Point

by Rebeka Nop

One great thing about being an adult is the freedom that comes with being in college.

As a college student, you are able to choose your own classes, the days and times your class meets and most importantly, your professors. Websites like ratemyprofessor.com couldn’t have made it easier to help you to choose which professor best fits your learning style.

Ratemyprofessor.com allows students to do exactly that, rate their professors. This is very useful in helping students get a good idea of what they will be getting themselves into. It is helpful to know what you can and can’t get away like, if attending class is really mandatory, how much homework is expected for the class and how the grading will work.

There are a lot of helpful comments that you can read through that can give you a bit of insight on your future educators like, “He was very passionate and highly informative on his material. He’s willing to go that extra mile if you’re willing to pay attention and seem interested” or “I took this class hoping to learn something and got nothing out of it. If you want an easy A, take this class. If you want to actually learn something, take someone else.”

This website can help cater to your learning style and can help you figure out how to get the most bang for your buck. The ratings offered at ratemyprofessor.com are: easiness, helpfulness, clarity, rater interest and hotness.

If you’re going to spend two hours or more in a class, might as well make sure it will be a fun class and the possibility of having some eye candy to look at is even better.

All kidding aside, if you’re looking to be challenged, this website will give you a look at what students before you have learned and what you can do to prepare yourself.

If you’re looking for a bit of a break from the normality of boringness, this website is also helpful because raters will specify the easiness of the course and what is expected from the professor.

The Internet provides us with an advantage within our finger tips so why not take advantage of that? College is for learning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn and have fun at the same time.

If you’d like to check out the website for yourself, it is at www.ratemyprofessors.com/SelectTeacher.jsp?sid=1318

Counterpoint

by Greg Diaz

It can be a frustration of college courses when you realize that you are in a class with a professor that does not mesh with your style of learning.

It can be that they lecture when you respond to more group activity. It can be that the professor likes to hold discussions more than review the materials from the books you were forced to purchase. There are numerous reasons why you can come away from the experience of a class that is less than favorable.

But part of the learning in the college experience is to realize that you are not always going to have bosses and colleagues that work in the manner that you are used to. There is something to be gained by pushing through that class and succeeding with or without the professor’s aid.

Especially in a community college climate where classes are harder and harder to get, you usually have to go with the professor that comes with the course you need. This is doubly true if you work or have other commitments outside of college and you have to plan your courses around your availability.

Websites like ratemyprofessors.com and others sound like a good idea in preparing for what to expect when selecting courses. But as with most comments on the internet they tend to represent the extremes.

In checking out one professors comments you see both “this is a great teacher with and interesting class that teaches you a lot,” right next to “I took this class hoping to learn something and got nothing out of it.”

This is especially difficult when there is little to no context with the comments as there are all left anonymously. There are plenty of people we all know that whose opinion on certain subjects you would not value, so ascribing value to nameless people seems foolish.

It is always best to enter a new experience with an open mind as you may find out that the teacher that people warned against is really someone that works best with what you want to do.

That definitely will not always be the case as we have all had professors that we would rather not see at the front of the classroom again. But in those cases you have to remember that a semester is not that long.

Try and remember that the point of colleges is to finish and good teacher or not, it does not have to impact what you accomplish. A wise man once said, “Keep your head down and power through.”