dunroving

I got out of the country before all that hit. My friends from undergrad went through it, though (as teachers, I mean). Some of them are now about to retire and speak quite bitterly about that period. I think it took a lot of the joy out of teaching for them.

I think the low point of my college career was learning how to do matrix algebra.

SultanOfSwing

Vector field theory did it for me. When you start to use w and v in addition to x, y and z as variables, something's gone wrong ...

Sally Redux

Something my husband found a bit de-motivating was the number of students who get their marks adjusted upwards for spurious illnesses and other excuses which don't appear to bear scrutiny.

Hotscot

I enjoyed those parts, the maths, which was fortunate since I'm a physicist.

However my original plan was to be an astronaut.

(I still shop at Wally World.)

SultanOfSwing

That's a bit shite, that.

I did have my A-level chemistry teacher suggest I 'doctor' my results when one point on my graph on a particular experiment was out of line with the others

I, as you know, was a physicist too but I hated the maths

My plan was to be an astronomer. While I appreciate the work of the engineers of this world, in creating the wonderful telescopes and getting probes into space, I really didn't need to know just how they did it!

Sally Redux

Someone he works with now does that with their research

SultanOfSwing

I knew why he said it was OK in my case. It was an A-level assessed experiment and every single other data point fit the pattern and I probably just misread that one.

He knew his stuff though, had a Ph.D (two chemistry teachers in my school had Ph.Ds), was a research chemist all over the world. Apparently, if you're interested in this sort of thing, he was in one of the first groups to isolate a carbon cation, in the early 70s. Someone else did it for longer the next week

I liked him though, he was funny, interesting and he liked to swear in class. Great days ...

MMcD

So much for peer-review when peer = fellow(ship) cheat

Sally Redux

It's really shocking.

MMcD

Absolutely, as in tut, tut

Which leads to the question: Which "scholarly" Journal of this and "scientific" Journal of that is the dumb public to believe?

Best get it from Fox news then

Sally Redux

A peer-review system has its flaws - areas are so specialized that few other people will have a good grasp of the work. Sometimes people get found out or whistleblown-on.

Yorkieabroad

Sounds like our tech drawing teacher....he used to come and stand behind you and fix his piercing stare at the part of your drawing that was wrong. He wouldn't say anything, but he wouldn't move till you'd started correcting it. Ok when it's just regular class, but he used to do it during the exams as well Dad could never understand how I got an A in O level TD

SultanOfSwing

That's a good one, I like that approach