Professor is a nice guy, but he is not teaching well. Thoughts?

[bcrowell]

please consider my advice in #27 above. you can still make up for your undiplomatic email. stop trying to place blame. start trying to learn.

Hmm...yeah. It hadn't occurred to me before, but it does sound as though the OP has never shown up in the professor's office hours to simply ask a question about something that s/he didn't understand in the course. This is the really easy, obvious thing to do. Do it once. Do it twice. Lather, rinse, repeat. Once you've shown up half a dozen times in the prof's office hours, you've established a personal relationship, and each of you will have started to absorb where the other person is at. If you've done this, and it's evident to the prof that you are really trying hard to learn, then constructive criticism of the prof's teaching is likely to be taken much more seriously...or it may become unnecessary because one or both of you may understand things about each other that you hadn't understood before.

 

[XcKyle93]

please consider my advice in #27 above. you can still make up for your undiplomatic email. stop trying to place blame. start trying to learn.

Considering I didn't copy and paste the e-mail for all to see, how would you know if the e-mail was "undiplomatic?"

I did mention setting up an appointment with him in #10, 17 posts before you chimed in. When I mentioned my professor's response to my e-mail, I was simply providing an update for all those who took time to respond to my initial inquiry. I still have yet to set up the above appointment, but that's because I am trying to mull over a few concrete points/questions to ask him during his office hours/during our private appointment. I don't want to barge in yelling "I don't know anything!" THAT would be undiplomatic.

Also, I believe my e-mail helped in at least some way because he addressed the class the next time we met, talking about how he's changed the order of the topics and why he has chosen to do so.

"stop trying to place blame. start trying to learn."
That actually hurt :(. I really care about learning, and will always take it upon myself to learn the material. I thought that was evident when I mentioned the amount of external resources I consulted. I am, for the most part, pretty proficient at learning things on my own.

I apologize if you've construed me as a whiner, but that's just because my threads I have posted on this website have come during moments of deep stress and frustration.