Garrido 1 Holli Garrido Robert Arnold Honors Seminar 8 November 2011 To Rate, or not to Rate?

I had honestly never heard of ratemyprofessors.com until some friends of mine started using it as a resource to decide where to enroll in classes and with who. If this was more like facebook, in the sense that you can see the name of everyone who rates the professors, I feel like it would be more valid than anonymous comments that could be coming from anyone, student or teacher, and even from people no longer enrolled at the university. I do not plan on using such a website to decide where to enroll because I am more concerned with completing what I need for my major, the honors program, and my minor, If I get placed with a less than ideal teacher than it will simply be a challenge for me to overcome our differences and come out with a good grade regardless. What was surprising to me is that professor Berman was fired even with his years of experience and no actual crime committed, and he even confessed to his wrongdoings. I agree with the author that a simple suspension would have been a more appropriate punishment rather than an all out dismissal from the school. Then again, after reading the first article it became clear to me just how influential fractal thinking can be, not just for an individual but in how they make decisions and judge others. I also thought it was interesting that what teachers found to be important attributes were not always what students found to be important.