[AT] Old trains/now NC State foolishness

Indiana Robinson robinson46176 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 11 06:35:10 PST 2009


On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Al Jones <farmallsupera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I felt pretty fortunate to take most of my classes in the College of Ag.
> and Life Sciences.  Most of those professors were leaders in their
> respective fields, but at the same time were pragmatic enough to realize
> that they had a responsibility to their students as well as their research.
> And I hit it at a good time--a lot of the "greats" retired not long after I
> graduated in '97:  Dr. Carm Parkhurst in Poultry Science, Drs. Al Rakes and
> Ray Harvey in Animal Science, Dr. Roy Larsen in Horticulture (the only one
> of the bunch that didn't seem to do that much teaching--just talked for an
> hour than gave you a hard-a$$ exam on stuff he'd never mentioned in class)
> and Dr. J.C. Raulston in Horticulture---he got killed in a car accident
> right near the end of the following fall semester after I had him the
> previous fall.
>
> Dr. Carm Parkhurst was probably the best teacher I have ever had, anywhere.
> He could lecture to a group of 40-50 students and make you think he was
> talking directly to you and no one else. At first I thought it was just me
> until some of us were talking before class one day and realized that we ALL
> felt that way.
>
> The only classes I came close to struggling in were the other classes
> outside of Ag. Education or CALS.  Modern American History was tough.  I
> had a professor for 20th Century American Lit. (or something like that)
> that literally couldn't see my papers unless I printed it about 16 font in
> boldface.  Anything I wrote was never right.  I already mentioned
> botany--that was a farce.  The maths I took were ok but it was amusing to
> watch people try to get help from the TA from China that spoke maybe 25-30
> words of English.
>
> Al
>
==============================================


I went to BSU for a year and had some of the best professors around
and some of the worst... One lady psychology prof that was just awful.
She basically sat at her desk and read the textbook to the class in a
flat monotone voice. Ruined what could have been a very interesting
subject. At the other end of the scale I had a history prof that
really knew and loved his subject and was amazing at teaching it. The
rest fell somewhere in the middle but a sad number were in the lower
middle... Just a job, show up, go through the motions etc. etc.
(yawn). One Lit prof was an arrogant egotistical twit of a human but
was still a good teacher. Another should have just kept playing
basketball...
BSU was on quarters instead of semesters so you were exposed to a lot
of different profs over a short time.
-
My drafting prof was very good. I helped a guy that had transferred in
from Purdue who made A's in drafting at Purdue but was failing at BSU.
I think he had been cheating his way through at Purdue, huge classes,
nobody looking... He had already taken the beginning drafting that we
were in together but he didn't have a clue.
That is what is wrong with judging people from their degrees... The
person that learned well and kept learning afterward and the guy who
cheated his way through and shut down learning as soon as it was
convenient both get to hang the same degree on the wall. That is even
more scary if the latter is your doctor.  :-)



-- 
Have you hugged your horses today?

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com




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