“Very inconvenient class! Always holds lectures on top of mountains, in middle of the Sea of Galilee—but never close to the main campus.”
“Inconsistent attendance policy. Said we had to be in class by 9:00 a.m. every day. Over half the class showed up late or didn’t attend until the last meeting, but we all got the same participation grade.”
“He’s nice enough, I guess, but he doesn’t vet his TAs: they all provide completely different, conflicting lecture notes. (TIP: Try to get in Luke’s section.)”
“By week one, I was already tired of his anti-rich, pro-Samaritan bullshit. I wanted to take a course in Christianity, not liberalism.”
“Wears sandals too much. No one wants to see your dusty feet.”
“Not what I expected. They say his area of specialty is carpentry, but we never built anything.”
“Kind of absent-minded. My name’s Simon, and he’s called me ‘Peter’ for the entire semester.”
“I wanted to like this class, but on the first day, he submerged us in a river instead of going over the syllabus, and that was kind of a lot.”
“Doesn’t respect students’ time. A line of us had been waiting outside his office for over an hour. Finally, he showed up, said, ‘And the last shall be first,’ and started seeing us in reverse order. Made me late for work-study.”
“Tells too many stories. Easy to get him off track during lectures.”
“Feels like a class for farmers. Hope you like talking about seeds. Wheat seeds. Mustard seeds. Seeds, seeds, seeds.”
“DON’T take his class if you care about your GPA!!! Treats everything like pass/fail. Only cares about you if you’re failing the class, so good luck getting that A- up to an A.”
“Plays favorites. (Sorry, we can’t all be John ‘The Beloved.’)”
“Brought a bunch of snacks for the whole class once, then never did it again. Kind of a letdown.”
“I asked him to sign my accommodations form from the Disability Services Office, and he spit on the ground and rubbed the dirt in my eyes. I can see now, but it was still rude.”
“Won’t give straight answers. I asked him if something was going to be on the test, and he said, ‘You say that it will be,’ and stared at me with no expression. I mean, come on, bro.”
“Definitely plays favorites. Calls on the same twelve guys over and over. I even heard he took them out to dinner.”
“Weird format for a discussion class. He put everyone on one side of the table, so we can’t face each other when we talk.”
“Instructor is a drama queen. He stopped in the middle of a lecture to announce, ‘ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME,’ right after I had told him that I was switching advisors.”
“What is this class? Why do we keep going out on fishing boats? What was with the thing where we had to sort out goats from sheep? Why did we have to shove a camel through the eye of a needle? What is this class?”
“I reached out because I needed an extremely important, last-minute letter of rec for a summer internship. He didn’t get back to me for three days. Do your job.”
“Inaccessible. He told me he’d be in his office; I walked all the way there, and the door was open, and he was gone.”
“One time, I questioned one of his points during discussion, and he made me put my fingers through his hand-holes, WTF.”
“He straight-up ghosted us. He took on the entire class as his advisees, got us all excited to work with him, then immediately left for a 2,000+ year sabbatical. Thanks for nothing.”
“A complete joke. Only got the job because his dad is important.”
Read an interview with Amanda Lehr about her inspiration for writing this piece.