One of the most frequently discussed topics on campus seems to be whether the professors are “good” or “bad”, whether their classes are difficult or not, and most importantly, whether you should take their classes. When you start hearing people talk about their professors, it’s easy to become a little apprehensive about the classes you had already registered for. You become nervous because you have no clue whether you had gotten any “good” professors or if you had unintentionally set yourself up for failure and gotten “bad” professors for all of your classes.

You know this because this may have been you, one semester, one year, or even one month ago. But after a bit of asking around you may conclude that everyone seems to have different opinions about the same professors. For instance, some people prefer a professor who is strict, with a very structured class, whereas others may prefer a professor who has a more relaxed approach. Two people could be taking the same class with the same professor and have completely different opinions about the professor.

After realizing this you may understand why it is so difficult to get a clear answer on who is a “good” professor and who is a “bad” professor. This could actually make you even more nervous than you were before because, at this point, you have no clue what kind of professor you prefer and in turn, this makes it altogether more difficult to decipher which one of your professors you should be most nervous about. On one hand, you may appreciate a class with structure but on the other hand, you would rather not have a drill sergeant as a professor.

Hopefully, you did not have a horrible first semester and made it through with only a handful of breakdowns (fingers crossed that none of those were directly linked to your professors), a new perspective on what makes a professor “good” or “bad”, and the knowledge that you cannot assume that just because someone else thinks a professor is “bad” that you’ll think the same thing as well. So, remember that everyone’s opinion is subjective and do not let that stop you from taking a class you had always wanted to take, because at the end of the day you may end up finding that the professor they did not like was the perfect fit for you.