Professors

The closest comparison to your description is the random professor who spends all of his time talking to us about his latest projects or discoveries.. you know, the ones no one really cares about at all.

Mostly, my professors care more about teaching than their own research. Or at least it seems that way. Of course, there''s always about 5% of them that always seem to busy to talk for 2 seconds. All in all, I''m impressed with the quality of the UMaine professors. I''ve heard horror stories about other schools though . [cough]UNH[/cough].

Actually, I have only had one prof talk about his research, and he did that for about 5 minutes, and moved onto what he was doing next. The professors in my experience have been fairly available, of course I have only been in the CIS, Math, and Japanese departments mainly, so I don''t know about anyone else at my school.

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Original post by Cold_Steel
Mostly, my professors care more about teaching than their own research. Or at least it seems that way. Of course, there''s always about 5% of them that always seem to busy to talk for 2 seconds. All in all, I''m impressed with the quality of the UMaine professors. I''ve heard horror stories about other schools though . [cough]UNH[/cough].

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That''s my experience as well. The worst problem I''ve had are professors that are too stringent about office hours. But even they are willing to schedule meetings in advance, so long as you don''t just pop into their labs or whatever.

CM

What I get from most profs is that they don''t take undergrads seriously. When you become a graduate student, they may think you are devoted and be more interested in helping you succeed.

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Original post by mtw
Is it common for professors to be more interested in their own work than in teaching? Sometimes it seems like people become professors because they think it''s easy and because it will give them time to work on their personal projects. What kind of professors do you run into most often?

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Geniuses often have jobs where they can free their mind. For instance, a chess grandmaster who washes dishes so he can think about chess (true story). I suspect a lot (some) professors are the same way. Teaching what they''re good at isn''t hard for them. Same thing.

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Original post by light-nexus
What I get from most profs is that they don''t take undergrads seriously. When you become a graduate student, they may think you are devoted and be more interested in helping you succeed.

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That''s something I''ve come across as well.

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Original post by mtw

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Original post by light-nexus
What I get from most profs is that they don''t take undergrads seriously. When you become a graduate student, they may think you are devoted and be more interested in helping you succeed.

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That''s something I''ve come across as well.

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Screen your professors. Either you attend a shitty school, or you''re picking bad classes. Its been several years since I took a class without knowing how good the teacher was going to be in advance. Just ask around...somebody has had the teacher, and will tell you how much they suck.

CM

This is what my 2 older brothers said, but they both went to the same, shitty college. When my dad was a professor at a university he used to do work for his business on university time, lol.

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Proceeding on a brutal rampage is the obvious choice.

It''s not just the caliber of the school - if the school is research oriented, expect fewer professors to be as interested in teaching as they are in their research. UCSD is like that. My experiences 10 years ago broke down roughly in thirds as far as science professors went. A third were excellent teachers, a third were ok teachers and a third were there clearly for their research and little else.