GT Academic Horror Stories

[YellowJacket86]

Good god, that's the name I was trying to remember. with that same class.

The Virge!

 

[YellowJacket86]

OK - I lived "the dream" - two of them! First - Winter quarter 1984, I think. Had a "Man and Machine" class or some-such from ESM. No textbook, had to copy text from overhead, lots of reading, not interesting at all, elective. After a week or two, I decided to bail on it. Dropped (My AE advisor snorted and laughed and said to me and another professor, "It's just a damn ESM class! Drop it!"). Fast forward to spring break and my grades arrive in the mail - F! Otherwise, my best quarter ever. Fortunately, I was a pack-rat, and only 100 miles from school. The next day I drove back to campus and took my drop receipt to the Registrar office and got it all cleared up. If not for that slip of paper tucked away in a mound of other papers, I would have been hosed.

Second - I had statics with Dr. Chen (The Bamboo Shaft - http://thecardboard.org/board/index.php?topic=11063.25;imode). A short way into the quarter, he had to do some travel, and he was replaced by a rotating cast of other characters like him. For some reason, statics was just not clicking. I think I forgot my calculator for the "gimme" test that was "do you know how to use a calculator" Anyway, he got back and finals rolled around, and I was nursing a C. I got up on the day and rolled over to the test a few minutes early - 11:00 am timeslot, I think. Something was odd - there were already a few people there, and they were all working furiously, and turning in papers! It finally hit me that it was the end of the exam, and I was almost 3 hours late! The TA grabbed the papers and started to leave, and I stopped him and explained how I was late. He was all like "Too bad, I'm out, dude." He did say he was going to Chen's office, and I could tag along and plead my case. Chen was bemused and had a laugh in a kind of "don't sweat the small stuff" way. He said it was no big deal, and that there was a letter-grade curve up. He took out the grade book, looked me up, and said "You have C, so you get B!", and then wrote down 'A'! I just kept quiet - I did not want to upset the goodness that was happening. He looked at it, then at me and said "You try to trick me!", and laughed, and changed it to 'B' I thanked him profusely, and got out. I dated a girl the next year who was in the same class at a different time - she went into the final with an A and came out with a C. FWIW, I was 3 hours early to my Circuits final two days later....

 

[awbuzz]

Professor Chen's Statics class is one I still tell stories about. Congrats on the B. He didn't curve a year earlier...
If you hear how easy the class is because it's "open notes, open book" don't fall for it!!

 

[YellowJacket86]

Chen was one thing, but Virgil Smith was in a different league. You might have had him, but if not, he prided himself on coming up with a completely original set of problems for every test - he said he stayed up late the night before to come up with problems. There were generally two problems on a regular test and four on the final. I had access to Word from back in the '70s, and there was no repetition I could find. He would walk around the room during the test, and at halfway he would say something like "If you haven't finished problem 1 yet, I suggest you abandon it and move on to problem 2." I had a friend who went to him for help on some homework, and Virg told him "You're not ready to talk to me." He told another friend he would never graduate from Georgia Tech with an engineering degree. You could be in his class for the first time on Monday, and he would greet you by name in the hall on Tuesday. I remember one particular test from the second class I had with him (don't remember the name, but it was force/moment diagrams, defbods, etc.) - I got a 98 on the test, and the class average was way up, like in the 70s or 80s. He felt like he had failed us somehow

 

[YellowJacket86]

OK now - DROWNPROOFING!!!!!!

Literally crawled out of the pool and puked...twice.

 

[YellowJacket86]

Anyone ever have Prof. Stamford for Physics back in the early 80's. Supposedly teachers could also be on probation or warning if too many students didn't do well and apparently he was always on probation or warning.

During the 1st class of 1st quarter Physics had made comment regarding what freshmen are told the half teh folks that enter Tech won't graduate fro Tech. Then he proudly states that we should look around and that only one of every three students would be in this class come drop day.

We'll darned if he wasn't right. No partial credit... if you hosed up the "b" part of the problem you most likely messed up "c" and "d" becasue you had to have "b" correct to be able to answer "c" and "d".

Ended up with a 69.87 average - a D - for the class all becaseu the SOB would round it up to a 70 so I'd get a C for the class.

Too many teachers took it as a source of pride to give you the Ma Tech Shaft.

Not sure if it was Stamford or not, but I had the physics professor who was a real smart-alec. The last day of class, he sat down and said something like "Ask me anything, anything at all. I know everything." Would have been probably '85.

 

[jrgray]

Oh, so many horror stories. There was Stanford and no partial credit because if "you're off by a negative sign, you built your bridge upside down" which sent me through E-Mag, Re-Mag and Three-Mag on my way to the M-train. But my highest honor was the quarter I took E-Mag, Statics and Diff Eqs at the same time and earned a 0.4 GPA instead of a 4.0. Thank goodness for my C in public policy.

 

[awbuzz]

Oh, so many horror stories. There was Stanford and no partial credit because if "you're off by a negative sign, you built your bridge upside down" which sent me through E-Mag, Re-Mag and Three-Mag on my way to the M-train. But my highest honor was the quarter I took E-Mag, Statics and Diff Eqs at the same time and earned a 0.4 GPA instead of a 4.0. Thank goodness for my C in public policy.

Ah! So you are a member of the Square Root club [emoji3] !!!

 

[gtmike]

Freshman chem class had a teacher that had never taught intro chem to freshman. First test I got a 49 and got a very high A. Later, that would be normal, but it was quite an intro to the school.

Calc II I had a German professor and Greek TA and nobody I knew to go to to help me learn anything about it. I still don't know what an eigenvalue or eigenvector is and I hate dealing with matrix stuff because I wasn't able to learn it. I got a B and have no clue about Calc II.

Had an A in CS (Scheme) and lost it in the final exam. It was my last of four (Chem, CS, Calc II, History) and I didn't even review it a single time, I was so ready to be done.

0 credit for part of my CS (Java) program when I spelled the method name wrong - "occurences" instead of "occurrences." I don't think I've spelled it wrong since.

Stayed up all night finishing a DSP lab. Fell asleep in the morning and got to class 20 minutes late. Automatic -30 pts.

Got the phone dialer working for DSP and called my parents in the middle of the night by accident.

So proud of my anti-aliasing results in DSP and ended up getting a 60 or something on it - ended up I didn't do it correctly but the pictures looked good enough to me.

MSE2001 was the one I can't believe I even took. I skipped it or read the paper when I did go to class. It was so dry and boring and I finished the class without having a clue about anything related to MSE. That's the one I have dreams about because it always felt surreal going to the tests because I felt like I knew nothing.

Had Circuits (ECE2040) and the exams you would just circle your final answer, no work counted for anything. When there was a minute left I went back and circled my answers. One problem had two answers. I circled one correctly but the other I mistakenly circled a mid-point step - the right answer was right below it. I tried to show it to the professor and he wouldn't even look at the page. Got a 0 for the problem. The class average was a 33 before the final but there were two guys that would always get 80s and 90s on everything. That was my last semester in CmpE/EE. Somehow I had a 3.4 so as bad as I felt like I was doing, apparently most people were doing even worse. Transferred to IE and, honestly, it was a joke. But I just didn't enjoy anything about CmpE/EE and felt like I wasn't smart enough to have a career in it.
I still think about the "you would have crashed the space shuttle" answer to every unforgiving grading decision. Now that I don't suffer from it anymore, I agree, but it sucks at the time.

 

[MWT89]

Physics quizzes were multiple choice with four possible answers; a choice of two numbers either positive or negative. I had a friend who took e-mag, re-mag, and three-mag.

And the grades were posted Friday afternoons in the glass window next the front door of the physics building. At least once I saw the window covered with plywood - no doubt a ticked off student.

 

[MountainBuzzMan]

Dr Su EE 3200. in 1987. Held the second test for almost 2 weeks and returned it the day after drop day. Always curved the class average to be a 1.99 overall. Made a B on the final and I still got a D overall in the class.

 

[Dustman]

I lived the dream too. Twice, and in the same class. I was an EE and was taking Wendell "Bud" Williams machines class as an elective because I heard it was an easy A. This was during summer quarter. Nobody went to his class. I mean nobody. But there was some secret ME network that got the word out when there was an exam and the room was always packed. I wasn't in that club. I actually attended most of his classes trying to find out when the next exam was. I waltzed down the hall one day and saw a packed room and turned around and left. Made up a story the next day at his office that I had been sick and he let me make up the exam. Fast forward to a few weeks before finals and I'm asking people when and where is the final. Nobody knew. A week later I walked in and he was giving the final. This time I manned up and approached him. He gave me this incredulous "you again?" look and said you might want to try coming to class. I Told him I HAD been coming to his classes and nobody could tell me when or where the final was, but I would gladly take the final right now if I could please just borrow a pencil and a straight edge. I made an A.