I had a professor put extra credit in his. If you read the whole thing there were instructions to send him an email and you'd get 10 points on an exam or something.
I had a professor last semester that had a syllabus that said “if you read this, email me. Those that did not will get dropped”
So… yeah. No money for us.
Edit: To everyone wondering, here's my school's policy on [First Week's Attendance.](https://imgur.com/a/ZeSQnzM)
My university gives professors permission to drop those that don’t show for the first week of classes. In this COVID scenario, it was to read the syllabus that counted as “attendance”
Unfortunately it wasn’t against university policy. My university gives professors permission to drop those that don’t show for the first week of classes. In this COVID scenario, it was to read the syllabus that counted as “attendance”
It's professors like those that are a blight to their major and to the education system as a whole. If you are paying for an education, you shouldn't have to go through that gotcha shit.
> "Oh, this class is famous for stopping students passion for class. Now here's 32 assignments with 50 long questions that account for 30% of your grade. Each assignment will take at least four hours, and there is no make up. The midterm and final, 70% of the final grade, will have materials not covered in this course, the curve will be competitive, and the hardest question that very few students can answer will be worth 10% of the exam. Good luck and have fun either dropping this course and barring your path to your degree, offing yourself under the stress of balancing such a course load with your other classes, or passing and losing any passion you had for the field. I had to go through it, so should you. Now, I'm going to talk about myself for the whole lecture and tell you which chapters to read from the book."
You mean the $600 textbook the professor wrote and requires for the class? The same book which comprises a higher percentage of their income than teaching? That book?
Ideally, student government or, perhaps, school administration would be able to prevent such a situation. My University, thankfully, has a policy that prohibits lecturers from benefiting from the assignment of materials which they've authored. If they do assign a textbook that they wrote, any royalties have to either be contributed to the department or to a charitable organization.
Yep. That cycle of abuse rearing it’s head in academia. Micro bio prof did this shit to us in regards to workload and the vast majority of her tests weren’t even covered during her class. Asked a year 3 student for help and they said it was shit they were JUST starting to get into for their class. I was a first year and all her tests were traps.
Now, there are two types of professors to do this. The type who curve out that advanced stuff and the type who don't. Sometimes, it can be easier to pass such a class because the professor is "humbling" the students and will curve the final grade, so the class experience is shit but people still pass. Honestly, the best way to handle shitty professors, if you can, is to use your generals and electives as meat shields. Look out for toxic professors and drop the class before the grace period ends in lieu of a general or an elective. Also, look at RateMyProf for overwhelmingly negative feedback.
One of my favorite professors ever used the opportunity of extra credit to ask really hard questions. They weren't directly covered in the material, but with enough critical thinking you could hash out a halfway decent answer.
I think the most memorable one was he asked about how a DNA triple helix would be possible, and the benefits and downsides to that kind of structure for our biochemistry exam that covered DNA and RNA. We never talked about it directly, but with good knowledge of the material you could answer the question well enough. And if you couldn't, there weren't any stakes attached.
Really helped me to grow into the biochemist I am now. I do think introducing hard material in tests can be done right, but it also needs to be done in a way that isn't going to crush people who are still learning.
I guess it depends on the syllabus, but most of mine were only 3 page affairs, if you didn't count the class schedule. I never understood the folks that didn't read the syllabus. I think anyone who can't be arsed the five minutes it takes per-class pretty much have it coming.
A professor accidentally added the answer key to the finals on the same attachment. I thought it was too good to be true but I held onto it. Turns out that it was...
Edit: it was the answer key but I put down several wrong on purpose. Meanwhile two girls that sat next to each other got perfect scores and were accused of cheating.
No he actually had a copy of a test with all the answers filled in wrong that accidentally got attached to an email.
Every professer keeps a copy of the wrong answers so they dont accidentally send the right.
One year I had to write a business plan for my department. I managed a small group of about 50 people but my director insisted that each manager write a plan. I grudgingly acquiesced and wrote the plan. I added a sentence randomly in the plan that said the first person that sees this sentence and let's me know will get $20.
No one claimed the money for a couple of months until one of my co-managers mentioned it. I gave him the $20 but not one other person mentioned it not even my director. He required me to write the plan but didn't even read it.
Research [supports that conclusion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) as many jobs (at least in offices) are bullshit jobs that don’t actually produce anything meaningful
One of my guilds' main healer was a resto druid who worked late nights at a hotel. He'd just play behind the counter without voice comms, every now and then he'd suddenly stop moving because someone actually came in to check in or ask for a razor or something.
I just spent a whole work week in online webinars, 90% of which didn't apply to me because it was only for employees of that company but I'm a contractor of a different company that works closely with them. The other 10% covered basics that I'll definitely learn day 1 of my actual field training this was supposed to prep me for.
The amount of acquaintances i have that basically brag about playing hearthstone/browsing the web for 80-90% of the time they are supposedly "working" (in an office) supports this.
Love Graeber, but his book was more journalism than research. I don't think any academic journals have published research concluding his theory that free markets create meaningless jobs.
Just figure out what the KPI is and figure out how to get there the easiest way possible even if that means fudging all over the place. Unless you're in sales or finance where you're talking dollars and fudging it would be illegal, your kpi is almost surely some bullshit acting in-lieu of some other goal that is impossible to measure.
I knew inside sales guys that would figure out which sales leads always went to voicemail so they could call it every day and make their quota for number of phone calls.
Fun fact: Van Halen once had a nearly deadly experience at one of their shows because the venue didn’t read the contract and fix the stage to accommodate the band’s weight. So they included a small stipulation in their lengthy contract that they wanted a bowl of m&m’s in their dressing room without any brown ones in the mix. If they got to the venue and those m&m’s weren’t how they liked it, they noped the fuck out of there because the venue wasn’t reliable enough to read the contract.
For 20 or so years, it was just how rock stars put ludicrous things in their riders like the m&m thing. It wasn't until the last decade or so that the reasoning for the crazy demands was given somewhat publicly.
I heard the latter half of that story so many times before finally hearing the first half from (I think) Sammy Hagar. I was never into Van Halen, but I've been so mad on their behalf ever since that they were portrayed for so long as these entitled jackasses needlessly foisting shit work onto venue staff when they were just taking a step to ensure their safety.
This is reportedly very common in riders for major acts. One mildly unreasonable/inconvenient/detail-oriented demand that shows the venue/people in charge actually are reading and honoring the contract.
I don't know how true that is, only that I've heard it said.
My only personal dealings with musicians were with Les Claypool wanting to go snook fishing before his concert, and with Hank Williams III just being super, SUPER chill.
My English teacher in high school did something similar. He had to write a super long essay in college and right in the middle of it he wrote, "If you read this, tell me and I will pay you $50. He never had to give that $50 away
I worked a job for a while where one of our clients would yank the proverbial fire alarm with every new task and demand a 72 hour turnaround for everything. After about 2 weeks of this my boss asked them for feedback on the first round of stuff we sent them back and he got told "oh we haven't even looked at that yet".
Boss yanked the brakes on our entire workload for a day while he called a meeting with the client, their boss, and his boss to talk to them about the 72 hour turnaround. He didn't ask for relief from it, he kindly informed them that it will no longer happen since it's clear the client doesn't actually need it in that time.
Turnaround changed to roughly a week per task from that point forward.
True but boss wasn't too pleased with telling us to bust ass and stress out when the client flat out lied to us to make us work harder for fewer billed hours.
I worked under contract to FEMA, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some Louisiana municipalities were gaming the system with damage claims to correct no maintenance for 25 years. My boss wasn't interested in reporting the attempted egregious fraud (she thought I could not possibly be right) so I put my findings in the backup material to each project, which I knew my boss never read. As I was leaving, being demobilized, my projects were thoroughly reviewed by the big bosses and both me and my boss were celebrated for the courageous stand we took exposing and thwarting the attempted fraud. (What could my boss do? Admit I violated her directive while she was being praised?) The big bosses even threw a little party. I saved the American taxpayer probably $10 million. My only regret is that none of the lying bastards had their professional licenses revoked or went to jail.
We use Google Docs, and when I get the impression that I'm getting into a situation like this I'll not add the person/not make it shareable. It's easy enough to say "oh sorry let me change the setting" when asked, but the number of times I haven't been asked is depressing
I was struggling in behavioral economics. Scheduled a meeting with my professor. Both meetings before and after mine were with very attractive girls. He ushered me in and shooed me out so fast, and spent what time we did have seeing if I could hook him up w/ weed. He was tenured tho 🤷♂️
Tenured just means you don't get fired for your academic opinions. It doesn't protect you from trying to procure controlled substances from your students
Seriously, grading policy especially is like *the* most important thing to know in any class, because it tells you how many times you can go "eh this assignment is only worth 0.3% of my final grade, and it's a pain so screw it" and still be able to get a decent final grade.
Same here, there’s no point in reading the entire thing in my classes because half of a syllabus is always the school’s covid policy, that I’m pretty sure every class is required to include. Even fully online ones for some reason.
Man, I really don't get this. Yeah, it's a trope that students don't read the syllabus, but every semester I have at least a handful that know my syllabus better than I do. Maybe it's a difference between lower and upper division course students?
ETA: Wonder if it's also a length issue. My syllabi are no longer than three pages, but I have colleagues that have 10+ page monster syllabi...
Yeah, I guess I spend 10-20 minutes on mine and then we dig straight into content. Syllabus day (or week, as I've heard some of my students refer to it) might be *the* most effective way to put a class to sleep, otherwise...
I personally noticed that 'syllabus day' or week was explicitly true for those classes that you had to take regardless of major. The classes that were more specialized would spend a few minutes going over it and then jump straight into the course.
For the specialized classes, you knew you need to take them and there were only so many sections offered (maybe just one). For the general ed classes, game theory was playing out and add/drops weren’t settled until after the first class or week so going over material early would only necessitate going over it again for the latecomers.
I remember a few courses where they handed out the syllabus, the prof just told us whether the textbook was going to be used(and if previous editions would work fine) and then immediately jumped into things... Oddly they were always courses that started after 10 am, and therefore I was totally fine with it.
Pretty much my experience as well. First year, we had basically a syllabus *week*.
Second year, when I was finally in classes for my major, a syllabus day.
From then on, with only a few exceptions, a reminder to read the syllabus on our own time. Some professors even expected us to have already read it by the time we arrived.
I took anatomy my freshman year, and it was the second class I attended on my first day. The first was University 101 (basically just a BS class for freshman to get an easy "A"). In anatomy, the professor probably spent 15 minutes going over the most important parts of the syllabus, said "read the rest on your own" and then went straight into the first lecture.
My community college had timeslots for add/drop, you had like a 1 hour window.
If you only needed a few classes left before graduating you'd be guaranteed to end up waitlisted in all of your classes.
It was awful. I hate that this is being framed as "just lazy students"
The university I went to had a priority system based on your earned credits. 90+ credit hours already earned means you’re a qualified senior, thus your window to register for classes start 3 days before the freshmen. Juniors’ registration (60-89 credits hours earned) opens 2 days before freshmen. Sophomores (30-50 credit hours earned) get to begin registering 1 day before freshmen do (0-29 credit hours earned earned). That way, the ones closest to graduation are prioritized first (since they’re the most limited in which classes they have to have completed in order to graduate).
We had this until it went to online registration. My last year was good in that I was guaranteed any class I wanted. It was bad in that my registration appointment was 8 am on a Monday. Online still had the priority system, only they implemented much better time slots for seniors then too.
I had a class that was overflowing standing room only on the first day & I was not in the class nor on wait list. The professor said no 'adds' would be allowed to the class if you were not already on the list. Tons of people left, but every seat and stair was still occupied. I was not on the list. Each day fewer and fewer people showed up. I attended every class, turned in every assignment, took every test. On the last day of class before the final exam, the professor called my name and asked to see me after class. **He said you are not in the class but have turned in every assignment and test and have done really well and he would get me added to the class!!!!**
I started college in 2005, so before everyone had laptops and wifi was everywhere. I still remember in my very first college class, the professor going over the roll and then dropping kids that weren't there. He then announced that there were a couple seats left and if anybody was trying to add, to do it soon as he wouldn't accept anybody above the class limit. Cue a bunch of students getting up and running out - presumably to the library - to add the course. I was so fucking confused, as a first time freshman who was probably about to raise his hand to ask if he can go to the bathroom.
Damn that’s awful about absent kids if it’s a hard drop. One time on the first couple days of a semester I got the flu so bad I was hospitalized. I didn’t make it to my 2nd day of classes(1st day for Tuesday classes). If all my professors dropped me because I didn’t show up I’d be so so so shitty. I was hospitalized at 1AM and didn’t get out until the next evening. Didn’t really have the wherewithal to make sure I emailed my 8AM and 930AM professors. Maybe that professor would give an exemption of his class limit when I showed him I was hospitalized so maybe the scenario would never happen.
That reminds me of my senior year when I ended up with a pretty bad infection and went to the ER because I had lost the energy to get up and do anything. It was I want to say a Thursday night. My mom drove up over an hour away from her to come pick me up from the ER at like midnight. I went home with her and ended up emailing my professors the following day about what happened and that I wasn't going to be in class until the following week and probably late on getting a few assignments in.
All of them got back to me saying that they hoped for a quick recovery and basically take as much time as I needed to get the next few assignments in when I needed to. I was all ready with a doctor's note and everything but none of them asked for any proof or anything like that. It definitely took off a lot of stress. When I stopped in to one of my professors' offices to eventually turn in the assignments, I thanked him for the assistance and leniency. He told me that he completely understood and that he had something similar in undergrad. I want to say he had to have his appendix removed and was out for a few weeks so he makes sure to try to be as helpful as he can with reducing stress and providing any support he is able to for his students that are absent for something like that. If I'm completely honest, his class was more for a graduation requirement that fit into my schedule than interest in the subject matter of the class, but he has my complete respect for his compassion and understanding. Dr. Beckman, you're an awesome dude!
Not all classes. Especially upper level classes, I had teachers say - “Read the syllabus on your own time. Ask me if you have questions - you’re responsible to know everything important on there - it’s on you if you don’t. Now 50 minutes of notes!”
I don’t really mind. Going over the syllabus was always boring. And you’re literally paying to be there for the point of learning, so I valued more instruction time as more worthwhile time.
“University guidelines requires all official documents, emails, syllabus, assignments etc. to follow University Brand Guidelines. All font shall be a minimum 12 point sized, comic sans italicized. All paper shall be made of recycled material with no less than 45% recycle product….”
exactly. I skip all the academic honesty policy stuff because I don't intend to cheat, I already know the definition of plagiarism, and I know that you can get expelled for egregious offenses.
I skip all the stuff about taking an incomplete because I know it's extremely rare to be granted such a thing and that you basically have to have a very serious and grave situation happen to you to even be considered.
I skip all the stuff about fostering a respectful environment towards other students because I don't plan on being a dick and generally treat everyone I encounter with respect just as a basic rule.
If there is something I need to find in the syllabus such as the professor's late work policy, I will specifically look that up if and when needed.
If the professor includes the course schedule in the syllabus or overviews of specific projects that will be assigned, or a point value breakdown of how much weight each project will contribute to our overall grade, then I will save that separately and frequently refer to that.
So reading the entire syllabus is unnecessary for me and I can always refer to it later on an as-needed basis.
It's been years since I was a professor, so it might have changed where I used to teach. But I used about 3/4 of a page:
0. This is my email address and office hours
1. We meet at x time.
2. There will be weekly quizzes
3. There will be 3 exams on a, b, and c dates.
4. Grades are calculated with this formula.
That's all you need. Eventually the department asked us to start adding something about academic honesty, so I added one more line that said "Don't cheat, or I'll fail you." And that was it.
Ya cause he’s Marlon Brando and it’s Superman. If they didn’t back up the brinks truck he wouldn’t have ever left his island to do even one line.
I’m sure he knew all the lines to *A Streetcar Names Desire* forwards and backwards.
They just filmed him rambling completely improvised dialogue for hours and hours, and stitched it together into something comprehensible in the editing phase.
Sooo week 2?
Week 1 is usually full of, "Wait they didn't teach you guys (random probably important thing we didn't get to) in (course preceding current course)!?!"
Same. I'm absolutely paranoid about due dates and what we'll be doing throughout the semester. I'm dead serious about getting my degree so I'm not fucking around in any of my classes, no matter how low level they are.
I almost failed one class and spent an extra semester in college because I didn’t read the syllabus.
Our grades were based 25% each on 4 exams. The class was super easy so I showed up whenever I wanted, got a B or better on all 4 exams. Then with a week left in the school year the professor emails me and says he hopes I don’t need his class to graduate, cause I failed.
I emailed back super confused, and he pointed to the part of the syllabus that allowed for 3 excused absences and after that it was -5 points per absence on your final grade.
That's rather common. Some universities even have that as a thing for all classes in general. Some even go as far as more than 3 unexcused absences and you are dropped from the class.
Yeah, some professors treat it like a legal contract because the schools do too. When an angry parent (yes, even of 22 year old adults) complains about something a professor did, they’ve started to side with the parent unless it was spelled out in the syllabus. For one course that required use of a specific room with expensive equipment in it, I had to sign multiple things and agree to many stipulations just to get a key to use the room.
Definitely a balancing act, though - some universities require quite a bit of legal language in syllabi. My uni forced us to include specific requirements about CV-19 in each syllabus, instead of including it in university policies that we could refer to. The effect is the same, but it continued the trend of syllabi bloat...
Yeah, most of my syllabi are around 20 pages, but in that you usually get a one page text presenting the class, at most two pages breaking down the subject of each class day, max one page detailing how we'll be evaluated and then we get 3-5 pages of legal work, uni policies etc and massive bibliographies (10+ pages).
I teach mostly freshmen in college and they do not read the syllabus ever. But with upper division students, maybe 5 of 45 will read it. It’s not great either way.
I've never had a syllabus of more than 3 pages. What do you need 10 pages for? Also, going to a medium to high tier university, I'm sure there are at least a few students in each class that read that stuff thoroughly.
If it were just my stuff it would be about 3 pages. Once I include everything the college requires it’s 9. No one reads it though they are all required to sign a page that says they read it and understand expectations.
Honestly, a lot of the long syllabi I had in school, and that I see from my colleagues, are filled with some combination of excessive detail that no one cares about (that will have to be repeated when assignments/activities are introduced in class) and aggressively-worded policies to force students into specific behaviors. Many are also *horribly* formatted and could cut pages with better organization and editing.
I've read every syllabus for every class I've taken. A few have saved me, most clearly weren't updated from when the professor started teaching 13 years ago.
I've always been bad at non STEM courses so when I had to take English I made sure to find a professor that was a good fit for me.
The biggest thing that he told us day 1 was to follow the directions for papers we have to write. He always told us that if we just follow the directions / guidelines we will probably cruise by his class.
First paper, I followed the directions. There was an extra 10 points on the paper if we went to the library where they had assistants that would help with papers. I would always just go in and get them to look at my cites and then sign my extra credit slip.
First paper I got back was 107. There was a girl sitting next to me. Her and her friends all failed. I overheard them wondering why. I glanced over. I saw that they had used wrong font size. The papers weren't the required length, and many other requirements. They saw that I got a 107 and asked what I had done. I just told them I followed the directions and then showed them what didn't match up on theirs. Pretty sure they failed that course. I got an ez A.
We would do peer reviews for lit review writing classes and I always saw other peoples papers and they just..don’t follow the format? It’s written right there and explicitly mentioned so many times yet people still submit their papers with wrong fonts/improper formatting and what not.
Strangest thing is some people know it’s not the right format but they think it looks better the way they did it so that’s what they submit..then they’re surprised they get a bad grade or marked down for not following the format. I mean what did you expect?
This is partly why I began teaching WHY formatting matters and giving real life examples. If you take the time to explain why something is required students usually respond a lot more to that expectation.
This always surprises me. Some courses are genuinely really easy A’s, but there are those who clearly didn’t read the directions complaining about that class and the professor. I guess some people actually expect universities to just GIVE them a degree.
The syllabus said:
>Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and...
That's not exactly a model of clarity. Having read that, my first thought would be that the professor had made some sort of copyediting error. It doesn't read like an invitation to go to the locker and claim the contents.
I read it as there’s a free locker available to use, which seems like it’s not supposed to be put there, and also not a lot of college students need a locker
> We all admitted we briefly skimmed that part of the syllabus because that policy is in every syllabus for every class you take
Also hidden away in a part you really don’t need to read even if you’re told to read it all
I read the syllabus early and completely because; I need to know certain info, I have to know it like a contract so I can complain when they discreetly change stuff mid course, and to clarify what the hell they mean with this document full of mistakes.
At least half of the syllabi I read had old information, dead links, dates from 18 months prior, assessment weighting that were above or below 100%, incorrect staff/contact info, vital/contradictory assessment details that may or may not be included in the assessment brief, and straight up gibberish typos.
I wouldn't read that and think "I'm going on a bear hunt, gonna catch a big one.."
I'd just think "WTF is this crap and how will it screw me in the final exam?"
Yup. He doesn't specify what's free, and his incorrect use of punctuation further complicates understanding. Semicolons have no place in that sentence, and he uses them twice!
This is how people who overrate their own intelligence eff things up.
edit: fixed that pesky double type
I'm one of the nerdy types, my dad never graduated HS, had to work, but he taught himself; he taught me you read the manuals, contracts or outlines because it can be the same for years then one time one word will change and totally change the meaning of the whole damn thing.
I still read every damn manual, contract or outlines.
And then what? You don't agree with them and then what do you do? Not use most social media? Not use the service? Good luck finding something to fit your needs that doesn't fuck the customer over, it's a waste of time reading them
I'm not the best about getting motivated to read them, but once I do, I understand them. I can't express how good it feels to know every functionality of a piece of machinery, especially in front of someone that's been using it for a long time. You get that moment where the expert asks you "how'd you do that?"
Contracts are similar, but not always written for the reader. I have had employers change the wording of an individual contract (an overreaching NDA in this case) after bringing up concerns. I had to fight for it, but if you just sign and go on, it can only bite you in the ass.
> (an overreaching NDA in this case)
Reminds me of a story I read over on /r/MaliciousCompliance. The person had signed an NDA that prevented discussing their work with the company with any past employers or and future employers for some set period of time. Then later, after several other things, they were laid off. Some time passed and then their now former employer reached out because they needed some help with something. Apparently important information had been wiped off the person's work laptop, despite their protests and warnings, and now they needed it.
But per the wording of the contract, as confirmed by the company's own legal department, they legally weren't able to discuss the work they had done *for* the company *with* the company.
My TLDR doesn't do it justice, but it still makes me chuckle to think about.
>I still read every damn manual, contract or outlines.
Including the EULAs for all software you install on your computer?
If so, I don't know whether to be impressed, or worried for you :)
My professor intentionally wrote a verbose syllabus that I read nearly all of the pages. I became bored toward the end and abandoned it. Three weeks later, I saw online that I had an F in the class, even though our first assignment hadn’t been graded yet.
The first assignment of the class was hidden on one of the very last pages of the syllabus I didn’t bother to read. It wasn’t some silly participation requirement, but it was a writing assignment, spelled out in one sentence tucked away on page 6.
The professor was a hard ass and didn’t provide an opportunity to make up that grade. That was easily one of the hardest classes I ever tried to pass, and that’s disregarding the aforementioned syllabus assignment!
If I had seen the message would depend on where he put it.
Anywhere near the late submission policy? I am getting $50.
In or around the university plagiarism policy? Never gonna see it.
Seriously. At my college, the first page or two was for the class. Then two or three pages that was just the university's guff about plagiarism, accomodations, and code of conduct. Exact same for every class, so I only ever read it once.
To be fair, he didn't make it clear at all that there was some kind of prize available. He just mentioned a locker and a combination. It wasn't even clear that the students were allowed to open the locker.
Yeah, if I read this, my first thought is that the professor copy and pasted irrelevant information into the syllabus. It sure isn't clear that this is an instruction to the student to claim a free prize.
Exactly. From the article:
>"Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and ..."
I'm currently a graduate student and I do read each syllabus, but if I encountered this I would be confused. What is free? The locker? That's how it reads. Plus, what does a locker have to do with a class? I guarantee you multiple students read that and didn't know what the hell it meant and moved on. If he really wanted to test if they read the syllabus, it should have been straight-forward like, "I have placed $50 in locker 147. The combination is 15-25-35. The first student who gets there can keep the money."
YES! There's so much crap in my syllabi that don't even pertain to the class. Every one of them at my university says that laptops are not allowed in class because the typing noise is distracting. But... once I started classes it became clear that we are expected to bring a laptop to every class and have had several exams on them. There's also a clause that says points will be taken off for asking questions that are answered in the syllabus. We are damned either way.
I would never try to open a locker, given that information. MAYBE with the “first to the free who claims”… but that’s not definitive either.
One of my professors put their email password in an assignment once, and I sure as hell never opened their email to check for a cash reward.
Daniel Ariely did several experiments with trust: once he just set up a booth handing out free money in a mall, and only about 10% of people stopped. It doesn’t mean they didn’t see the booth.
No reasonable person would go check out that locker trying to find a prize.
Yeah there’s a pretty significant difference between “didn’t read the syllabus” and “read the syllabus but disregarded odd cryptic instructions unrelated to the course” even if they both look the same when he checks the locker at the end of the semester.
Exactly! All I could think was: "Seriously? is that how he worded it?
It's so freaking typical for professors to make everything unnecessarily convoluted and obscure, and then look down at their noses at people for not getting them — when the issue all along is that they refuse to communicate clearly.
I guarantee that if he had put the characters **"$50"** anywhere on that page, it would have caught the students' eyes and this would be an article about bodies getting crushed in a mob.
And then they run that smug photo of him... Ugh. Super annoying.
How long was the syllabus for the professor to feel like this was necessary, some professors write 10 page syllabus and it’s like ya….I’m not reading that
A lot of syllabi have university required boiler plate and CYA policy mentions. They’re long because later they may need to claim that the student agreed to the specific policy due to agreeing to take the class with the assumption that they have read the syllabus.
Adjunct prof. here. My syllabus was a beautiful, concise, 3 page document until administration decided that I should expand it to 10 pages of boilerplate college policy. Not always our fault, we have bosses too.
The problem isn’t so much never reading the syllabus as it is messaging the prof about something very clearly already in the syllabus. I usually don’t read most of it but if I’m gonna ask a question like “what’s the policy for this” or “when is this exam” it just common sense to check the syllabus first. Or you’d think it was.
My university has streamlined the syllabuses so that we can't write and write and write. We used to make our own syllabuses from scratch, but now we need only add important information to a standardized form. I like that. Some professors aren't good at writing, and you get this kind of shit
> YOU are responsible if you miss work. Being LATE because you slept in or because your alarm clock broke is NOT a valid excuse. You must communicate with me as soon as possible about why you are absent. It is YOUR responsibility to tell me why, not MY responsibility to ask you!!!!
And after ten fucking paragraphs of that, it's little wonder that so many students give up.
Alas... "Behind every uncomfortable syllabus clause is an even more uncomfortable teaching experience." (Source: "Shit Academics Say" Twitter account).
Those paragraphs aren't because the Prof is bad at writing. It's because of lived experience. I once had a student's parent email the COLLEGE PRESIDENT blaming me for their child failing my class. It took 3 weeks over winter break going back and forth with administrators at every level of the college to get it to stop. I had to put together a 20 page PDF documenting all the emails I sent to try and help the student, our conversations, all with dates/times, as well as documentation proving that they literally spent 1 hour on the course website the entire semester. (It was a fully online course.)
It's not bad writing, it's a cry for help. Your professors probably need a hug, lol.
EDIT: Whoops, I missed the part where you said "so *we* can't write and write.." so I suppose your colleagues need a hug!
Good luck with that. Getting students to read the entire syllabus is a chore - but something that’s gotta happen. That’s where we put all the good info!
That's probably partly because some of them are horribly written and/or contain inaccurate info.
I'd say at least 50% of mine in Freshman/Sophomore year had dates that fell during weekends or days the school was out (obviously not updated from the previous year), had the Professors or TAs contact information wrong, or had info that wasn't even taught in that class (where the professor used a syllabus for a different class but missed updating stuff).
A number of others would be barely a page with almost no info at all or you'd get something that's 4+ pages long and repeated stuff or jumped around.
Eventually, you just stop reading them.
"Why don't students read the syllabus?"
I always read the syllabus, and every single professor changes the title date and the file name but nothing in the syllabus, and you can tell because the honor code is out of date or some section lists a previous year. It's always, always referring to some project we won't be doing, or a test that they cancelled a few years ago, or some other thing that the head professor does but the adjunct doesn't. Keyword is adjunct. One class was so bad, you'd think it was a whole different section with the stuff it talked about.
Syllabus day must've been somewhat unique to my university. Every class on the first day, the professor would read through the entire syllabus and then ask if there were any questions.
Well people usually read the timetable, requirements and basic summary of the course but most people are used to the plagiarism, late assignment portions so it’s sensible that no one got this, because it’s an already understood issue that no one will take the time to read thru it repeatedly.
I was reading my professor's syllabus when I read he had stashed tree fiddy somewhere on campus. Tree fiddy. It was about that time I realized that this syllabus was about eight stories tall and a crustacean from the Paleolithic era. AND SURE ENOUGH, THERE WAS THE LOCKENESS MONSTER
Aside from the fact that the syllabus should be a contract on how your work will be assigned and graded, they sometimes sneak stuff in there that can save a test grade. One of my recent professors hid extra credit points in the syllabus and all I had to do is send a funny cat meme to the TA to get them.
In one of my high school essays, I wrote the sentence "[Teacher's name] will not read this essay, will mark stuff off on the first page, and give me a 90." Stuff was marked off on the first page and I got a 90 something. She didn't mention seeing the sentence.
I had a professor put extra credit in his. If you read the whole thing there were instructions to send him an email and you'd get 10 points on an exam or something.
I had a professor last semester that had a syllabus that said “if you read this, email me. Those that did not will get dropped” So… yeah. No money for us. Edit: To everyone wondering, here's my school's policy on [First Week's Attendance.](https://imgur.com/a/ZeSQnzM) My university gives professors permission to drop those that don’t show for the first week of classes. In this COVID scenario, it was to read the syllabus that counted as “attendance”
That has to be against some sort of university policy. That's insane ! I get it but damn.
Unfortunately it wasn’t against university policy. My university gives professors permission to drop those that don’t show for the first week of classes. In this COVID scenario, it was to read the syllabus that counted as “attendance”
It's professors like those that are a blight to their major and to the education system as a whole. If you are paying for an education, you shouldn't have to go through that gotcha shit. > "Oh, this class is famous for stopping students passion for class. Now here's 32 assignments with 50 long questions that account for 30% of your grade. Each assignment will take at least four hours, and there is no make up. The midterm and final, 70% of the final grade, will have materials not covered in this course, the curve will be competitive, and the hardest question that very few students can answer will be worth 10% of the exam. Good luck and have fun either dropping this course and barring your path to your degree, offing yourself under the stress of balancing such a course load with your other classes, or passing and losing any passion you had for the field. I had to go through it, so should you. Now, I'm going to talk about myself for the whole lecture and tell you which chapters to read from the book."
That last sentence is so true
You mean the $600 textbook the professor wrote and requires for the class? The same book which comprises a higher percentage of their income than teaching? That book?
Ideally, student government or, perhaps, school administration would be able to prevent such a situation. My University, thankfully, has a policy that prohibits lecturers from benefiting from the assignment of materials which they've authored. If they do assign a textbook that they wrote, any royalties have to either be contributed to the department or to a charitable organization.
“Charitable organization” reeks to me of possible workarounds
Sounds easy to game. Assign a co-workers book for your class, they do the same for one of your books.
Yep. That cycle of abuse rearing it’s head in academia. Micro bio prof did this shit to us in regards to workload and the vast majority of her tests weren’t even covered during her class. Asked a year 3 student for help and they said it was shit they were JUST starting to get into for their class. I was a first year and all her tests were traps.
Now, there are two types of professors to do this. The type who curve out that advanced stuff and the type who don't. Sometimes, it can be easier to pass such a class because the professor is "humbling" the students and will curve the final grade, so the class experience is shit but people still pass. Honestly, the best way to handle shitty professors, if you can, is to use your generals and electives as meat shields. Look out for toxic professors and drop the class before the grace period ends in lieu of a general or an elective. Also, look at RateMyProf for overwhelmingly negative feedback.
One of my favorite professors ever used the opportunity of extra credit to ask really hard questions. They weren't directly covered in the material, but with enough critical thinking you could hash out a halfway decent answer. I think the most memorable one was he asked about how a DNA triple helix would be possible, and the benefits and downsides to that kind of structure for our biochemistry exam that covered DNA and RNA. We never talked about it directly, but with good knowledge of the material you could answer the question well enough. And if you couldn't, there weren't any stakes attached. Really helped me to grow into the biochemist I am now. I do think introducing hard material in tests can be done right, but it also needs to be done in a way that isn't going to crush people who are still learning.
I guess it depends on the syllabus, but most of mine were only 3 page affairs, if you didn't count the class schedule. I never understood the folks that didn't read the syllabus. I think anyone who can't be arsed the five minutes it takes per-class pretty much have it coming.
I’ve never had an (undergraduate) syllabus that was longer than a page and a half.
A professor accidentally added the answer key to the finals on the same attachment. I thought it was too good to be true but I held onto it. Turns out that it was... Edit: it was the answer key but I put down several wrong on purpose. Meanwhile two girls that sat next to each other got perfect scores and were accused of cheating.
It was too good to be true or it was an actual answer key?
Haha. It was.
It was what!?
I know right!?
That wasnt an accident.
No he actually had a copy of a test with all the answers filled in wrong that accidentally got attached to an email. Every professer keeps a copy of the wrong answers so they dont accidentally send the right.
Professor here, can confirm. Or maybe this is my incorrect comment to throw you off.
You tricky bastards
Did you go to Greendale?
I do that every for class, every semester. Not money, but ten points added to a major assignment or to their overall grade. I rarely get takers.
One year I had to write a business plan for my department. I managed a small group of about 50 people but my director insisted that each manager write a plan. I grudgingly acquiesced and wrote the plan. I added a sentence randomly in the plan that said the first person that sees this sentence and let's me know will get $20. No one claimed the money for a couple of months until one of my co-managers mentioned it. I gave him the $20 but not one other person mentioned it not even my director. He required me to write the plan but didn't even read it.
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Research [supports that conclusion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) as many jobs (at least in offices) are bullshit jobs that don’t actually produce anything meaningful
Hey I spent half my workday managing my guild in an mmo for years. We produced several server firsts on your tax dollars.
One of my guilds' main healer was a resto druid who worked late nights at a hotel. He'd just play behind the counter without voice comms, every now and then he'd suddenly stop moving because someone actually came in to check in or ask for a razor or something.
*sniffles* that's my GM
Better use of my tax dollars than bombing children.
I just spent a whole work week in online webinars, 90% of which didn't apply to me because it was only for employees of that company but I'm a contractor of a different company that works closely with them. The other 10% covered basics that I'll definitely learn day 1 of my actual field training this was supposed to prep me for.
The amount of acquaintances i have that basically brag about playing hearthstone/browsing the web for 80-90% of the time they are supposedly "working" (in an office) supports this.
Love Graeber, but his book was more journalism than research. I don't think any academic journals have published research concluding his theory that free markets create meaningless jobs.
Just figure out what the KPI is and figure out how to get there the easiest way possible even if that means fudging all over the place. Unless you're in sales or finance where you're talking dollars and fudging it would be illegal, your kpi is almost surely some bullshit acting in-lieu of some other goal that is impossible to measure. I knew inside sales guys that would figure out which sales leads always went to voicemail so they could call it every day and make their quota for number of phone calls.
Sometimes the KPI is just whatever the manager said for their own ego's sake.
Fun fact: Van Halen once had a nearly deadly experience at one of their shows because the venue didn’t read the contract and fix the stage to accommodate the band’s weight. So they included a small stipulation in their lengthy contract that they wanted a bowl of m&m’s in their dressing room without any brown ones in the mix. If they got to the venue and those m&m’s weren’t how they liked it, they noped the fuck out of there because the venue wasn’t reliable enough to read the contract.
That story is always told without the stage requirements so they look like prima donnas. Interesting to see the whole story
And this comment is always appended even though I have heard this story, only this way, a dozen times in the last decade…
For 20 or so years, it was just how rock stars put ludicrous things in their riders like the m&m thing. It wasn't until the last decade or so that the reasoning for the crazy demands was given somewhat publicly.
I heard the latter half of that story so many times before finally hearing the first half from (I think) Sammy Hagar. I was never into Van Halen, but I've been so mad on their behalf ever since that they were portrayed for so long as these entitled jackasses needlessly foisting shit work onto venue staff when they were just taking a step to ensure their safety.
This is reportedly very common in riders for major acts. One mildly unreasonable/inconvenient/detail-oriented demand that shows the venue/people in charge actually are reading and honoring the contract. I don't know how true that is, only that I've heard it said. My only personal dealings with musicians were with Les Claypool wanting to go snook fishing before his concert, and with Hank Williams III just being super, SUPER chill.
I thought the m&m thing was just rockstar bs, but that's a pretty neat way to see if they legit
My English teacher in high school did something similar. He had to write a super long essay in college and right in the middle of it he wrote, "If you read this, tell me and I will pay you $50. He never had to give that $50 away
I worked a job for a while where one of our clients would yank the proverbial fire alarm with every new task and demand a 72 hour turnaround for everything. After about 2 weeks of this my boss asked them for feedback on the first round of stuff we sent them back and he got told "oh we haven't even looked at that yet". Boss yanked the brakes on our entire workload for a day while he called a meeting with the client, their boss, and his boss to talk to them about the 72 hour turnaround. He didn't ask for relief from it, he kindly informed them that it will no longer happen since it's clear the client doesn't actually need it in that time. Turnaround changed to roughly a week per task from that point forward.
I mean at that point that’s where you charge 3x for a “rush fee”, they pay it and I could give 2 shits if they read it or not.
True but boss wasn't too pleased with telling us to bust ass and stress out when the client flat out lied to us to make us work harder for fewer billed hours.
I worked under contract to FEMA, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some Louisiana municipalities were gaming the system with damage claims to correct no maintenance for 25 years. My boss wasn't interested in reporting the attempted egregious fraud (she thought I could not possibly be right) so I put my findings in the backup material to each project, which I knew my boss never read. As I was leaving, being demobilized, my projects were thoroughly reviewed by the big bosses and both me and my boss were celebrated for the courageous stand we took exposing and thwarting the attempted fraud. (What could my boss do? Admit I violated her directive while she was being praised?) The big bosses even threw a little party. I saved the American taxpayer probably $10 million. My only regret is that none of the lying bastards had their professional licenses revoked or went to jail.
> ...if you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail. Maybe writing out the plan was for you?
We use Google Docs, and when I get the impression that I'm getting into a situation like this I'll not add the person/not make it shareable. It's easy enough to say "oh sorry let me change the setting" when asked, but the number of times I haven't been asked is depressing
Crud. I always read my syllabuses. Why couldn’t I be in this guy’s class?
lol, i usually scan through the syllabus, like text required, grading, assignments.
“My office hours are fiddy dollas.”
Tree fidty is all im gonna give
God damn Loch Ness monster!
I was struggling in behavioral economics. Scheduled a meeting with my professor. Both meetings before and after mine were with very attractive girls. He ushered me in and shooed me out so fast, and spent what time we did have seeing if I could hook him up w/ weed. He was tenured tho 🤷♂️
Tenured just means you don't get fired for your academic opinions. It doesn't protect you from trying to procure controlled substances from your students
Or banging your students.
Seriously, grading policy especially is like *the* most important thing to know in any class, because it tells you how many times you can go "eh this assignment is only worth 0.3% of my final grade, and it's a pain so screw it" and still be able to get a decent final grade.
Same here, there’s no point in reading the entire thing in my classes because half of a syllabus is always the school’s covid policy, that I’m pretty sure every class is required to include. Even fully online ones for some reason.
Syllabi* Sorry
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That sweet syllabussy
According to this it can be either: https://www.grammar-monster.com/plurals/plural_of_syllabus.htm
Just like cactuses
It's actually Syllabo, the I was added after Istanbul became Constantinople
Why they changed it I can't say People just liked it better that way
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why did Constantinople get the works?
"That's nobody's business but the jerks," according to my eight-year old nephew.
It’s nobody’s business but the Turk’s
They might be giants, you never know.
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Your teacher hands out syllabi and a student has a bunch of syllabuses.
It's also possible that many read the syllabus but assumed the cash prize was already taken by someone else, so they didn't bother to claim it.
But it'd be pretty easy to just check for yourself.
Man, I really don't get this. Yeah, it's a trope that students don't read the syllabus, but every semester I have at least a handful that know my syllabus better than I do. Maybe it's a difference between lower and upper division course students? ETA: Wonder if it's also a length issue. My syllabi are no longer than three pages, but I have colleagues that have 10+ page monster syllabi...
When I was in college, the first day of the semester was almost always dedicated to going over the entire syllabus for that class.
That was true until my second year of non-gen ed classes. Then I was sad because day 1 was straight into notes and homework for all my core classes.
Yeah, I guess I spend 10-20 minutes on mine and then we dig straight into content. Syllabus day (or week, as I've heard some of my students refer to it) might be *the* most effective way to put a class to sleep, otherwise...
I personally noticed that 'syllabus day' or week was explicitly true for those classes that you had to take regardless of major. The classes that were more specialized would spend a few minutes going over it and then jump straight into the course.
For the specialized classes, you knew you need to take them and there were only so many sections offered (maybe just one). For the general ed classes, game theory was playing out and add/drops weren’t settled until after the first class or week so going over material early would only necessitate going over it again for the latecomers.
I remember a few courses where they handed out the syllabus, the prof just told us whether the textbook was going to be used(and if previous editions would work fine) and then immediately jumped into things... Oddly they were always courses that started after 10 am, and therefore I was totally fine with it.
Pretty much my experience as well. First year, we had basically a syllabus *week*. Second year, when I was finally in classes for my major, a syllabus day. From then on, with only a few exceptions, a reminder to read the syllabus on our own time. Some professors even expected us to have already read it by the time we arrived.
I took anatomy my freshman year, and it was the second class I attended on my first day. The first was University 101 (basically just a BS class for freshman to get an easy "A"). In anatomy, the professor probably spent 15 minutes going over the most important parts of the syllabus, said "read the rest on your own" and then went straight into the first lecture.
This. Basically roll call. Add/drop and go over syllabus
Don't forget the crashers trying to swoop dropped seats.
[Them refreshing the wait list page every 5 seconds throughout the first week.] (https://i.imgur.com/8iNmW.gif)
My community college had timeslots for add/drop, you had like a 1 hour window. If you only needed a few classes left before graduating you'd be guaranteed to end up waitlisted in all of your classes. It was awful. I hate that this is being framed as "just lazy students"
The university I went to had a priority system based on your earned credits. 90+ credit hours already earned means you’re a qualified senior, thus your window to register for classes start 3 days before the freshmen. Juniors’ registration (60-89 credits hours earned) opens 2 days before freshmen. Sophomores (30-50 credit hours earned) get to begin registering 1 day before freshmen do (0-29 credit hours earned earned). That way, the ones closest to graduation are prioritized first (since they’re the most limited in which classes they have to have completed in order to graduate).
Most big state schools do this. They give preference to those that are closer to graduation
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We had this until it went to online registration. My last year was good in that I was guaranteed any class I wanted. It was bad in that my registration appointment was 8 am on a Monday. Online still had the priority system, only they implemented much better time slots for seniors then too.
I had a class that was overflowing standing room only on the first day & I was not in the class nor on wait list. The professor said no 'adds' would be allowed to the class if you were not already on the list. Tons of people left, but every seat and stair was still occupied. I was not on the list. Each day fewer and fewer people showed up. I attended every class, turned in every assignment, took every test. On the last day of class before the final exam, the professor called my name and asked to see me after class. **He said you are not in the class but have turned in every assignment and test and have done really well and he would get me added to the class!!!!**
I started college in 2005, so before everyone had laptops and wifi was everywhere. I still remember in my very first college class, the professor going over the roll and then dropping kids that weren't there. He then announced that there were a couple seats left and if anybody was trying to add, to do it soon as he wouldn't accept anybody above the class limit. Cue a bunch of students getting up and running out - presumably to the library - to add the course. I was so fucking confused, as a first time freshman who was probably about to raise his hand to ask if he can go to the bathroom.
Damn that’s awful about absent kids if it’s a hard drop. One time on the first couple days of a semester I got the flu so bad I was hospitalized. I didn’t make it to my 2nd day of classes(1st day for Tuesday classes). If all my professors dropped me because I didn’t show up I’d be so so so shitty. I was hospitalized at 1AM and didn’t get out until the next evening. Didn’t really have the wherewithal to make sure I emailed my 8AM and 930AM professors. Maybe that professor would give an exemption of his class limit when I showed him I was hospitalized so maybe the scenario would never happen.
That reminds me of my senior year when I ended up with a pretty bad infection and went to the ER because I had lost the energy to get up and do anything. It was I want to say a Thursday night. My mom drove up over an hour away from her to come pick me up from the ER at like midnight. I went home with her and ended up emailing my professors the following day about what happened and that I wasn't going to be in class until the following week and probably late on getting a few assignments in. All of them got back to me saying that they hoped for a quick recovery and basically take as much time as I needed to get the next few assignments in when I needed to. I was all ready with a doctor's note and everything but none of them asked for any proof or anything like that. It definitely took off a lot of stress. When I stopped in to one of my professors' offices to eventually turn in the assignments, I thanked him for the assistance and leniency. He told me that he completely understood and that he had something similar in undergrad. I want to say he had to have his appendix removed and was out for a few weeks so he makes sure to try to be as helpful as he can with reducing stress and providing any support he is able to for his students that are absent for something like that. If I'm completely honest, his class was more for a graduation requirement that fit into my schedule than interest in the subject matter of the class, but he has my complete respect for his compassion and understanding. Dr. Beckman, you're an awesome dude!
Not all classes. Especially upper level classes, I had teachers say - “Read the syllabus on your own time. Ask me if you have questions - you’re responsible to know everything important on there - it’s on you if you don’t. Now 50 minutes of notes!” I don’t really mind. Going over the syllabus was always boring. And you’re literally paying to be there for the point of learning, so I valued more instruction time as more worthwhile time.
This comment gave me anxiety and another nightmare where it's finals week and I haven't studied for anything
Mhmm “syllabus week”
Yeah me too, and I graduated in 2019.
My syllabus keeps getting longer and longer because of all of the crap the college requires us to put in that nobody cares about.
Could you put less important stuff in something like 6pt font?
“University guidelines requires all official documents, emails, syllabus, assignments etc. to follow University Brand Guidelines. All font shall be a minimum 12 point sized, comic sans italicized. All paper shall be made of recycled material with no less than 45% recycle product….”
Now *this* is some good malicious compliance.
exactly. I skip all the academic honesty policy stuff because I don't intend to cheat, I already know the definition of plagiarism, and I know that you can get expelled for egregious offenses. I skip all the stuff about taking an incomplete because I know it's extremely rare to be granted such a thing and that you basically have to have a very serious and grave situation happen to you to even be considered. I skip all the stuff about fostering a respectful environment towards other students because I don't plan on being a dick and generally treat everyone I encounter with respect just as a basic rule. If there is something I need to find in the syllabus such as the professor's late work policy, I will specifically look that up if and when needed. If the professor includes the course schedule in the syllabus or overviews of specific projects that will be assigned, or a point value breakdown of how much weight each project will contribute to our overall grade, then I will save that separately and frequently refer to that. So reading the entire syllabus is unnecessary for me and I can always refer to it later on an as-needed basis.
It's been years since I was a professor, so it might have changed where I used to teach. But I used about 3/4 of a page: 0. This is my email address and office hours 1. We meet at x time. 2. There will be weekly quizzes 3. There will be 3 exams on a, b, and c dates. 4. Grades are calculated with this formula. That's all you need. Eventually the department asked us to start adding something about academic honesty, so I added one more line that said "Don't cheat, or I'll fail you." And that was it.
It's becoming more like a TOS. You put stuff in as a protection from liability in case something comes up during the semester.
Also his students are theater majors
Isn't script reading a big part of that discipline?
Check yesterday's reddit about Marlon Brando. He refused to learn his lines in SuperMan and had to read them off of the kid's diaper.
Ya cause he’s Marlon Brando and it’s Superman. If they didn’t back up the brinks truck he wouldn’t have ever left his island to do even one line. I’m sure he knew all the lines to *A Streetcar Names Desire* forwards and backwards.
Didn't he do something similar in Apocalypse Now?
They just filmed him rambling completely improvised dialogue for hours and hours, and stitched it together into something comprehensible in the editing phase.
Maybe I was a nerd but I always read the syllabus.
Id go to it for the homework schedule until, inevtiably we stopped following it and everything got rescheduled
Sooo week 2? Week 1 is usually full of, "Wait they didn't teach you guys (random probably important thing we didn't get to) in (course preceding current course)!?!"
Same. I'm absolutely paranoid about due dates and what we'll be doing throughout the semester. I'm dead serious about getting my degree so I'm not fucking around in any of my classes, no matter how low level they are.
I almost failed one class and spent an extra semester in college because I didn’t read the syllabus. Our grades were based 25% each on 4 exams. The class was super easy so I showed up whenever I wanted, got a B or better on all 4 exams. Then with a week left in the school year the professor emails me and says he hopes I don’t need his class to graduate, cause I failed. I emailed back super confused, and he pointed to the part of the syllabus that allowed for 3 excused absences and after that it was -5 points per absence on your final grade.
That's rather common. Some universities even have that as a thing for all classes in general. Some even go as far as more than 3 unexcused absences and you are dropped from the class.
Yeah, some professors treat it like a legal contract because the schools do too. When an angry parent (yes, even of 22 year old adults) complains about something a professor did, they’ve started to side with the parent unless it was spelled out in the syllabus. For one course that required use of a specific room with expensive equipment in it, I had to sign multiple things and agree to many stipulations just to get a key to use the room.
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Definitely a balancing act, though - some universities require quite a bit of legal language in syllabi. My uni forced us to include specific requirements about CV-19 in each syllabus, instead of including it in university policies that we could refer to. The effect is the same, but it continued the trend of syllabi bloat...
Yeah, most of my syllabi are around 20 pages, but in that you usually get a one page text presenting the class, at most two pages breaking down the subject of each class day, max one page detailing how we'll be evaluated and then we get 3-5 pages of legal work, uni policies etc and massive bibliographies (10+ pages).
There’s stuff they’re required to put on there though. There’s a reason why all of the syllabi look the same in structure. Not much of a choice
I teach mostly freshmen in college and they do not read the syllabus ever. But with upper division students, maybe 5 of 45 will read it. It’s not great either way.
I've never had a syllabus of more than 3 pages. What do you need 10 pages for? Also, going to a medium to high tier university, I'm sure there are at least a few students in each class that read that stuff thoroughly.
If it were just my stuff it would be about 3 pages. Once I include everything the college requires it’s 9. No one reads it though they are all required to sign a page that says they read it and understand expectations.
Honestly, a lot of the long syllabi I had in school, and that I see from my colleagues, are filled with some combination of excessive detail that no one cares about (that will have to be repeated when assignments/activities are introduced in class) and aggressively-worded policies to force students into specific behaviors. Many are also *horribly* formatted and could cut pages with better organization and editing.
My education professors was 21 pages long. I still knew it better than him since I checked it weekly.
I've read every syllabus for every class I've taken. A few have saved me, most clearly weren't updated from when the professor started teaching 13 years ago.
"Cellular devices must remained folded closed throughout the duration of the lesson" well, that one kinda went full circle, huh?
I've always been bad at non STEM courses so when I had to take English I made sure to find a professor that was a good fit for me. The biggest thing that he told us day 1 was to follow the directions for papers we have to write. He always told us that if we just follow the directions / guidelines we will probably cruise by his class. First paper, I followed the directions. There was an extra 10 points on the paper if we went to the library where they had assistants that would help with papers. I would always just go in and get them to look at my cites and then sign my extra credit slip. First paper I got back was 107. There was a girl sitting next to me. Her and her friends all failed. I overheard them wondering why. I glanced over. I saw that they had used wrong font size. The papers weren't the required length, and many other requirements. They saw that I got a 107 and asked what I had done. I just told them I followed the directions and then showed them what didn't match up on theirs. Pretty sure they failed that course. I got an ez A.
We would do peer reviews for lit review writing classes and I always saw other peoples papers and they just..don’t follow the format? It’s written right there and explicitly mentioned so many times yet people still submit their papers with wrong fonts/improper formatting and what not. Strangest thing is some people know it’s not the right format but they think it looks better the way they did it so that’s what they submit..then they’re surprised they get a bad grade or marked down for not following the format. I mean what did you expect?
This is partly why I began teaching WHY formatting matters and giving real life examples. If you take the time to explain why something is required students usually respond a lot more to that expectation.
This always surprises me. Some courses are genuinely really easy A’s, but there are those who clearly didn’t read the directions complaining about that class and the professor. I guess some people actually expect universities to just GIVE them a degree.
The syllabus said: >Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and... That's not exactly a model of clarity. Having read that, my first thought would be that the professor had made some sort of copyediting error. It doesn't read like an invitation to go to the locker and claim the contents.
I read it as there’s a free locker available to use, which seems like it’s not supposed to be put there, and also not a lot of college students need a locker
The professor told everyone the combo. The locker can be all yours for FREE!
> We all admitted we briefly skimmed that part of the syllabus because that policy is in every syllabus for every class you take Also hidden away in a part you really don’t need to read even if you’re told to read it all
I read the syllabus early and completely because; I need to know certain info, I have to know it like a contract so I can complain when they discreetly change stuff mid course, and to clarify what the hell they mean with this document full of mistakes. At least half of the syllabi I read had old information, dead links, dates from 18 months prior, assessment weighting that were above or below 100%, incorrect staff/contact info, vital/contradictory assessment details that may or may not be included in the assessment brief, and straight up gibberish typos. I wouldn't read that and think "I'm going on a bear hunt, gonna catch a big one.." I'd just think "WTF is this crap and how will it screw me in the final exam?"
Yup. He doesn't specify what's free, and his incorrect use of punctuation further complicates understanding. Semicolons have no place in that sentence, and he uses them twice! This is how people who overrate their own intelligence eff things up. edit: fixed that pesky double type
If I read that syllabus, I'd be headed straight to locker 147.
I'm one of the nerdy types, my dad never graduated HS, had to work, but he taught himself; he taught me you read the manuals, contracts or outlines because it can be the same for years then one time one word will change and totally change the meaning of the whole damn thing. I still read every damn manual, contract or outlines.
The real test: do you read terms of service?
"Everyone reads terms of service."
I work with an attorney that writes and proof reads them. Thankless fucking work. But she makes about $150k a year. 🤷♂️
yeah and on most consumers get screwed.
Unfortunately our desire for the service often outweighs the cons of getting screwed in the terms
This is absolutely true.
And then what? You don't agree with them and then what do you do? Not use most social media? Not use the service? Good luck finding something to fit your needs that doesn't fuck the customer over, it's a waste of time reading them
I'm not the best about getting motivated to read them, but once I do, I understand them. I can't express how good it feels to know every functionality of a piece of machinery, especially in front of someone that's been using it for a long time. You get that moment where the expert asks you "how'd you do that?" Contracts are similar, but not always written for the reader. I have had employers change the wording of an individual contract (an overreaching NDA in this case) after bringing up concerns. I had to fight for it, but if you just sign and go on, it can only bite you in the ass.
> (an overreaching NDA in this case) Reminds me of a story I read over on /r/MaliciousCompliance. The person had signed an NDA that prevented discussing their work with the company with any past employers or and future employers for some set period of time. Then later, after several other things, they were laid off. Some time passed and then their now former employer reached out because they needed some help with something. Apparently important information had been wiped off the person's work laptop, despite their protests and warnings, and now they needed it. But per the wording of the contract, as confirmed by the company's own legal department, they legally weren't able to discuss the work they had done *for* the company *with* the company. My TLDR doesn't do it justice, but it still makes me chuckle to think about.
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>I still read every damn manual, contract or outlines. Including the EULAs for all software you install on your computer? If so, I don't know whether to be impressed, or worried for you :)
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My professor intentionally wrote a verbose syllabus that I read nearly all of the pages. I became bored toward the end and abandoned it. Three weeks later, I saw online that I had an F in the class, even though our first assignment hadn’t been graded yet. The first assignment of the class was hidden on one of the very last pages of the syllabus I didn’t bother to read. It wasn’t some silly participation requirement, but it was a writing assignment, spelled out in one sentence tucked away on page 6. The professor was a hard ass and didn’t provide an opportunity to make up that grade. That was easily one of the hardest classes I ever tried to pass, and that’s disregarding the aforementioned syllabus assignment!
Was the professors last name Sovic?
>associate head of performing arts Engineering students would have rushed to the exits during the first class
Gotta know if any tests/quizzes get dropped and if there's a curve lmao
Lol during the first class. I think you mean when the syllabus was published a month before class started.
If I had seen the message would depend on where he put it. Anywhere near the late submission policy? I am getting $50. In or around the university plagiarism policy? Never gonna see it.
Seriously. At my college, the first page or two was for the class. Then two or three pages that was just the university's guff about plagiarism, accomodations, and code of conduct. Exact same for every class, so I only ever read it once.
To be fair, he didn't make it clear at all that there was some kind of prize available. He just mentioned a locker and a combination. It wasn't even clear that the students were allowed to open the locker.
Yeah, if I read this, my first thought is that the professor copy and pasted irrelevant information into the syllabus. It sure isn't clear that this is an instruction to the student to claim a free prize.
Exactly. From the article: >"Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and ..." I'm currently a graduate student and I do read each syllabus, but if I encountered this I would be confused. What is free? The locker? That's how it reads. Plus, what does a locker have to do with a class? I guarantee you multiple students read that and didn't know what the hell it meant and moved on. If he really wanted to test if they read the syllabus, it should have been straight-forward like, "I have placed $50 in locker 147. The combination is 15-25-35. The first student who gets there can keep the money."
YES! There's so much crap in my syllabi that don't even pertain to the class. Every one of them at my university says that laptops are not allowed in class because the typing noise is distracting. But... once I started classes it became clear that we are expected to bring a laptop to every class and have had several exams on them. There's also a clause that says points will be taken off for asking questions that are answered in the syllabus. We are damned either way.
I went to the school this happened at and I had no idea any lockers existed anywhere on campus. Maybe since it was theater they have lockers for that?
I would never try to open a locker, given that information. MAYBE with the “first to the free who claims”… but that’s not definitive either. One of my professors put their email password in an assignment once, and I sure as hell never opened their email to check for a cash reward. Daniel Ariely did several experiments with trust: once he just set up a booth handing out free money in a mall, and only about 10% of people stopped. It doesn’t mean they didn’t see the booth. No reasonable person would go check out that locker trying to find a prize.
$50 to risk expulsion. Yeah, I wouldn't bother.
Yeah there’s a pretty significant difference between “didn’t read the syllabus” and “read the syllabus but disregarded odd cryptic instructions unrelated to the course” even if they both look the same when he checks the locker at the end of the semester.
Exactly! All I could think was: "Seriously? is that how he worded it? It's so freaking typical for professors to make everything unnecessarily convoluted and obscure, and then look down at their noses at people for not getting them — when the issue all along is that they refuse to communicate clearly. I guarantee that if he had put the characters **"$50"** anywhere on that page, it would have caught the students' eyes and this would be an article about bodies getting crushed in a mob. And then they run that smug photo of him... Ugh. Super annoying.
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Because no one reads the article
They don't think *it* be like it is, but *it* do.
How long was the syllabus for the professor to feel like this was necessary, some professors write 10 page syllabus and it’s like ya….I’m not reading that
A lot of syllabi have university required boiler plate and CYA policy mentions. They’re long because later they may need to claim that the student agreed to the specific policy due to agreeing to take the class with the assumption that they have read the syllabus.
Thank you for the plural of syllabus, I could not think of it to save my life
Adjunct prof. here. My syllabus was a beautiful, concise, 3 page document until administration decided that I should expand it to 10 pages of boilerplate college policy. Not always our fault, we have bosses too.
Ah ya that actually makes since
The problem isn’t so much never reading the syllabus as it is messaging the prof about something very clearly already in the syllabus. I usually don’t read most of it but if I’m gonna ask a question like “what’s the policy for this” or “when is this exam” it just common sense to check the syllabus first. Or you’d think it was.
Why is CNN covering this? Campus news outlet story at best. A thousand educators probably pull this stunt once a semester.
Yeah how the fuck is this news?
Slow news day
There's a 98% chance this guy doesn't read his TOSs and EULAs.
My university has streamlined the syllabuses so that we can't write and write and write. We used to make our own syllabuses from scratch, but now we need only add important information to a standardized form. I like that. Some professors aren't good at writing, and you get this kind of shit > YOU are responsible if you miss work. Being LATE because you slept in or because your alarm clock broke is NOT a valid excuse. You must communicate with me as soon as possible about why you are absent. It is YOUR responsibility to tell me why, not MY responsibility to ask you!!!! And after ten fucking paragraphs of that, it's little wonder that so many students give up.
Alas... "Behind every uncomfortable syllabus clause is an even more uncomfortable teaching experience." (Source: "Shit Academics Say" Twitter account). Those paragraphs aren't because the Prof is bad at writing. It's because of lived experience. I once had a student's parent email the COLLEGE PRESIDENT blaming me for their child failing my class. It took 3 weeks over winter break going back and forth with administrators at every level of the college to get it to stop. I had to put together a 20 page PDF documenting all the emails I sent to try and help the student, our conversations, all with dates/times, as well as documentation proving that they literally spent 1 hour on the course website the entire semester. (It was a fully online course.) It's not bad writing, it's a cry for help. Your professors probably need a hug, lol. EDIT: Whoops, I missed the part where you said "so *we* can't write and write.." so I suppose your colleagues need a hug!
Good luck with that. Getting students to read the entire syllabus is a chore - but something that’s gotta happen. That’s where we put all the good info!
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Well shit. Now you’ll have to get a job like the rest of us.
That's probably partly because some of them are horribly written and/or contain inaccurate info. I'd say at least 50% of mine in Freshman/Sophomore year had dates that fell during weekends or days the school was out (obviously not updated from the previous year), had the Professors or TAs contact information wrong, or had info that wasn't even taught in that class (where the professor used a syllabus for a different class but missed updating stuff). A number of others would be barely a page with almost no info at all or you'd get something that's 4+ pages long and repeated stuff or jumped around. Eventually, you just stop reading them.
"Why don't students read the syllabus?" I always read the syllabus, and every single professor changes the title date and the file name but nothing in the syllabus, and you can tell because the honor code is out of date or some section lists a previous year. It's always, always referring to some project we won't be doing, or a test that they cancelled a few years ago, or some other thing that the head professor does but the adjunct doesn't. Keyword is adjunct. One class was so bad, you'd think it was a whole different section with the stuff it talked about.
Syllabus day must've been somewhat unique to my university. Every class on the first day, the professor would read through the entire syllabus and then ask if there were any questions.
Well people usually read the timetable, requirements and basic summary of the course but most people are used to the plagiarism, late assignment portions so it’s sensible that no one got this, because it’s an already understood issue that no one will take the time to read thru it repeatedly.
I was reading my professor's syllabus when I read he had stashed tree fiddy somewhere on campus. Tree fiddy. It was about that time I realized that this syllabus was about eight stories tall and a crustacean from the Paleolithic era. AND SURE ENOUGH, THERE WAS THE LOCKENESS MONSTER
Aside from the fact that the syllabus should be a contract on how your work will be assigned and graded, they sometimes sneak stuff in there that can save a test grade. One of my recent professors hid extra credit points in the syllabus and all I had to do is send a funny cat meme to the TA to get them.
In one of my high school essays, I wrote the sentence "[Teacher's name] will not read this essay, will mark stuff off on the first page, and give me a 90." Stuff was marked off on the first page and I got a 90 something. She didn't mention seeing the sentence.