I have the professor from hell.

The title is not an exaggeration. This professor is a complete nightmare. He tore our group to pieces on Tuesday. Yelled at us, told us we were stupid, we know nothing. He constantly lectures his students about not going deep enough, not understanding the basic concepts, just spitting out vocabulary that they read in a textbook. Today he lectured us about how textbooks are useless. The authors probably know nothing about what they're writing. They just learn it on the surface and write a chapter on it and sell it for lots of money. And authors of journal articles are all just publishing crap because it looks good for their career. 90 percent of journal articles are crap. And certain journals, like the journal of membrane science, is written by engineers who know nothing about chemistry but try to write about it anyways. He is so critical of everyone else. How are we supposed to know what is "approved" and what isn't? I mean a textbook isn't an appropriate source of information for a college class? That's ridiculous!

Every time our group meets with him it is a terrifying experience. I'm not joking. We have to work up the nerve to go talk to him. None of us want to be the one to speak up, because as soon as we open our mouths he exclaims that we don't know anything and we can't come to him until we have done the background research. We can't ask him stupid questions. We have to research. We have to know the basics. This is not "voo-doo" science (that's one of his favorite phrases along with "black box" science). So he spent 2 hours telling us that it's the end of the 6th week, and we have to present our data in the 9th week, and he still won't approve our procedure because we have no idea what we are doing. Does he think we are just blowing this off?! That's completely false! We spent ten times more time and effort on this class than any other and yet we are confused and frustrated. Our group meets 3 times a week for at least 2 hours each time outside of class. Class itself is another 6 hours a week. So that's 12 hours a week on one 3 credit class. We spend hours and hours besides that doing research on our own. I can't tell you how many journal articles I've read. And the project he gave us: it turns out that nobody knows the answer! He's given us an impossible task to complete in 10 weeks and berates us for not knowing the answer. And nothing I'm saying is specific to our group. He treats every one of his students like this. He makes every group think that they are the "bad group" and they are behind everyone else and they aren't putting in enough effort like everyone else.

On top of being yelled at and called stupid, he writes all over our papers. We turned in our first draft of our own journal article last week. This was just the introduction, about a fifth of the whole paper. The front page of mine was completely covered in red pen. He wrote right over my words. At the very top was written "if you keep this up, you will get an F" I'm not even kidding. He wrote that on my paper. He also wrote a giant question mark over a paragraph, and wrote in giant letters "where is the chemistry." I should post a picture just so you can see. Daniel was appalled when I showed him. He thinks I exaggerate when I talk about this professor, but now I have proof in writing.

This class is torture. Everybody hates it. Everybody hates our professor. He scares us. We get all tongue tied and nobody wants to speak up because we'll look and sound stupid. He asks us a simple question, that we all KNOW the answer to, but nobody will answer it because somehow he will make it look like we don't know. He contradicts himself constantly, like telling us that we can't just follow the procedure someone else came up with and then telling us that we need to find someone else who has done the same thing that we want to do. Everybody's paper has red pen all over it. Everybody's says "poor work" and he lectured each group individually on how their writing is "sub-par for this level of class." On my group member's paper, the third page in, he wrote "I'm not even going to finish reading it because it's nonsense." Unbelievable! Even the other professors feel sorry for us. But I WILL NOT CRY. I will not. I want to, but I won't. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of knowing he's getting to me. He can play these mind games, but when this class is over my life will go on. I have a life. My life is not chemistry. I have a fiancee, and a puppy, and a house, and a family, and a wedding. And no matter what he does to me, as long as I pass this class, I can forget all about him and it. He will not break me. HA!