bjt223

Does the quality professors matter if you get a good grade? Should we just work hard ourself and earn the good grade then just breeze it through not knowing what you did?

Mirabeau

Well, it depends, I suppose---even if you sailed through the course easily, you then need to ask yourself "did I learn anything", because in college I would think that's a bit more important than how well you did (now that's not to say that grades are completely irrelevant, of course they aren't. Personally, I'd feel cheated if, say, I took a course on the history of the Habsburg Empire (yay working in my history obsessions), got an A, but didn't learn anything new.

colormehappy

Good professors will challenge you and make you work for an A. Some professors might not. But you're paying the money for that class, so you might as well get the most out of it that you can. I use this same reasoning when I really don't want to get up and trudge across campus to class.

lethargytm

does size matter?
yes it matters

lethargytm

does size matter?
yes it matters

tomatoking

do you actually want to learn?

burgler09

The professor means everything, you shouldn't be worried about easy/hard as much as a fair professor. Generally you need the good grades so I mean, I'd rather have an easy professor than an extremely hard one.. but at the same time you'll probably have to understand the material enough, especially if you in some sort of pre-health field.

uyulove

it really depends if you care about the class or not... like I would try to get an easy professor for some science courses (even if he/she doesn't teach me anything) since i just need that course for graduation requirements (more than me actually wanting to take a course in science)

PlattsburghLoser

Yes.
I had my first horrible professor last summer and I wanted to withdraw from all of her classes - even though I was receiving A's in them.

She had a knack for creating unnecessary stress, flaking on her own assignments (i.e. Would say a 12,000 word paper is due Monday next week. Monday comes and she says she was up taking care of her kid, or something, and it's now due next month.), she was late to every single class - but would get furious if the class left at the 15-minute wait mark, she always attacked this one girl in class for absurd reasons, the list goes on and on.

The good grades were simply not worth dealing with this woman.

demeter

Good professors can bring passion to their lessons and make you love subjects that you were indifferent to at first. I think the quality does matter if you look beyond numbers. I had an okay French professor first semester. Not bad but not remarkable either. I love French, and I was really looking forward to reading French literature and moving beyond just learning the French language, but my professor didn't really seem enthusiastic and was often unprepared. While the class didn't put a damper on my interest (and I did very well in it, so it didn't ruin my GPA either), I still felt, at the end of the term, that it had been a major disappointment.

Knowing what I know now, I would've taken a different elective. There are so many classes I want to take, and I know it's impossible to take them all, so every "bad" professor is a disappointment (and, I feel, a waste of time/money). And I'm not using bad as a synonym for strict.

I mean, even if I graduate with a 4.0 GPA, if all my classes were like my first semester French class, I'd still be pretty disappointed.

gprime

Does it matter? Well, I'd say yes for several reasons:

* Even if you care about the opportunities college creates, rather than the education you get, you are more than your GPA. If you intend to go to graduate (MA, PhD) or professional school (business, law, medicine, ect), you'll need good GRE/GMAT/LSAT scores to get in to the schools you want. And your chances of performing well increase with having worked through a rigorous curriculum that forced you to master the material and truely apply yourself. If you've coasted by taking bullsh** classes, you'll be shooting yourself in the foot come test time.

* If a professor is an easy grader, but makes the class miserable, you may find the toll it takes on you to be more than the GPA-padding is worth. For example, teachers who force you to attend their insane, irrelevent programs outside of class with reward, or who grade based on how closely you mirror their own opinion, will make class hell. And given the cost of your education, and the hours you will invest in taking any given course, you deserve better than that.

Now, if it is a required course, and failing to take it or delaying to take it with a different instructor will cause you problems, then suck it up and sit through the class. Similarly, if it is for a gen ed requirement you have no interest in, then the class might be worth taking so long as the teacher is not insane. But generally, taking fluff courses to pad your transcript is not a good idea.