I still remember the night before class registration, my freshman spring. Someone showed me the website Rate My Professors, just to check whether the professor for my discrete mathematics class was worth taking.

There it was: a 2.3 out of 5, stacked with fourteen “awful” ratings and not a single positive review in sight. I remember thinking, uh oh. But all the other sections were full, and I wanted to get the class over with. So I took it anyway.

That, in hindsight, was a terrible idea. I spent the semester convincing myself I was wasting time sitting through lectures. I even joked that I could teach the course better, except I wasn’t totally joking. That attitude turned into a habit of skipping class, tanking my participation grade, and teaching myself the material from the textbook. I ended up doing fine on my own, but the whole thing solidified one rule for me: never register for a class again without checking Rate My Professors first.

For the next few semesters, it became a ritual. I’d open Rate My Professors before I even opened the course list. But this fall, that routine didn’t help much.

When you start taking upper-division classes, the number of sections drops fast. Introductory courses like Calculus might have ten sections in the fall, but by your junior or senior year, you are lucky if the electives you actually want to take even show up on the schedule. Required classes usually have at least one section, and the one I needed to take did. Naturally, I checked the reviews for the only professor teaching the course.

When I opened her page, I saw ten reviews. Every single one rated her a one. Not a one and a half, not a two, but just a clean line of ones. The comments were even worse. “Genuinely the worst experience I’ve ever had in a classroom.” “Does not give partial credit.” “Goes super fast through lectures.” “Verbally abusive.” You get the picture. 

I hesitated. The class cap was only seven students. That number somehow made me more nervous. Still, I signed up. I figured, if it’s that bad, I’ll drop it.

Halfway through the semester, I can honestly say that those reviews were not entirely wrong, but somewhat incomplete. She turned out to be one of the kindest professors I’ve ever had. When she noticed I had the old edition of the textbook, she didn’t make me buy the new one. Instead, she photocopies the homework problem pages for me before every class. She’s tough, but she’s also generous, patient and genuinely wants us to understand the material.

This experience made me rethink how much faith I’d been putting in a website full of anonymous posts. Yes, Rate My Professors can help you gauge workload, assignment style or how lecture-heavy a class might be. It doesn’t tell you how the person actually is once you’re in their classroom. Those small, human moments rarely make it into the reviews.

Some of the reviews are fair. Every student has a right to share their experience, especially if a class really was disorganized or unclear. But a lot of them make me roll my eyes.

I’ve seen people complain about attendance policies more than once. One even said the professor “only” allowed four unexcused absences, which is basically two full weeks of class. That’s more than generous. We’re all paying to be here, and missing that many classes shouldn’t be something to brag about.

And then there are the reviews that dock points for things like having an accent or talking too fast. Sure, sometimes communication can be tough, but that’s not a reason to tear down someone’s reputation online. There’s a difference between saying a class was challenging and making it sound like the professor shouldn’t be teaching at all.

Plus, negativity is louder. Like any review site, people are more likely to leave comments when they’re angry than when they’re content. A student who earned a D for missing eight classes is probably not going to write, “Totally fair, my bad.”

We already fill out anonymous course evaluations at the end of every semester. Maybe those are the ones that should matter more, because professors actually read them and can do something about what we say.

So as registration season approaches again, I’ll probably still check Rate My Professors (out of habit, if nothing else). But I’ll try to take it less seriously this time. Because sometimes, a page full of ones doesn’t mean “bad teacher.” It just means “tough class.” And sometimes, the toughest professors end up teaching you the most.