Ruin My Week
At the end of a college semester your professor gives you a grade as a rating of your work. For better or worse a site called RateMyProfessors.com exists that allows students to strike back, reviewing their professors and either praising or lambasting them for their performance.
Though the ratings are meant for other students, as you would expect professors who wants to improve their craft or simply have a morbid curiosity about what their students really think about them often read those reviews. And since the reviews are left anonymously people don’t hold back.
A recent post on Reddit challenged academics everywhere to admit whether they check RateMyProfessors and to share the funniest reviews they’ve received from students.
Here are some of the best, worst, and most bizarre ratings professors have received, according to the professors themselves.
1.
A bunch of students criticized me for using a fake British accent and trying to morph it back to an American accent too soon
2.
There have been some fun ones, however this one from back in early 2000s always stuck out to me:
I hope you get the bird flu and die. However, before you die, you understand that you gave it to your wife and family and they all die. And then you die with the knowledge that you killed them.
3.
4.
It’s two words long: “The devil.”
Twice. I got that twice. Either two students left it, or one wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. Either way, I whooped out loud and showed all my friends.
(Understand, most of my scores are positive, and I do care about what my students think and doing right by them. But that just hit me funny: “The devil.“)
5.
My uncle is a professor and he got into a dispute with a student a couple of semesters ago. My uncle caught the kid cheating red-handed because my uncle could see that the kid was on the class webpage during an exam, and then he looked at the kid and saw him clearly trying to be sneaky with his phone. So the kid got into all the trouble universities have in store for cheaters. But then the kid accused my uncle of being racist, that he’s only being accused of cheating because he is Asian. My uncle has all of the proof needed to show that this claim was bullshit, and the kid got punished appropriately.
A few weeks later my uncle checked RMP and there were several reviews (all with similar-sounding language) accusing him of being a racist. He contacted RMP and explained the situation and they all got taken down. Then a few weeks later a bunch of (again, similarly-worded) reviews came up saying that my uncle is too old to be a professor (I think he was 47 when this all happened). He had those taken down too, but he tells his students that story before every exam and now students will post “definitely not too old to be a professor :-)” and stuff like that on his RMP page, because he’s actually a good professor and people really like him.
6.
My dad was a prof, and he was upset to read one review on RateMyProfessor that said, “He might look like Santa, but he sure ain’t jolly!” He was annoyed that they thought he looked old.
7.
One of my fav uncles is a professor at a local state college that’s pretty fancy. So my aunt and I looked it up. Pm everyone loves his class, clear expectations, clear explaining, but one person said they were worried about his teeth cause of how much Diet Coke he drinks in class.
8.
From my father’s RMP:
HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEMS AND WILL FAIL YOU EVEN WHEN DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER!
My dad has no clue who this is, considering no one has ever told him that they had cancer and couldn’t make it to class.
9.
10.
Grad student teaching an astronomy summer class to undergrads. Only review I got said that I was a “dried up old dick licker” (I was 26) and that this was “the hardest math I had to do in my 5 years of college”. I know who wrote it. Guy was a business major, and pissed because I asked him to calculate a number with an exponent of 3.2. He had no idea how to put that in his calculator and threw a goddamn hissy fit.
