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/sci/ - Science & Math

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7457949 No.7457949 [Reply] [Original]

Has a professor with a PhD ever failed a class in college? Or ever had a bad grade? Do all professors have brilliants and are straight A students?

>> No.7457954

>>7457949
The fact you even need to ask such a retarded question already tells me you're never going to become a PhD in anything other than Women/Gender Studies.

>> No.7457962

>>7457949
More like the reverse

>>7457954
Truth

>> No.7457963

>>7457954
Nothing is a stupid question.

>> No.7457967

>>7457949

Are you 12? You can't possibly be older than 16, that's as high as I'll give you for an age.

>> No.7457969

>>7457967
No I'm 21 but thanks for being generous.

>> No.7457974

>>7457963
>Nothing is a stupid question

ahh, so you failed English 101.

>> No.7458530

>>7457949
No, professors never had a bad day and fugged up a test. If you get sick and miss a test, you can no longer become a Ph,D. Professors don't get depressed or have any personal issues getting in the way of them have brilliants. High IQ is important because it shows they're great at the most important task, solving IQ tests.

>> No.7458535

>>7457949
I know /sci/ would hate me for this but Einstein failed several exams and he is still more brilliant than all of the PhDs in MIT.

>> No.7458569
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7458569

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Smale
>Initially, he was a good student, placing into an honors calculus sequence taught by Bob Thrall and earning himself A's. However, his sophomore and junior years were marred with mediocre grades, mostly Bs, Cs and even an F in nuclear physics. However, with some luck, Smale was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Michigan's mathematics department. Yet again, Smale performed poorly in his first years, earning a C average as a graduate student. It was only when the department chair, Hildebrandt, threatened to kick out Smale, that he began to work hard.[2] Smale finally earned his Ph.D. in 1957, under Raoul Bott.
>He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966

>> No.7460189

>>7458530
Is that sarcasm?

>> No.7460196

>>7458569
Thanks for the motivation :)

>> No.7460197

>>7458535
Yeah but he's jewish though.

>> No.7460203

>>7460189
definitely not

>> No.7460347

>>7458530
wonder how I can tell you are a NEET?

>> No.7460375

>>7457949
It's common to have at least one bad semester.
It is expected.
If you already maintain a good GPA, you'll remain competitive regardless (3.5).

>> No.7460405

>>7457949
I talked to the professor I work with at Purdue about what my grades should be to become a professor. He said he got 2 grades that weren't A's in his entire undergrad(both were B'). Speech and Intro chem. You pretty much want A's for professor track.

>> No.7460420

>>7460405
You want to show the hiring committee that you can teach, that you can write grant proposals, and that you have a decent research output. They don't give a fuck about your undergrad grades.

>> No.7460458

>>7458569

This anon beat me to it about a day ago, well done. Truly a "dun give up brah" story.

>> No.7460459
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7460459

>>7460189

>> No.7460463

>>7458569
This is a nice story but top graduate schools are too competitive for this to work nowadays.

>> No.7460464

>implying brilliance and getting good grades from sucking your teacher's dick are related

>> No.7460466

>>7457949
>>7457949

My zoology prof was a palaeontologist. He failed a course his first year. It's no big deal if you fail a course, so long as you're average is decent you'll be fine

>> No.7460493

>>7458535
Got to find ways to motivate the kids. There exist people who are really smart but just can't focus on exams or find motivation in certain forms of education. That's a teachers main job: To try and find the buttons which trigger curiosity and motivation.

>> No.7460501

>>7458569
*Field's
*field's

...

>> No.7460607

>>7460420
I think he meant it more in regard to work ethic than actual grades. Obviously they don't give a fuck about undergrad when you have a phd.

>> No.7460635

>>7460464
>not being smart enough to suck your professors dick
retard

>> No.7460637

>>7460635
I'm into people younger than thirty.
He was already married...

>> No.7461232

Most finished undergrad with university and/or departmental honors, from many of the CVs I've seen. Of course, that doesn't mean that they never had a C in a class, or even had to re-take a class to pass it. I've seen a few CVs and heard some stories of PIs who had a B/B+ average and had to re-take a class or two. Off the top of my head, I can think of some very successful PIs (tenure at prominent universities with prestigious academy memberships) who weren't superstars in the classroom in undergrad by their own admission, but fared much better in the research lab in grad school.

>> No.7461325

>>7457949
I dropped two courses in undergrad, got a C+ in a math class. I did a lot of drugs and was dealing with depression/anxiety on top of partying.

I'm in a PhD program now, and two years in I have a 4.0 including taking graduate math. My undergrad grades have only come back once to haunt me ever, and I pretty much proved the critic wrong by acing a class they told me I'd fail and proving theorems about something they told me was impossible.

>Moral is: undergrad grades haven't mattered to anyone except a blind committee who made predictions about my performance that haven't borne out.

>> No.7461349

>>7460501

the Fields medal is probably some agricultural award

>> No.7461358

>>7458535
>Einstein failed several exams
Those F's were the highest grade in Germany for a while.

>>7460637
That was a metaphor, you fucking idiot.

>> No.7461387

>>7457949
Some successful people were shit students, but largely because they were doing other things that were important or fundamental to their success rather than studying,

It is unlikely that you are one of those people.

If you want to be successful, play the signalling game and get the grades.

>> No.7462518

>>7457949
My astrophys professor didn't fail anything but did say graduate E&M was impossibly hard, didn't learn anything and couldn't pass it again. He also taught our Thermo class and told me when I started grad school not to tell the graduate Thermo prof this because he almost failed thermo as well.

>> No.7462524

>>7458569
i love you for showing me this.

>> No.7463804

>>7461358
He was at a Swiss Gymnasium, not a German one. The grades in Switzerland are
1.0 (worst), 2.0 (very poor), 3.0 (bad)
4.0 (passed)
5.0 (good)
6.0 (very good)
With 0.1 steps at tests and 0.5 steps in certs. Einstein mostly had 5.5 - 6.0 which was extremely good for a Swiss Gymnasium at the time (and would still be very good in internatiol comparison nowadays). Some people mistook the grades for German grades, where it's exactly reversed (1.0 best, >4.0 not passed), so they thought Einstein's Swiss 5.5-6.0's were extremely bad, when that wasn't the truth. I hope all of you don't get this wrong ever again.
t. someone who studied at the same school as Einstein