'm an expert in. There are other people in learning centers who can teach you about writing a research paper. This sort of thing can make it even more difficult to understand why you got a bad grade -- if you don't have very good skills at reading and following instructions, you're liable to leave off half a question or answer the wrong question or otherwise screw up real bad.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:05 PM on September 7, 2006

Now, I'm an admittedly lazy graduate student. I'm hacking code for a research group and teaching a lab, working on a PhD at a medium pace.

I say fuckit. If you're that smart, you've got a long row of A's zipping down your academic history. Take the "gentleman's B" approach. Be nice and amicable with the professor, have no shame, and simply do the bare minimum of what's asked. Or less. Deprioritize this class. You lose a letter grade by sloth, but it's no big deal in your GPA.

Go talk to him. Ask him questions about the old days. Research the hell out of the technologies he knows, and include those in future assignment. Professors love that. Besides, understanding past computing helps in understanding modern computing.

Or, it may turn out that this guy is great when he's not constrained by curriculum. He may have lots of really interesting stories. Does he do research? On what subject?

But, give it a bit more time before you freak out.
posted by Netzapper at 5:20 PM on September 7, 2006

From the professors point of view, he gives a test, to which he knows the answers (or a range of answers) and when he marks all the exams, he considers everything outside that range wrong. Is it always wrong? No. But he doesn't have time to research EVERY SINGLE answer that isn't in the answer key. 90% of wrong answers are just gibberish, so why would he bother?

If you get marked down, and you know that your answer is correct, discuss it, and explain why/how you answered the question properly.

To avoid all this, include HIS preferred answer as well. So if you need to give an example for such and such technology, give what the professor has been teaching you, and THEN add "another example is [newer thing]". That's how you can teach him something AND get full marks.

(IANAprofessor, but I mark exams for one)
posted by easternblot at 6:13 PM on September 7, 2006

I feel like you're describing my whole life. If yuo figure it out, let me know!
posted by RussHy at 8:42 PM on September 7, 2006

A lot of times, these things get fixed at the end of the academic year. I was doing a course last year - great lectures, great set reading, but the guy - a mature (the UK way of saying "not 18-25" - in this case, late sixties) doctorate student - who marked the essays would give you marks based on whether you agreed with his beliefs. It was a theology course - and we saw, quite clearly, that folks who had a fairly conservative Christian reading of the texts got great marks, while those who were more critical or who did more neutral interpretations got marked down - I was one of the folks who was more critical. It was so evident - because you had students who were fairly weak in class, but who were coming from the Theology course and were evidently very religious getting great marks, and people who were providing excellent suggestions in class and knowing the material very thoroughly come out with crud marks.

At the end of the year, when mark moderation came around, his assessment was evidently found to be flawed. Most people walked out with marks that - to the neutral observer - seemed to represent their abilities to a good extent (marks shot up from fails and low thirds to firsts and upper seconds). A lot of these things come out in the academic wash. In spite of biased marking, I'm still very glad I took the course. It'll be interesting to talk to people who do it next year and see whether the same thing happens.
posted by tommorris at 5:05 AM on September 8, 2006

First, set an example for all the lowly normals and don't end sentences in prepositions.
posted by schroedinger at 6:10 AM on September 8, 2006

To repeat some advice that was buried in a rambling comment (that seems to have disappeared due to tight moderation):

Your professor may be clued in to your interests (there are quite a few CIS professors out there who DO keep up with the times, and they're great guys to know) and this might be a total misunderstanding with an assistant grader.

I've found that in many CIS programs, teachers' assistants / grad students graded almost all of the papers and exams. The teachers' assistants were mostly foreign students who spoke little English and who had little clue about the world in general (except for their field of study), so there was a fair chance that THEIR misunderstanding of a test answer would cause them to mark it wrong.

Go to the "extra study" session for the class, which is likely run by the TA, and ask him/her directly why your answer was wrong and which is the correct answer. If you determine that the TA is misinformed and is responsible for the poor marks, you have a case to bring to the professor politely and calmly.
posted by brianvan at 8:12 AM on September 9, 2006

FauxScot wrote: "If he's just an adjunct prof, maybe you can compete."

So, I'd just like to point out that adjunct professors aren't less-qualified or less intelligent than their full-time, tenure-track colleagues, thank you very much. I adjunct because I love teaching at the college level, but already have a different job in my field, so only have time to teach one class per semester. There have been a vast number of articles recently in places like the Chronicle of Higher Education noting that adjunct faculty are increasingly standard in higher education, for economic rather than intellectual reasons. Slighting these faculty members' intelligence is adding unnecessary stigma to a job that already demands that one accept no tenure, no benefits, no stability, etc.

To answer the question: I have to echo those that suggest you examine more closely whether or not you answered the question/fulfilled the assignment. Also, have you ever talked to this professor? Take advantage of office hours -- if he thinks you care, he'll probably grade you better anyway, a bit unconsciously.
posted by obliquicity at 3:20 PM on September 9, 2006