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Comment by throwawaylaptop | Hacker News Reader

I was #3 in highschool out of a 550 graduating class. I thought I was bright.

Went to Cal for mechanical engineering, and while I survived the engineering classes, the physics classes wore me out and the math classes were almost impossible for me. I barely made it out of there.

I honestly wish I went somewhere easier so that it wasn't a constant struggle to keep up and survive. I think I would have actually learned more.

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I took a Math 1A class (intro to calc) at Cal where the prof turned his back on class at the start of the hour, then proceeded to mumble incoherently for 60 minutes while filling a chalkboard with equations. He’d turn back around at the end of the hour. Many students brought pillows. I learned literally nothing in lecture.

This professor wasn’t demanding, he was just making zero effort to actually teach.

Great researchers are not necessarily great teachers, especially for intro courses. Anecdotally, I think this is a common issue at “prestigious” schools.

I know that feelings but be assured, it’s better to be mediocre when you’re surrounded by amazing people than to be the best in a place where no one cares. I can guarantee you learnt more than other places even if you don’t feel like that at the moment.

I've had 20 years to think about this, and while it was always fun to get the positive vibes telling people I went to Cal, I still think UC Davis or SLO would have been better.

It's not like my only other option was to go to CSU East Bay, although I know people that built decent careers from there too to be honest.

I’ve heard people say this about difficult colleges or degrees before, so you’re not alone. The push to make something overly hard can simply leave some capable people behind by not matching their style or pace of learning. But also I think some of the less famous universities simply care about teaching while the top ones leave that to random grad students and instead brag about their research credentials. The thing is, professors doing research doesn’t help students learning.

I think all that matters is that most if not all professors care about teaching. And my experience at top universities has been that most still care about teaching and the grad students they need to rely on is because of the class size. There were definitely some that were basking in their own glory from the past, but those were few. Can’t tell about all universities, but I’d assume it’s the same everywhere. The reality is that given what it takes to become a tenured professor, you’re bound to have at least a few who generally suck at teaching.

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