Ex-Rated: Sheldon Helms

Taking college courses as a high school student can be pretty scary, and professors play a major role in determining your success in these. To help facilitate current and incoming members of the Early College on their journeys as quasi-college students, Witherly Heights shall be collating students reviews of their ex-Ohlone College professors to help gauge whether or not their teaching style will fit you.

The following reviews are written about Sheldon Helms, a professor in the Psychology department at Ohlone College. Most Early College students have taken and will take Prof. Helms’s General Psychology class. 

TR: Helms is a very interesting teacher, to say the least. He is one of the best if not the best lecturer I’ve ever had. He makes the information very interesting, he gives time for us to write definitions and take notes, and he gives really interesting examples and stories. He also shows cool video clips, which gives our hands breaks from taking notes constantly. However, as a person, he is kind of a jerk since he is extremely harsh and untrusting. He does not accept late assignments, and he does not let you take the test if you are late for one. However, his classes are easy and to me very interesting, so that is enough to make my review of him a positive one. If you are debating taking Helms or not, you should.

SP: Psychology with Professor Helms was a very fun and interesting class. Helms had engaging and interesting lectures so I rarely felt bored in his class. However, he did make comments and told stories of past students, which may not have always been appropriate. His tests were also quite specific and often focused on information that was barely covered in class and only in the textbook. He also never returned tests, which I didn’t like, as it didn’t give me the chance to learn from my mistakes to better prepare for the final.

SW: He’s pretty good. I enjoyed his teaching, but ironically I actually wish he gave us homework. It was pretty hard to remember things just purely on notes when it came time for quizzes, and he didn’t let us keep the tests even after we took them so we could study what we missed. But other than that, he’s pretty O.K.

KW: I took Sheldon Helms in the spring semester of my 10th grade and I have mixed opinions about him. I think he was a very good lecturer, and he gave a lot of examples that helped me as I studied the course. He often tells a lot of stories of cases based on what we were currently learning in class, which is very helpful to refer back to when the test comes. Unfortunately, that is the only good aspect of his class. I noticed that he is very strict about rules and he does not react well to cluelessness or incompetence. He has very strict testing rules and if you forget anything on the tests, he is not forgiving. He also expects every student to come in on time and if you happen to come in late, he will pause the class and make a snarky comment as you walk to your seat. Lastly, he does not lecture on everything the book covers so he expects you to read the book and remember the books content as well, as it will show up on the exams whether he lectured on it or not. I do not recommend taking his class as there are many responsibilities that come along with merely showing up to class. You are expected to bring all of your own test material (bubble sheets), and you also must be on time for class. Another side note, don’t wear perfume or cologne because he is very “sensitive” to the smell and he will get angry if he has to inform the class about this more than once.

JA: I had a pretty mixed experience with Helms, but definitely wouldn’t take a class of his again. He was a good lecturer and engaging when he held class, but the semester I had him he missed tons of classes and then tested us on things that weren’t in the book that he probably meant to lecture about, but never got around to. On top of that, him yelling at an ASL interpreter left a bad taste in my mouth about his character. Still, there’s no denying I learned a lot in class.

IE: I thought Helms was an okay teacher. One negative thing about him was that he was, in my opinion, unnecessarily strict when it came to students making mistakes or needing to skip classes. Otherwise, his lectures were probably the most interesting out of all the teachers I’ve taken. What I really appreciated was how he would include personal stories and interesting facts to keep his classes from getting boring.

AH: The one aspect of General Psychology with Helms I liked was the fact that he told a lot of stories. Most of the time, however, they were completely irrelevant to the content we were learning in class. Additionally, for the semester I took him, he missed over 2 weeks of class and then tested us on stuff he would have taught us. As for being an amazing lecturer, I have taken classes with professors who are much better and more accessible for help. I wouldn’t recommend taking one of Helm’s classes. There are better options.

GV: Sheldon Helms is an evil genius. He is very knowledgeable about his field and is an incredible lecturer. He tells fascinating anecdotes about his life that make many vague concepts of psychology relatable. For example, in General Psychology, to explain the humanistic perspective, Sheldon told us about how he once used active listening, a key tool of humanistic psychologists, to score a free turkey. His classes also are not very difficult and tests are easy to study for.

But now comes the evil part. Sheldon Helms is rude, arrogant, and apathetic. Starting with rude, if you come late to class, by just a minute, he will mock you. He mostly refrains from outright insulting latecomers, but he will halt his lecture and glare at the offending student until he/she finds his/her seat. This ties into his apathy. Sheldon is completely inflexible and uncaring about his students problems. Helms is also arrogant. He frequently brags about the famous people he knows, and not a class goes by without him reminding his students of his intelligence.

From these heavy criticisms it seems like I would really dislike Professor Helms, but in reality he is my favorite professor at Ohlone. The best evidence of my true feelings about Helms is this: after all I saw of Helms in General Psychology last semester, I ultimately decided to take another one of his classes this semester, purely because he is teaching it.