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I had a miserable class at UCSD with a "visiting professor". I had scored 100% on all quizzes and the midterm. Riding into the final exam with a A expectation. Two hours before the exam, I stopped by the library to see if one of the required books that never came into the school book store was on the library shelf. Score! I did a speed read of the material.

I walked into the lecture hall for the final. The prof had a very dour expression. After everyone was seated, he explained the reason for his bad mood. 3 students in the room had located the ditto masters for the final that the provost office dumped in the trash. They were discovered and sitting in the room. For their dishonesty, the rest of us would pay dearly. The final exam from the stolen ditto master would not be given. The exam would be an essay based on material in the book that was never stocked at the book store. Your final grade will be based on this essay. None of the midterm or quiz grades will be considered. The prof then announced that he was on the way to the airport to return to Princeton. Grading would be done by the TAs. No appeals accepted. Most of the class got a failing grade. I squeezed a C out of that crappy experience.

An equally difficult final exam occurred in my Genetics class under Dan Lindsley. We had 4 students from the med school that had returned to try to get a better grade. About 20 minutes into taking the final, one of them jumped up, shrieked and ran out of the room. Lindsley was a tough task master...may he be covered in Drosophila melanogaster throughout eternity.

“I had a miserable class at UCSD with a “visiting professor”.”

I have a similar tale of woe. I arrived as a freshman on campus pretty much lost. At the time to get into a class you had to get a punch-card ticket during a form of madness known as ‘open registration’. Freshmen, of course, got lowest priority on getting the tickets and on top of that fraternities and sororities would gather tickets for popular classes and professors.

I was told I had to take a foreign language. So I work my way to the Foreign Language table to be told “Chinese is still open but Russian has a short waiting list”. I foolishly thought Russian would be the easier language (it isn’t!) So I ended my freshman year with 8 units of ‘D’ in Russian. But a D is passing and I thus fulfilled my language requirement.