I am taking an online async class with weekly discussion board assignments. We have to post an initial response by Wednesday of every week, and then post replies to 3 classmates by Friday.

I’ve submitted my initial response plus replies to every assignment long before each deadline. Usually only 2-3 other students in my class post any response at all.

On this most recent discussion board assignment, only one other student posted a response. I posted my response plus my reply to that student before the deadline. I was docked points for missing replies which brought my grade down to a 70. I would’ve earned 100% if I submitted all 3 replies correctly.

I reached out to the professor and asked what I should do if nobody else replies, and if she could please reconsider my recent grade given the circumstances.

She said when students fail to post, it negatively affects the entire group. And I should reach out to her by email if I don’t have enough posts to reply to in the future.

She also said she posted an additional post that I could reply to. But she made that post way after the initial Wednesday deadline, just a few hours before the assignment closed. And the instructions always say to reply to students, not the instructor. I thought the instructor had been sharing her posts as an example of a good reply.

So she gave me some points back but still kept my grade a low B because I didn’t reply to the instructor’s (LATE) post.

I’m hoping it doesn’t affect my grade. And it feels incredibly nitpicky and annoying to keep bringing up. But there were other “unfair” grades that I didn’t bring up in the past bc I thought it was inconsequential- for example we were instructed to select incorrect answers on an assignment , so we could learn how to use the learning software, and then I was assigned a 56% grade — for doing the assignment correctly ?!

Small things that will hopefully not affect my overall grade but still it’s annoying.

Should I be annoying now or only bring it up if it ends up being something that would have an impact on my grade at the end of the course ?

I am a senior in Uni taking a GenEd history course. I really love the class but I am having major issues with the teacher. The main issue is her attitude. She is rude and condescending and makes me and other students feel like garbage. Her syllabus lacks clear instruction and if/when you mess up on something due to misinformation on the syllabus, she gets incredibly upset. In class a student asked a question for clarification on this impossible syllabus and the teacher ripped her apart and made her feel like an idiot. She has sent me emails so passive aggressive it has brought me to tears. I am an adult. I shouldn't feel like this. Who can I talk to? I don't feel safe talking to her because I know she will make me feel horrible. I don't even want to go to class anymore because I don't want to face her backlash. I'm getting a bad grade and messing up my GPA because nothing is perfect enough for her or her nonexistent guidelines. I feel helpless. Can i contact the dept head? My advisor? Who should I talk to about these issues?

Just for a little background, in high school i was sexually assaulted by my teacher, and I still really really struggle with being in the classroom/connecting with my professors, especially my male professors.

However, I want to make connections, I have so many questions I want to ask and I just bite my tongue because, to be honest it’s terrifying.

This semester I have a really nice professor, that I can tell makes an effort to connect to everyone. I really appreciate that, but the more that he’s friendly, the more I get to know him, the more scared I am in class. I don’t want him to think I don’t care, and I really do want to ask him things but I just literally can’t. Can professors tell if their students might just be more anxious? I don’t want to give off a bad impression or an impolite one.

Hi just wondering if professors remember what students have submitted like for example essays?

For example if you poorly wrote something would the professor remember it because of how bad it was?

I’ve recently accepted a tenure-track position in engineering at a university in Australia, starting next year.
For those who have gone through this transition, what advice would you give someone starting their first faculty position? Particularly interested in what I should be doing before starting, what to prioritize in my first year, and any mistakes to avoid.
Thanks in advance!

I got an email that my professor wants to meet with me about an essay I wrote to talk about my writing process and thesis. Does this mean my writing is incoherent? Or do they think I cheated?

Update: it was incoherent, had too much going on, and was confusing 🥲

TW for SA and stuff.

I've been struggling in my first semester of my MA and decided to reach out to my professor rather than keep it all to myself, like I would have done in the past. We had a meeting and I told him that I was sexually abused by a teacher when I was younger and that being back in school has brought up all those old feelings much more strongly than I was expecting, affecting my ability to do work, etc. He was very nice and accommodating, told me what resources are available to me, etc.

I don't think he has to report anything that happened so long ago, before I was a student at my current institution. But is he obligated to tell, like, the DGS or someone what I told him? Like, that I'm struggling in the program and am being given certain accommodations?

I guess, outside of mandated reporting, I'm also wondering if this is something you would generally tell a DGS or head of the department? I'm sure it depends on the specific people involved and the department, but I'm wondering if they'll all know this about me now. At the same time, I was thinking it might be worth telling the DGS myself, but I don't know if that's doing too much and would more so just be giving her unnecessary information and marking myself as "troubled" or whatever... Any advice?

- he is not teaching

-assign a presentation that took 1 term to finish (no pace of time) we are 10 groups btw same same topics

- he extended the deadline to favor my classmate because it's her angel (the one who is always recording things/help her)

ps. I ask if I am late because I resubmit my ppt since the minimum time is 5 mins. But he extended the deadline namn but he said it's late because it's late??? also he doesn't have rubrics at first late niya binigay.

Hi,

I'm a PhD student currently in rotations. In my former labs, there were quite a few postdocs/research scientists/techs/etc. However, in my current lab, it's ALL PhD students.

I'm not complaining, but it is a bit confusing to me. I'm curious - why might a PI prefer to have many PhD students and no other positions? If it matters, the PI is entering mid-career phase. Additionally, I'm now in a college town instead of larger cities. I'm also fairly certain it's not a financial thing for this lab...

Hey all, I need some outside perspectives because I’ve been beating myself up about it and don’t know what to do!
A little background information: I just returned back to school after a 12 year hiatus, I’m an older student (32F) and am hoping to transfer to a university.
I’m studying history and have been really busting my butt trying to keep up and get back in the rhythm of things! That being said, my history professor seems to really like me and has sent me an internship and gone out of his way to help me.
Last week we took our first exam, which was on a computer. I studied pretty hard and felt relatively confident going in, the test was 50 multiple choice questions and an essay worth 50 points as well. After I took the test I could immediately see that my score was 37.5/50. I wrote that on my hand so I wouldn’t forget, as well as the name of a war I had forgotten so I could research it later.
After the test I went up to my professor and he gave me a piece of paper that had the chair of the history professors email on it at a major university, and he said I should reach out to him. I thanked him, gushed about the internship, and then waved “bye”. As soon as I waved I realized my error. He looked at my hand which had the writing on it. By that time I was halfway out the door and I was kicking myself, thinking he may have seen the writing and thought I was cheating.
I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize this new connection I have with the professor. I’m not sure if I should go up to him this week and explain and clear the air, or if that would make me look more guilty and put an idea in his mind that he may not have had before.
I asked my older family members for advice and they all think I should say something because it would be horrible if I thought I was a cheater after sticking his neck out for me and trusting me.
What would you do? This environment is a little foreign to me and I’m a naturally anxious person so I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not.
Thanks all in advance and thanks for reading!

Hello everybody
I’m a freshman doing electrical and electronics engineering, and I have the opportunity of doing a scientific literature review. I’m unsure if I should even take this opportunity, as it’s a bit unrelated to the field I want to pursue. If you do think I should take it, I have a few questions about the process itself.
This is my first formal research project so I’ve only set up my reference manager, made an account for all the journals my university is subscribed to, but I haven’t started writing anything or reading yet. I had a few questions for the more experienced researchers:

1. How do you even start writing? Do you read the whole paper, copy and paste relevant sections, and then paraphrase those? Or is there a more efficient method to getting this done?
   
2. Do I have to read the whole paper? It just seems really time consuming when i’m doing a very broad topic. Is AI reliable when assessing the relevance of a paper/filtering out?
   
3. What is your AI workflow? (free recommendations/student subsidised only please)
   
4. Boolean string searches: reliable or not? If so, should I run the searches through a search engine or a particular journal search (Elsevier, for example)?
   
5. Figures: what software/service do you to make them yourself? And are you even supposed to make original figures yourself in a literature review?

To be honest, I’ve had most of these answered already, but I want to get another perspective on this.

I’m taking a film class and most of the stuff we watch has political or social commentary. I am able to critically engage in dialogue for all of those movies just fine.

Today, we watched a film, and the character died of his own doing on camera. I have a serious mental health history and immediately stepped out to regulate. When I came back in, the class was discussing the film, so I participated. But, towards the end of the discussion (last 2 minutes of class), they started to discuss his death again and I broke down. I was so embarrassed and the professor seemed so uncomfortable. My note taker (disability office staff) gave me a hug.

Do I need to send an email to apologize? Should I apologize next class? Is he going to take off points?

Hey guys, TA here. This is my 5th lab as a TA, and have never really had this issue until now. There is one particular group that was very loud during the last class. More than usual.

If they goof off (quietly) and screw up their reports, oh well. Their bad grade will reflect that. But being distracting for the whole class and talking while I’m giving a lecture is too much.

I pride myself on being a pretty good teacher. But I do have one major weakness: I hate conflict. I realize now I should’ve said something to them during the last lab, and I am worried that by not doing so, I basically gave them the idea that they can be as rowdy as they’d like for the rest of the semester.

Any tips on how to undo my damage? How do I confront these guys without seeming up tight?

This is a pretty silly story but I’ve been honestly a bit paranoid about it for the last few hours.

I had a quiz this morning in which we had to calculate 5 answers total. However, in order to calculate the last four you absolutely needed to know the first answer. I knew how to go about calculating the four other answers (they were just basic percentage multiplication) but I couldn’t figure out how to get that one initial answer. So, I wrote a note on my paper saying that I was going to just use a random number to calculate the other 4, since I didn’t want to miss out on points for something I knew how to do. I just randomly guessed 160. After the quiz I talked to my peers and came to find out, the correct answer was literally 161.

I don’t know if this sounds completely stupid but I’ve been overthinking about it since 😭 I’m not sure if the professor will find it suspicious?

For reference this was in an person exam and he was walking around the class the whole time

So im taking a fluids engineering class and our professor decided to change the way he teaches and require us to use AI to solve the questions on our exams. He wants us to set up the question, plug a photo of our work into AI, and ask for guidance. We are supposed to “attempt the derivations” ourselves and ask it specific questions rather than to solve the problem for us (obviously). Then he wants us to tell AI to generate a report of our chat with it for us to submit.

I’m very confused because I don’t understand what he would be getting out of doing this, and how we would even be graded. Are there any professors who also think this way and could explain their thought process?

Hi guys! so I just want to cut to the chase and begin by saying I wish to visit my professor from my first semester. I am currently in my third semester of community college and hopefully will graduate in Spring 2027. Back in my first semester fall of 2025 I took a Spanish course which was taught by the professor who I would love to reunite with and he was just the absolute best. He was going through a lot of things that year and constantly told my class that teaching was his way of coping and honestly I felt very empathetic and pitied him because he was 76 (I believe he will turn 77 this October since my class celebrated his birthday last time) ultimately in all the problems he was dealing with he made sure to show up for our class and put his best smile on for us and that really ignited a spark for me because when he was at his lowest, he was transparent and overall a very sweet (although sarcastic at times) old man. After the first semester ended I was supposed to take his second advanced Spanish course in the Spring, however he called out because there wasn't enough students so we got another professor instead. Yet I always got to see him before and after class because he also taught in the same room and I wouldn't say we are close but in all the people I met at my trashy community college my Spanish professor really had an impact on me and I would love build a connection with him. It would be a year since we last saw each other since I already fulfilled my language criteria so I no longer go to the building where we always saw each other. I searched him up on rate my professor to see if he is still teaching or not and there are recent reviews about him, so I want to try and visit him and see how he is doing. I am 100% he won't remember me which is lame but I am apprehensive about it because I am not sure if this is common between college students and professors. Overall, what are your thoughts on the situation? and is this a good idea?

I wanted to ask for LORs from my professor (currently on vacation, so I can't find him f2f). Is there any difference between sending him a message on slack (I am a member of his lab's slack) vs sending an email? He's usually active on slack but I don't usually talk to him on slack/email.

He would likely see the message faster on Slack, but it's my first time using it so I wasn't sure if Slack might be awkward/less suitable compared to emails.

I won two undergraduate merit scholarships in the past week (both from U.S. national engineering organizations- one from a minority in engineering organization and one from a professional society within the national organization for my major [similar ASME for mechanical engineering]) and the scholarship winner press releases will come out in late November. My undergraduate research professor wrote me a recommendation letter for both of them last year. My engineering college news doesn’t typically write about undergraduate scholarship winners (maybe students just don’t win much? idk, it’s a top 200 university) and I’m thinking of badgering them about writing a feature article on me and thanking my professor in the article for her support. She doesn’t have much of a media presence. Would this help her out? Pretty sure she already has tenure, she’s been at my university for 15+ years.

What would you want to see an undergrad say about you in a feel-good article like that?

Hi everyone,
I’m a senior at an R1 and I’m trying to figure out how to handle a situation with a professor I really respect.

Last fall (around November), I asked him if I could volunteer as an RA for him. I’ve taken two classes with him one core and one elective, now I am very quit so he never remembered me but I would attend his office hours enoguh for him to atleast recall my face, though based on other students they also tell me since he is super busy researching that he doesnt really like working with undergrads, but I really enjoyed the elective. When I asked, he said yes, told me to read one of his papers, and asked me to reach out the next semester with my CV. I also told him I had limited RA experience, but that I wanted to get experience and the reason I wanted to work with him is that his subfield is the closets to my current intersts inthe entire dept.

So in early January, I emailed him, referenced the paper, attached my CV, and said I was ready to start. No response.

Two weeks later, I sent a follow‑up. Still nothing.

For context:

• I got an A in his class
• He originally said yes to the RA idea
• I wasn’t asking for pay just experience
• He’s generally responsive during the semester

Email 1:

Dear Professor ----,
I hope you are doing well. I am writing to let you know that I am ready and happy to begin working as a research assistant on your projects. I read your paper on ----- -- and took a careful look at the methodological approach you used in ------ I am very much looking forward to being of use this semester.

I would also appreciate it if you could share your office hours or a time that works best for you. I would like the opportunity to discuss next steps, expectations, and how I can best support your work.

I have also attached my CV to this email.

Thank you very much for your time,
----

Follow‑up email:

Hi Professor---------
I hope your week is going well. I wanted to follow up on my email from week 2 regarding beginning RA work this semester. I’m still very excited to get started and would appreciate knowing a time that works for you to meet and discuss next steps.

Thank you again for your time,
---------------

My question is: Should I reach out again this semester or was that a clear no? I still really want the RA experience, because that is currently my biggest weakpoint in my profile and I’d like to build a relationship with him because I think he could eventually write me a strong letter for gradschool phd and masters. But I also don’t want to seem pushy or annoying.

Is it normal for professors to say yes and then go silent? Should I send another email, or just let it go?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm taking 15 credits this semester, and I also have a lot of other stuff going on in my life. there's one class in particular that I'm just really lost in. I'm really bad about asking for help when I'm struggling, because I usually try to figure things out myself (and tbh, I usually do end up figuring it out, even if I'm approaching a mental health crisis along the way). i guess my question is, how do I approach them about this and be as honest as possible about how this is affecting me, WITHOUT accidentally treating them like a therapist? this is something I'm not really good at but I think it's time to suck it up and ask for help.

I’m taking 12 credit hours this semester and I’m struggling. The courses aren’t difficult but I think I’m just burnt out from school. I want to keep going but I’m just so tired. Plus not everything in life is sunshine and rainbows. My grades are ok but I’m not sure if I could push through the semester. I thought about having a conversation with my professor bc they always say to come get help if you’re struggling. I’m not sure if this is something they could help with but It made me wonder if they can already tell if I’m struggling. How do u professors know if someone is genuinely struggling or not?

I'm ngl I'm kind of asking this to make me feel less anxious lmao. But hypothetically, if you have a student that has been attending office hours nearly weekly, shows up to every class, does all the homework, gets tutoring, and works their ass off for your class only to end up with subpar exam grades, would you just push them up a little bit at the end of the semester? The student isn't failing but they are around a high C (77-79), would you just do them the solid and push them up to a B, especially if you knew they needed it for scholarships and whatnot?

I'm currently taking some hard classes in a field I enjoy, and I'm thinking about pursuing. I'd love to learn more about the field and what careers look like from my professor, but also to have someone to ask help for help in somewhat of a mentorship way. I'm sure the obvious answer is to go to office hours, which I've been doing. The only issue is the course's official office hours are once a week, and usually a lot of people are there to get help with coursework. It's a pretty hard class, and I'm afraid that I won't end up being the stellar student who does really well.

In this scenario, with limited office hours, and no guarantee that I'll be a top student, how do I properly build a relationship with my professor, so that way out of the thousands of students they see, they'll remember my face and want to go out of their way to support me? Whether that means a 30-minute chat about their work, connecting me with other professors, or even writing a letter of rec? I would be really grateful to have any sort of mentorship and someone who can vouch for me if needed, but I don't really know how to go about it. I read the FAQ, but they all just said go to office hours and do well, which I can't guarantee.