As a former teacher, I know how hard it can be to do a good job in that profession. But as a current student, I also know how many people aren't even trying. So here are a few tips on Teaching Students So They Don't Secretly Hate You.

Announce a clear question-answering policy and stick to it

For example, "raise your hand if you know the answer" or "I'll choose someone randomly, and that person alone can answer", or "We'll go in order of seating", or even "Anyone who knows can shout it out."

Some teachers I know switch between all of these depending on how the mood strikes them. They'll ask a question, someone will raise their hand to answer, and while they're waiting for the teacher to call on them, another student will shout out the answer and the teacher will compliment them on getting it right. The next time the teacher asks a question, when the first student has learned enough to shout out the answer without raising his hand - the teacher chews him out for not behaving respectfully.

Some teachers put students on the spot - "What muscles does the median nerve supply?...Scott, you tell me this one." That's fine. What's not fine is if you don't know the student's name, so you just sort of look in their general direction without explanation, prompting the student you're looking at to be uncertain whether or not he has to give an answer, and other students who aren't being looked at not to realize they can't respond. And if you do specifically name someone, and that student can't answer, it's fine to open it up to the class - but you have to do this verbally, as opposed to with a furtive eye motion. Otherwise, people will have trouble figuring out whether you made the furtive eye motion or not, and then they'll either interrupt before the first student has gotten a chance to answer, or remain embarrassingly silent and prolong the first student's misery.

I keep having this thing happen where one professor stares at the student he wants to have answer a question, and if I answer a question when he's not staring at me, I get in trouble. And when he is staring at me, it takes me about ten seconds to be sure he's staring at me and not at the student behind me or to the side of me, and by that time someone (actually, it's always the same girl) has shouted out the answer; the professor inevitably tells her good job and chides me for not knowing the material. Needless to say, I hate him with a passion.

If Someone Volunteers An Answer, Don't Punish Them

Maybe a professor asks "What medication is most commonly used to treat carcinoid syndrome?" And I know this one, so after spending five seconds making sure the professor isn't staring at another student (and maybe being pre-empted by Interrupting Girl in the process), I say "octreotide."

And the professor says "And, Scott, can you tell me twelve possible side effects of octreotide?"

Well, actually, no I can't. So I'm sitting there looking like an idiot, while the whole class is staring at me, until just when I remember what the side effects are Interrupting Girl shouts something out - something wrong, maybe, but enough to make the professor give up and announce the correct answer.

So I've just undergone a mortifying experience and embarrassed myself in front of the whole class. I'd have to be insane to ever answer another one of that professor's questions. Even if I know almost everything about octreotide, there's always the chance he could follow up with a completely different question, or screw me over in some other way.

And then some teachers have the gall to wonder why no one is ever "able" to answer their questions.

And Don't Punish People For Asking Questions

Exactly the same as above. I ask "Excuse me, professor, what are the consequences of T cell deficiency?"

And the professor says, and this enrages me "Think about what T cells do in the body. What do you think would happen if they were deficient?"

Look. I'm not a stupid person. If there was a really simple way to get from the knowledge I already have to the knowledge I'm looking for, I would have taken it. I've just taken a chance, sacrificed some social status to admit I don't really understand this whole T cell thing, and you have flung it back in my face by asking me about the one thing I just admitted I don't know.

Maybe if you know a lot about T cells, it's really obvious from their role in the body what happens when they're deficient. But if I knew a lot about T cells, I wouldn't be a student in a class about T cells asking an apparently stupid question about them.

The point is, I have to say I don't know, I look stupid, Interrupting Girl shouts out the answer, and then I never ask you a question again.

Don't Ask Super Easy Questions

So a professor comes in and says "Who can tell me what organ pumps blood all around the body?" And after a few seconds of trying to figure out whether it's a trick question, everyone decides that it isn't, and he really is just looking for "the heart".

But no one says anything. First, it would look really crass and teacher's pet-ish. "Gosh, what a great question, is it...the heart?" Second, it would make it look like you were honestly pleased with yourself that you had the knowledge, that "oh! I know this!".

So the professor just looks around the class for a few seconds. Even Interrupting Girl doesn't want to take this one. And in the best case scenario, he realizes his mistake, answers his own question and keeps going. In a worse scenario, we all just sit there, awkwardly, until finally someone gives up, takes one for the team, raises her hand, and answers the question. And in the worst case scenario, the professor interprets our silence as us not realizing that the heart pumps blood, and we get treated to Remedial Lectures For Dumb People 101 for the rest of the session.

Don't Ask Definitions

I mean, sure, you can ask "What is an enantiomer?" or something, that's a perfectly reasonable question. I'm talking about the person who gets up in front of the class on the first day of school and says "Can anyone tell me what 'health' is?" Not in a rhetorical way to prove the point that health is a complicated concept, but actually wanting someone to tell him.

One of the first things you learn in philosophy is that doing this well is between hard and impossible. There's a classic first year philosophy exercise where a teacher asks you to define "chair", and then if you say "something you sit on", the teacher counters with "Then is the floor a chair, if you're sitting on the floor?" If you say "A separate object you sit on", the teacher counters with "tree stump". Say "An artificial object you sit on," you're countered with "bench". If you say "An artificial object you sit on with four legs", then suddenly an armchair isn't a chair. This is supposed to train you to move on to harder concepts like "good" or "truth", which philosophers are still working on after twenty-five hundred years.

But most people aren't philosophers, and their idea of this "game" is that they have one of ten million possible definitions in mind, and if you say anything else, you're wrong. "Health is the state of feeling well." No, that's too vague. "Health is the body functioning as intended." No, that doesn't capture all the subtleties. Then they trot out some definition that thirty experts spent a week drawing up at a conference held in a lavish resort in Switzerland, like "health is a triangle with biological well being at one corner, social well being at another, and spiritual well being at the top." Darn! That was totally going to be my next guess!

One of the most irritating teachers I ever had actually made a class of fifty medical students split up into groups of four, write down definitions of "global health" on a big piece of posterboard, and present them to the class. This took two hours of my life which I will never get back. In case you're wondering, the lavish-resort definition of global health is "health problems, issues, and concerns that transcend national boundaries, may be influenced by circumstances or experiences in other countries, and are best addressed by cooperative actions and solutions".

But knowing this doesn't make one a better doctor, any more than knowing an official definition of "chair" makes one a better furniture artisan. DOCTOR GELLING, GIVE ME MY TWO HOURS BACK!

Don't "Clarify" Assignments Midstream

Maybe in January, a professor assigns an essay on renal failure due March 1st. And maybe those are the only directions: "write an essay on renal failure."

And then in February, some student is a bit worried that she's not doing it right - fair enough - and asks the professor to clarify.

And so next class, the professor says "I was asked for some clarification on the renal failure essay, so here it is. I'd like a point by point comparison of acute and chronic renal failure. Focus on the treatments and don't bother going into all the different causes, they're not too important right now. And it shouldn't be more than 1000 words.

Which is all nice and well, unless someone just spent two weeks writing a 4000 word essay focusing on the causes of renal failure and without any specific comparison of acute and chronic.

Believe it or not, there are actually some students who finish work more than two hours before it's due. Or at least there were, until you incentivized them to stop doing that and to procrastinate like everyone else.

Don't Nitpick Every Step Of A Procedure

Most of what I learned in high school and college was facts. In medical school, I'm also learning procedures. Some of these are glamorous, like defibrillating a patient with a dangerous heart rhythm. Others are less glamorous but equally hard - like putting on a surgical gown without accidentally desterilizing it, or getting a drug from an ampoule into a syringe without it flying all over the place. Given a good explanation of how to do these things, five minutes or so to try it and figure it out, and simple answers to my questions, I can learn these. There are an astounding number of teachers who refuse to provide this.

Suppose after practice I have a ten-step procedure down except for steps 7 and 8. I ask a teacher for help, and she asks to watch me do it, and as soon as I start step 1, she criticizes some minor aspect of my performance: "You should hold that syringe closer to the tip", or "You should shake that bottle of medicine a couple of seconds more." And then asks me to start over.

Now I totally understand that it's important to get these procedures perfect, and that there's a role for little optimizing tips. But if you make me start a procedure over every time I don't do it in a perfectly fluid and elegant way, then I lose confidence, I get confused, and most importantly, we never actually make it to the step I seriously can't do before you have to go and help another student.

It's easier for me to get something down serviceably well, and then start tweaking each step to make it perfect, not to restart after every step if it isn't perfect and never even get to the end.

On a related note, there are certain things I can figure out in five minutes if I'm allowed to play around with them, but which I will never learn if you're hovering over me and giving inscrutable criticism every time I try. Surgical knots are like this. Give me a needle and a thread and I can eventually figure out how to tie them, but if you're hovering over me saying "No, no, you need to move your right hand hand over to the left, then place it through the loop near your index finger before crossing the two hands over one another and pulling a little bit towards me at a thirty degree angle - here, start over" I'm just going to stare at you blankly. And if that makes you less rather than more likely to leave me alone, we're never going to get anywhere.

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Obviously in addition to all of these things there are more important ways to fail as a teacher; don't engage students, present material in a confusing way, grade unfairly, and so on. These points are just the things that a monkey ought to be able to do, but which somehow manage to escape the attention of some otherwise brilliant doctors.