Best professor abuse?

[praxim]

I'm taking a 400-level math class (for those in universities with strange numbering systems, this is a senior-level course), and I happen to be in it with a bunch of dolts. They may be nice dolts — I don’t know, I haven’t really met them — but they are dolts nevertheless. The professor, an older French gentleman, becomes noticeably more irritated with their general mathematical ineptitude by the day. So he’s started to rail abuse at some of them. Here are some of his more memorable comments (read them in the not-particularly-heavy accent of a frustrated Frenchman for maximum effect):

“How many parameters are there? What, don’t you know how to count? Ok...” He circled the parameters on the board in red chalk. “This is Kindergarten 101...”

“It’s not a trick question. It’s not even a math question. It’s a question of you understanding the English language.”

And, best of all, referring to a group of girls who have obviously worked together on homeworks (which he discourages but admits he is powerless to stop):

“When you work together, try to have in your group someone who is smart.”

This guy never fails to crack me up. So, what memorable derisive things have your instructors said?

[Incubus]

There is a sulking rapper-type fellow in my theater history class, who does nothing but slouch there the whole time. We had one class meeting where we met at the ampitheater to perform scenes from the Bacchae. Unimpressed with his lack of enthusiasm, the professor barked, "Get up here, pull your pants up, and put your hat on straight". The student meekly complied :eek:

[robertliguori]

"I'm going to beat you [points at student] over the head, with you[points at me].

We'd been giving him a hard time about Descartes' 'proofs'. Beware the CS major in a philosophy class, for they think recursively.

"I'm going to slap you so hard, the cops in Christainsburg [town a few miles away] will pick you up for speeding."

Yeah, that was a cool professor.

[Lockz]

Beware the CS major in a philosophy class, for they think recursively.

Wow, that's the first time in quite a while that I've laughed out loud to a post .... it's not even that funny I suppose, but I'm a CS student and it just hit me strangely.

[Tuckerfan]

This didn't happen in a class I was in, but one a couple of friends of mine had. This was in the late 80s when rap was just starting to become popular in this area. The class was a recording industry one and the students were playing the tracks they'd recorded in their first 4 hour session in the studio. One of the guys in the class was a white kid who was very heavily into rap, and when he played one of the songs he'd recorded, the professor asked the guy where he was going with the track.

Guy: Well, I don't. You see, I got the boom beat going on over here in this song, but in this other song, I've got the boom beat going on over there and I kind of like that. So I'm not sure if I should do this song with the boom beat here, or the song with the boom beat over there. I've also got twenty other songs, that I'm really digging on. So, I don't know if I want to do these two or one of those.

Prof: Twenty songs? Did you record all of those in one session?

Guy: Yeah, man.

Prof: Are you sure this is what you want to do? I mean, twenty songs in four hours, it's kind of hard to do any quality work in such a short amount of time.

Guy: You wouldn't understand. It's a black thing.

Prof: Yeah, but you're white.

[cromulent]

In an introductory physics course two years ago:
"How many of you think the answer is A?" A good number of students raised their hands. "All right. How many of you think the answer is B?" More students raised their hands. "Hmm. How many of you think the answer is C?" Again, several students raised their hands. "What about D?" A few students raised their hands.

The professor rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling. "Well, variety is the spice of life, I suppose..."

[NE Texan]

One evening I was running late completing my paper for a poli. sci. class that was due the next morning. After finishing it, I went to print it out, and found my printer was running out of ink in the ribbon (yes, I know that dates me, just leave it). I didn't really have a prayer of buying a replacement before class the next morning, so I decided it would have to do.

When I got the paper back, the prof had written: "Your argument, like your print, is too faint to be found…"

[cornflakes]

There is beauty in simplicity.

I took intro statistics at a community college, which might begin to explain why half of the class didn't have a clue what we were doing. Our teacher would regularly ask someone a question, wait through a few seconds of silence then, not in a shout but in a clear projecting voice, say "What, are you people STUPID? THIS IS EASY!", then he would scrawl the answer out on the board.

I was one of the few students that understood the work but in the end it didn't matter; he blew off grading the finals, gave everybody a B and probably headed out to a bar.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I got the paper back, the prof had written: "Your argument, like your print, is too faint to be found…"

Excellent!

[Elysian]

I took a practical mathematics course at Ball State. This was after I had successfully completed Calculus, but I had changed my major to English and the registrar required basic math to graduate. I couldn't talk them out of it :rolleyes:

That poor professor. If I had met him on the street I would have thought he was a math professor just from the way he dressed. He wore the suit jackets with the brown patches on the elbows and everything. He even had the posture of a math professor.

In the class there were a bunch of theatre majors, art majors, and me. After the first test, I managed to get an A+ on every assignment. Maybe it was because I was just so good, or maybe it was because everyone else was just so BAD.

The professor would spend half the class trying to explain why he used the letter X instead of a number. Then he had to explain how 2x and 3x became 5x. It was like trying to teach how to make fire to to bunch of chimpanzees, and seeing them try to eat it.

It was never anything he said. He was too understated to say anything that amounted to abuse. But he grew more and more slumped through the semester, ignored hands from particularly troubling people, and sighed and rolled his eyes a lot. I thought he was killingly funny, but the rest of the class didn't even catch on.

[Podkayne]

“When you work together, try to have in your group someone who is smart.”Oy, does that bring back memories.

Student in my office: "I don't understand why I do so badly on the tests! I do the homework every week, and I even study with a group and everything."

Me: "Um . . . yes . . . What kind of scores does your group get on the homework?"

Her: "Uhhh. . . ."

Receiving four copies of the same wrong problem solutions every week does make grading slightly easier, BUT . . .

[chukhung]

For Differential Equations I had a professor from Greece. He had his tics (quite literally--I think he must have had a mild form of Tourette's). He insisted that Greek letters in equations be pronounced the way Greeks pronounce them, which is sometimes quite different from the way they're normally pronounced in an American math class.

He announced the format of the final exam by stating, "This test will separate the sheep from the goats!" To this day, I'm still not sure which set of farm animals I was supposed to aspire to.

[Motorgirl]

"This test will separate the sheep from the goats!" To this day, I'm still not sure which set of farm animals I was supposed to aspire to.


Well, sheep go to heaven... :D

[Dangerosa]

I took a practical mathematics course at Ball State. This was after I had successfully completed Calculus, but I had changed my major to English and the registrar required basic math to graduate. I couldn't talk them out of it :rolleyes:

That poor professor. If I had met him on the street I would have thought he was a math professor just from the way he dressed. He wore the suit jackets with the brown patches on the elbows and everything. He even had the posture of a math professor.

In the class there were a bunch of theatre majors, art majors, and me. After the first test, I managed to get an A+ on every assignment. Maybe it was because I was just so good, or maybe it was because everyone else was just so BAD.

The professor would spend half the class trying to explain why he used the letter X instead of a number. Then he had to explain how 2x and 3x became 5x. It was like trying to teach how to make fire to to bunch of chimpanzees, and seeing them try to eat it.

It was never anything he said. He was too understated to say anything that amounted to abuse. But he grew more and more slumped through the semester, ignored hands from particularly troubling people, and sighed and rolled his eyes a lot. I thought he was killingly funny, but the rest of the class didn't even catch on.


I'm taking that class right now. Its college algebra. Is night school - the prof has a day job as an engineer. And I am clueless how we will complete the required coursework.

[F. U. Shakespeare]

In a complex variables class, the professor was simplifying an equation that contained a lot of trig terms.

At one point, he noted that two of the terms cancelled each other, because they were cos(theta) and cos(- theta). They were on opposite sides of the equation, and since cos(theta) = cos(-theta), they cancelled.

A few moments later, a guy in the front row spoke up, claiming that another two terms cancelled each other out: they were theta and -theta, also on opposite sides of the equation.

For a second, I agreed with him, until I realized I'd been confused by the similar simplification the professor had done moments earlier. It was an easy mistake to make. The professor told him he was wrong.

But the guy, either still confused (or just stubborn) persisted: Theta and -theta (on opposite sides of the equation) cancelled out.

The professor paused.

"You're saying that theta equals negative theta?"

"Yes".

The professor paused again, then asked, "Could I borrow some money from you?"

[haardvark]

Third year engineering thermodynamics, taught by a grizzled emeritus from Hungary who could not have given a fractional shit about the academic needs of any undergraduate.

On an almost daily basis, he would get PURPLE in the face from anger, and mutter under his breath, "Such ignorance, such lamentable ignorance..."

To one particularly mixed-up student: "The wealth of your stupidity astounds me!"

The one time he broke out of his standard, heavily accented flowery prose: "If you are not able to accomplish even this basic manipulation in time for the final exam, you are truly fucked."
<hr>
First year algebra: "If you find yourself unsatisfied with the way this course is taught, please feel free to bring it up with the first year cirriculum coordinator."

A student asked who that was.

Prof.: "Me. I wish you luck."

[JoeSki]

Harrdvark, you have me in stitches.

[Maus Magill]

In my High School German class, Dr. Gurganus was a very tough teacher. On the other hand, out of all my high school teacher, he prepared me for college the most. The last I heard he was teaching at The Citadel.

On day, a young lady in class would not stop yammering. He looked at her dead on and told her, "Frau:lein Green, if you do not stop talking, I am going to reach down your throat; rip out your larynx; and run up and down the halls screaming, 'Look what I got! Look what I got!'"

Ms. Greene didn't open her mouth the rest of the class.

[tremorviolet]

This is kinda abuse, kinda misogyny: The professor I had for Statics and Dynamics (kinda a pratical application of physics required for engineers) was a grumpy old guy who'd been at the university since before women were allowed to take engineering. The rumor going around was that one not-particularly-bright girl had gone to him for help and he'd told her that maybe she should consider just marrying an engineer...

[Loopydude]

In a high-school Chemistry class, the teacher was demonstrating the polarity of water molecules, using a stream of water and a lucite rod. By rubbing the lucite rod with silk, he was able to build up a considerable negative charge on the rod, and this charge would deflect the water stream, which normally fell straight down from the tap.

His first attempt didn't yield a dramatic enough effect, so he bagan to stroke the rod harder, and faster. The natural association was made, and one couragious class clown began moaning and grunting softly from the back row, growing louder with each stroke of the rod. The teacher was aware of it, but tried to ignore the first few seconds; however, his limit was reached fairly quickly, after which he glared at the offending student and snarled: "What you like to do in your free time is your damn business, but [I]don't[\I] bring it into my classroom, you understand me, you little deviant?"

What a hardass. God I loved that guy.

[Phlosphr]

Elysian - Whats wrong with brown elbow patches? At least mine are suede, and the sport coat a nice warm wool on cold days?

**Looks down at loafers, jeans, white button-down, and brown wool, suede-patched sport coat** :( Am I that much of a giveaway?

Not having too much time right now to cite some past prof. humor, I will say this threadis fun, and I'll keep an eye on it :)

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

A high school math teacher whom we all loved liked to get students to come up to the board and explain how they solved a particular homework problem.

One guy got up and gave this long, meandering explanation that left us all perplexed. The teacher thought about it for a second, and said, "Wow. Matt, have you ever considered a career in teaching?"

"Uh, no," Matt said, confused.

The professor nodded thoughtfully. "Good. Jasmine, would you do the next problem?"

Daniel

[ioioio]

My philosophy/logic professor was a smug Ivy Leaguer in his first year of college teaching. One day he was going on and on about something that obviously was not being comprehended by anyone in the class. "Could you give us an example?" I asked. He became very angry and said, "I don't give examples. If I start doing that, students will always think in the concrete instead of learning to think in the abstract."
Okay.... better we don't understand at all.
After class, his T.A. came up to me, apologized for his behavior, and gave me a nice example.

[praxim]

Not really abuse, but sort of a preemptive strike...

On the very first day of my freshman calculus course, the professor, and middle-aged Russian man who was an extroverted mathematician (meaning that he literally stared at our feet as he spoke to us) told us why we were in his class.

“Why are you in this class? Is it because Penn State needs mathematicians? No. A real mathematician would never take this course.”

This was, coincidentally, right after I decided I would like to be a mathematician.

Of course, I’ve had to take, as part of my program, courses I don’t think a real computer scientist/programmer should ever have to take, and it hasn’t stopped me...

[Gfactor]

Existentialist philosophy class:

Prof. was one of those who tried to make his course as different as possible.

The assignments for the term:

1. Read 7 books out of a list of 10.
2. Keep a journal and turn it in twice.
3. Term paper.

There were several freshmen and sophomores in the class who were hyper-focused on the mechanics of the class, and terrified at the lack of structure.

After the usual questions about whether the term paper had to be typed (this was in 1987), and double spaced, and how many pages it had to be, and how many sources one had to cite, came the doozy.

Doe-eyed Freshman: "How many pages should we read for each class meeting?"
Prof: "Think of it this way: You are already seven books behind. Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha."

[slortar]

Doe-eyed Freshman: "How many pages should we read for each class meeting?"
Prof: "Think of it this way: You are already seven books behind. Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha."

Oh, that's a thing of beauty. Truly it is.

[Ferret Herder]

I posted this in another thread the other day, but realized it works here too.

My advisor in grad school, a social psychology professor, taught a class on interpersonal relationships. Not just romance, but all kinds of relationships - friendships, relatives, rivals, and so forth. This was naturally taken by a lot of undergrads (especially women) who figured it'd be a "fluff" class, among other things, but it wasn't.

I remember one day in which she was lecturing about how that feeling of "fireworks" and heart-pounding from earlier on in a romantic relationship is your brain's way of telling you to pay really close attention to this person, but that something of that constant level of intensity can't last forever. For the relationship to continue on a good track, it has to mature into a comfortable feeling (with occasional bursts of fireworks), as you can't maintain that level of intensity for a very long time, as it'd wear you out. One young woman said she didn't see why it had to be that way, and my advisor's response included the comment that if you sought constant fireworks, then you were dooming yourself to a life of serial relationships that were broken off the moment the "magic" faded. The student seemed rather disappointed and a little embarrassed.

[Gfactor]

Oh, that's a thing of beauty. Truly it is.

What a coincidence, it happened at WMU, which is in K-Zoo.

[Roland Orzabal]

"I'm going to beat you [points at student] over the head, with you[points at me].

We'd been giving him a hard time about Descartes' 'proofs'. Beware the CS major in a philosophy class, for they think recursively.

"I'm going to slap you so hard, the cops in Christainsburg [town a few miles away] will pick you up for speeding."

Yeah, that was a cool professor.

I think I know the guy you're talking about. Mr. Rhea, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech, right? My friend and I always referred to him as PrickMan for his tendency to lay the verbal smack down on anyone he felt was beneath him. Note that that doesn't mean I didn't like him. He was a prick (Man), but he was a funny prick, and he knew what he was talking about.

Note: I no longer attend VT, so it's safe for me to post this, in case you were worried ;)

[Dung Beetle]

In my High School German class, Dr. Gurganus was a very tough teacher. On the other hand, out of all my high school teacher, he prepared me for college the most. The last I heard he was teaching at The Citadel.

On day, a young lady in class would not stop yammering. He looked at her dead on and told her, "Frau:lein Green, if you do not stop talking, I am going to reach down your throat; rip out your larynx; and run up and down the halls screaming, 'Look what I got! Look what I got!'"

Ms. Greene didn't open her mouth the rest of the class.
God, that is funny! Every few minutes I get the giggles again. He'd have had to kick me out.

[Max Torque]

Well, when I took Differential Equations for the second time, the professor was endlessly abusive. By the end of the semester, there were maybe ten of us left, and we caught it all. Mostly it was along the lines of, "Why do you not understand this? It is simple concept. My twelve year old daughter does these equations over breakfast." Etc. etc.

Before that, I had a rather fun Calculus II prof. He was an ex-drill sergeant, with a powerfull booming voice. He loved it when students would start to nod off in class. He'd gradually get quieter and quieter, and as his voice got softer the student would drop off. Said professor would then ease over near the student and speak at full "drop and give me 20" volume. Oh, the near-heart attacks that ensued....

[Hyperelastic]

I was riding in an elevator in the math building once and overheard an older, Germanic professorial type say to a colleague, "I haf a teorem dat no mathematics iss taught in Amerrican high schools, because any oder concluusion wud be at complete odds wit de efidence."

[Antigen]

I had an English teacher who used to tell us that if we couldn't spell properly we'd end up pathetic losers and nobody would ever love us. Handing essays back to the class, she stopped at one guy's desk and asked him "No marriage plans on the horizon, are there, Brad?"

Brad: "Um... no..."

Teacher: "I thought not."


My high school physics prof once caught a girl yawning a particularly gaping, bug-catching yawn in the middle of his lecture. He called out "Hey, nice tonsils. Yes, very wonderful tonsils. That's your name now." And Tonsils she was, for the rest of the year, to her dismay. We also had a "Droppy" (always dropping things in the lab) and a "Cologne" (macho Italian boy who would come in dripping with the stuff).

Just this week in Immunology, teacher to class jackass, who had been throwing paper airplanes (he's in his 20s): "You're just an idiot, aren't you." :D

[Mercury]

A bunch of us were visiting our thermodynamics professor's office to ask some questions, and my friend asked him what he got in thermodynamics when he was a student.

"What do you think I got?"

My friend facetiously guessed an A.

"Of course I got an A. I got an A in everything when I was undergrad. Except I got an A- in voice lessons."

:mad:

[Elysian]

Elysian - Whats wrong with brown elbow patches? At least mine are suede, and the sport coat a nice warm wool on cold days?

**Looks down at loafers, jeans, white button-down, and brown wool, suede-patched sport coat** :( Am I that much of a giveaway?

Actually, Phlosphr, your name is more of a giveaway than your dress. I mean, I can't even tell what you're wearing from over here.

If it makes you feel any better (and it may not) I was considering adding that the jacket with brown patches was also a uniform of philosophy professors. But I didn't because I thought that would confuse the issue. Also, math professors may wear the same jacket as philosophy professors, but they tend to wear better trousers.

Why both types of professors wear the same kind of jacket is a question you are probably more equipped to answer, being a philosopher and all.

[slortar]

What a coincidence, it happened at WMU, which is in K-Zoo.

What can I say? We raise the best asshole professors in Michigan. :D

[kunilou]

God bless my first Broadcasting professor, the nicest guy who ever walked the earth. So naturally, everyone blew off the class.

He never said anything about it. When the final exam came around (I think it was the first time everyone in the class managed to show up) he said

"There are rumors going around the department that this is going to be a hard final. I've even heard that I'm going to give you 100 true/false questions, 25 multiple choice questions and five essay questions.

Those rumors are true. You have one hour and 50 minutes. Good luck."

[Mama Tiger]

This is more professorial public humiliation than abuse, but it still scarred me for life.

I had a string of classes in a row -- 10, 11, 12, and 1. So by the last class, French, I was hungry. Sitting in class one day while the professor was lecturing us about something or other, my stomach let out a loud and looong gurgle during a pause. The professor's response? "In French, we call that l'estomac qui chante, the stomach that sings!"

My ears still reverberate with the laughter of my classmates.

[Magiver]

I had a law professor that was right out of the sitcom "paper chase". He would ask a question and then start down the line of students asking them what they thought was the salient point in the case. After each student gave a stupid answer he would say something like "you just lost the case and your client is suing you for incompetence" or "learn and memorize the location of the unemployment bureau". He would fire off his zingers in rapid succession moving on to the next victim.

I remember clearly being next in line and knowing the answer (but not the correct legal jargon. My answer to the question was "saying it doesn't make it so". He reared back his arm and was about point his finger at me when he stopped, thought about it and said "your absolutely right".

It's funny when it's not you.

[QuarkChild]

I had a mechanics professor in college whom I overheard in the hallway to say, "All my students are from the Planet Zort." I guess that doesn't count as abusive, since he didn't know I overheard.

[Snooooopy]

I had a mechanics professor in college whom I overheard in the hallway to say, "All my students are from the Planet Zort." I guess that doesn't count as abusive, since he didn't know I overheard.

He couldn't possibly have known this, but the quality of Zortian education in the field of mechanics is highly respected throughout the Alpha Quadrant.

[iampunha]

"I'm going to slap you so hard, the cops in Christainsburg [town a few miles away] will pick you up for speeding."

Yeah, that was a cool professor.

[blatant unapologetic hijack]

How long ago? I'm maybe 15 minutes from Cburg right now.

[/BUH]

[Roland Orzabal]

iampunha: Where ya be? Blacksburg? I hang out at Tech a couple nights a week; maybe we've met.

[iampunha]

Alas, not quite smart (or rich) enough for tech; you can find me a few minutes' drive from the radford campus. The information in my location field is not random.

[Lamia]

I didn't have any really angry or bitter professors, but I took Intermediate German with a rather stern Czech professor who previously only taught beginners. She had higher expectations for her first intermediate class than we were able to meet. In the first part of the semester every student was actually reduced to tears. And I don't mean all at once, I mean on several different occasions there was something so difficult or stressful in the class that it made someone cry.

Finally the professor realized that she was demanding too much of students at our level. She explained that she would be making some changes to the course, adding that she'd wrongly thought that "Intermediate students would know something already."

Ouch.

[Tracy Lord]

Not so much angry/bitter/abusive, but definitely a man with a fine sense of humor -- definitely necessary for someone as intelligent as he teaching high school seniors dumbed-down World History.

I started jotting down quotes from that class about halfway through, because I wanted to remember why I loved it so much.

--
Prof: Okay, come on, the difference between Columbus and the other guys. [pause] Pizarro and Cortez, they were something Columbus wasn't...starts with a C. [long pause] Ends with an "onquistador."

Prof: They poison him, shoot him, club him, shoot him again, and you know what he dies of? Drowning. But that's Rasputin for you. He's kind of a weird cat.

Prof: Ironically enough, guess who was the only Romanov left alive after the shooting?
Kid: ...Alexei?
Prof: That's right, the bleeder.

(a kid is eating in class)
Prof: You! You're on probation.
(ten minutes later, same kid is still eating)
Prof: You! You're on double secret probation.
Kid: Eh?
Prof: You heard me.

Kid: Hey, Tommy, you're up.
Tommy: I'm not up, you're up.
Kid: Nuh-uh! You're up!
Prof: Africa!
Class: ...
Prof: I'm sorry, aren't we playing "Name Continents?" Everyone keeps saying "Europe."

Prof: Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with George Orwell. Are you?
Kid: I think so -- didn't he write Animal House?
Prof: Oh, sure. Some Deltas are more equal than others.

Mr. J: So then the Soviets got pretty chummy with the Chinese, which sent the US a big red flag, pun intended-- [pause] Red flag? I guess you'd have to have been paying attention during the Russian Revolution unit to catch that one.

[Jayn_Newell]

One of the tutors I had last year was somewhat condescending towards us, and he also really liked the Divine Comedy. So after one of the first Dante lectures we were treated with this remark-

"I know you're all emotionless beings that have been corrupted by the media, but please try to be moved by this."

[Sami41]

"I'm going to beat you [points at student] over the head, with you[points at me].



That reminds me of my Junior High Band Director. He was constantly threatening to throw flute players at us (the low brass section).

[furt]

Had a History prof whose kid was a child prodigy, and when he handed back our tests he'd tell us what score his 11-year old had gotten; it was usually the highest grade in the class.

We all hated that little punk.

[Martiju]

Prof: Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with George Orwell. Are you?
Kid: I think so -- didn't he write Animal House?
Prof: Oh, sure. Some Deltas are more equal than others.



That is just brilliant! The best thing - there probably is scope for a film version of Animal Farm set in a university...!

[CandidGamera]

Not so much angry/bitter/abusive, but definitely a man with a fine sense of humor -- definitely necessary for someone as intelligent as he teaching high school seniors dumbed-down World History.

I started jotting down quotes from that class about halfway through, because I wanted to remember why I loved it so much. (snip)

Apparently, your History Professor is my long-lost older twin brother, because these are exactly the sorts of things I say. I'm a whiz with apparent non-sequiturs.

[Duke]

This one (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_fe_st/professor_removed_3&printer=1) will surely go down in history.

[Mercury]

I don't know how I forgot this one...

In 12th grade physics, we sat at these big, long lab tables. The chairs were very high off the ground, with no arms, and on wheels.

We had a really silly teacher who was prone to doing weird things. His class was sinfully easy, and most of the time we never paid attention. I sat in the back row, with my friends on either side of me, and my friend Will sat right in front of me.

One day, mid-lecture, Will turned around and started a conversation. The teacher walked to the back of the room...and sat on his lap.

Our teacher was a self-described 980 Newtons, and Will was of the tall and skinny persuasion. We all looked like :eek: for the rest of the day!

[praxim]

We had a really silly teacher who was prone to doing weird things. His class was sinfully easy, and most of the time we never paid attention. I sat in the back row, with my friends on either side of me, and my friend Will sat right in front of me.

Said teacher came up to me once, eyed my Tool shirt, and said, "You listen to that shit music?"

"Huh?"

"'s Tool."

"Ugh..."

[Katisha]

One of the tutors I had last year was somewhat condescending towards us, and he also really liked the Divine Comedy. So after one of the first Dante lectures we were treated with this remark-

"I know you're all emotionless beings that have been corrupted by the media, but please try to be moved by this."

Ha! I'm really tempted to file this one away for personal use... ;)

This is a great thread.

[Eureka]

One of my professors slapped me in the face twice.

Written that way, it sounds like professor abuse. Taken in the context of what actually happened, it is more than a little dramatic.

The course was Shakespeare. The professor was a man highly regarded as a Shakespearean scholar. One day in class, he walked up to me, while discussing a scene in one of Shakespeare's plays where someone gets slapped, and placed his hand against my cheek. It was odd. People are not supposed to invade your personal space and touch you without permission.

A few weeks later, while discussing Othello, the professor does it again. He borrows a sheet of paper from a friend of mine, rolls it loosely into a cylinder and taps my cheek exceedingly gently with it. This time he was explaining how various theatrical companies have dealt with the need in the script for a black man to strike a white woman (not always a good idea in a public place).

The funny thing is that he never struck any of the other students in that class.

[Hyperelastic]

This one (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_fe_st/professor_removed_3&printer=1) will surely go down in history.


The linked story raises two questions: (A) Why did they take him to the Coroner's Office instead of a police station or hospital?, and (2) is "Student Kacie Spears" related to Britney Spears? (incident took place in Louisiana, Britney Spears is from Louisiana, what are the chances?)

[neuroman]

This one (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_fe_st/professor_removed_3&printer=1) will surely go down in history.
They took the prof to the coroner's office for evaluation? He must not have been well at all.

I don't have any great zingers, but I have one or two tales:

8am honors engineering class, freshman year. I was sitting in the back row. Two thirds of the way up the auditorium, a pair of students exchanged a few quiet whispers. I couldn't even hear them, and I was closer to them than the professor. But the guy had ears like a rabbit.

The prof stops class and points up at them. "You two there, what are your names?" Names were given, he jots them down. "Look boys, I'm not going to lie to you" he said. "This is going to have an impact on your grade." And he wasn't joking.

Another time in an honors differential equations class, a girl was seated in the second row obliviously reading a newspaper right in the middle of class. And not discreetly either. No, the paper was spread wide open in front of her and she was holding it with both hands.

After about one minute of this, the professor let loose such a tirade on her that she probably never again even read so much as looked at the comics section.

[Llama Llogophile]

I took a Children's Literature course once, thinking it would be fun...

The prof looked like Woody Allen if he had been painted by Picasso in his blue period. And everything - EVERYTHING in children's literature was about sex. Very Freudian, but most of us weren't buying it.

So about two thirds of the way through the semester he was giving his usual sexual schtick about the book we had just read (probably Goodnight Moon...), and the class was disagreeing.

He finally gets ticked off and says, "Well, the very fact that you are resistant to this interpretation MUST mean that you agree with it, possibly for personal reasons!"

A few started to object, and then shut up.

(My reaction was to feel like I was in a scene from Life of Brian. "Well what kind of chance does that give me? All right, I AM the messiah!")

[joazito]

Circuits Theory teacher. He was witty every single class, and immensely entertaining.

One of the not-so-bright students had a tremendous capacity for making consistingly stupid questions. All other teachers just took deep breaths and cope with him, but not this teacher. One day he said "I'm going to get a yellow and a red card, after two questions that's it!" (after football/soccer rules). Next class we were surprised by his keeping his promise - he DID get the yellow and the red card and sure enough he used them on mr. not-so-bright :). He also said extra questions would be €20, one of the guys even waved a bill to get him to answer.
He also made me sit at the whiteboard after not keeping quiet. (this was a university class)
He also made a red dot on the board for "hardcore" matter.
He also noticed how there was a total lack of female students that year. He said "last year we had two, guess I should have flunked them."
He also - oh nevermind. The guy was just great.

On a similar note... Teacher displays porn during exam (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1998218.stm).

[Melandry]

All last year, I had to put up with the fellow grad student from Hell. He had no social skills, his hobbies were coming to class 15 minutes late and asking questions purposefully designed to infuriate the professor, then bragging about it afterwards. He was so horrible in class that a professor from another department whose class he was taking had to come meet with our department chair and tell her to restrain her student. The whole year was a nightmare, and the rest of us grad students practically threw a party when we were told he had been "asked to leave."

One day, in the middle of a class on Cicero, he interrupted the professor to note that Thedor Mommsen considered Cicero "an unprincipled opportunist, a mere rhetorician, in his treatises a flabby journalist and in his speeches a shifty lawyer." The professor is a respected Cicero scholar, btw.

She just stared at him for a good 30 seconds, and then she asked, quite calmy "So why should we read Cicero?"

Oh-so-witty asshole says "So we can understand Mommsen better.*"

Wrong answer, bitch. The professor spent the next 30 minutes calmly explaining why Cicero is a key figure in Roman history who is worth studying even if one does not like him as a person, carefully exposed the biased techniques which Mommsen used to "prove" that Cicero was such a horrible person (turns out she had researched the topic thoroughly once for a possible paper) and concluded with "And if anyone here still doesn't feel that Cicero is worth studying, they can get out of my class."

So, no witty zingers here, but considering how I felt about this asshole, it was one of the best classroom moments I've ever experienced. Unfortunately undermined by the fact that she apparently regreted it later and sent out two emails apologizing for losing her temper in class. She was perfectly calm and reasonable throughout, IMO. I almost emailed her back and said "Don't apologize!"

*Note; He may not have been kidding, as he did have a tendency to exalt secondary sources far above primary ones.

[Muffin]

5th thorough 7th form English teacher to young student Gary Gray: "Gray, you blithering idiot!" (more often than not accompanied by beaning Gray in the head with a piece of chalk from across the classroom).

[Scarlett67]

Re "Teacher displays porn during exam" (in which a teacher accidentally projected porn from his computer onto a screen):

When I was in high school, some kids were goofing around and found a copy of Playboy in the history teacher's desk. They thoughtfully taped it (centerfold facing out, of course) onto the pull-down map, which they rolled up again. Next class period, teacher pulls down the map to illustrate a point. Hilarity ensues.

[tomndebb]

In the sprit of Melandry's post:

I had a classmate that had fully persuaded himself that all "modern" (post-1960) pedagogy was a waste, that everything promulgated by the Church since Vatican II was probably heresy, and that he had provided himself a far better education that the rest of us had by going back to earlier texts.

He was also a bit misogynistic, believing that women should probably not worry their little heads about collegiate courses.

So one day, after being a complete PITA through most of a theology course taught by a woman, he tried to demonstrate that her "modern" point of view had already been refuted by Thomas Aquinas.

At that point, she interrupted her presentation to quote the relevant section of the Summa verbatim in Latin, translated it to English, demonstrated how his translation was corrupt and that his understanding of the text was in error even if his translation had not been, and provided a clear link from Thomas's actual text to the theological point that had been reiterated in the Second Vatican Council. All this without referring to a single note.

The class cheered.

[BrotherCadfael]

Not abuse []i]by[/i] the professor, more like abuse of the professor:

I was taking International Economics (at this point, I can't for the life of me remember why I was taking International Economics, but I was).

The professor was, as economics professors tend to do, tossing out glittering generalities, and the students were all faithfully copying them down in their notebooks, without a shred of cognition.

Not being a real big notetaker, perhaps I was paying a bit more attention to the content of the lecture. Or maybe I was just bored and wanted to be a pain in the ass.

Anyway, something struck me as odd, and I raise a hand.

"Professor", I said, "you said so-and-so, right?"

The professor agreed.

"OK," I replied, "that is equivilant to saying such-and-such?" (I have long since forgotten the specifics of the lecture.)

Again, the professor agreed with my reformulation.

"Which implies this-and-so?"

"Yes".

"Which is another way of saying this-and-such"

"Mm-hm" (He's getting a bit impatient at this point, perhaps wondering where all this is going).

"So what you are saying is that inflation causes unemployment?"


I had him. I had, with precise logic, proven that the entire thesis of his lecture for the day was equivilant to a contradicton, which any mathematician (or even math major) would tell you proved that his entire thesis was invalid. I anxiously awaited his response.

Increadibly, he elected to brazen it out: "Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

At this point, even the most dimwitted of my classmates were uneasily looking around, saying "Wait a minute..." under their breath.

I ultimately got a "D" in that course. Never before or since have I ever felt pride in such a grade, but I have always valued that grade as a badge of honor, in the fight against ignorance.

[Astroboy14]

Not my story, but it happened to a friend of mine:

He had gotten an exam back, and had done less well than he had expected. Looking closely at the test he found that he had made a small error on one question (something along the lines of mistaking a poistive sign for a negative sign in the middle of a long series of calculations); and he had recieved no credit for the question even though the rest of his calculations were correct.

He approached his professor with the test, to see if he could get some credit for the question. The professor (Dr. Shu I still remember; and he wasn't even my teacher!) looked at the exam, said "You build bridge. Bridge fall down. Answer wrong." And handed the test back.

[Green Eyed Stranger]

Not my story, but it happened to a friend of mine:

He had gotten an exam back, and had done less well than he had expected. Looking closely at the test he found that he had made a small error on one question (something along the lines of mistaking a poistive sign for a negative sign in the middle of a long series of calculations); and he had recieved no credit for the question even though the rest of his calculations were correct.

He approached his professor with the test, to see if he could get some credit for the question. The professor (Dr. Shu I still remember; and he wasn't even my teacher!) looked at the exam, said "You build bridge. Bridge fall down. Answer wrong." And handed the test back.

This kind of response has always bothered me. I know for sure that I wouldn't ever drive on a bridge that had been designed in 50 minutes with no references.

My story comes from Calc II. We had a series of exams through out the year covering the material. On one particular exam, every one bombed. Seriously, you passed with a D if you got 17 percent.

Fast forward to the final review. We get to the section that was covered on the aforementioned exam, and the professor announces:

"This section won't be on the final."

A hundred some students breathe a sigh of relief, before he goes on:

"The purpose of the final is to show me what you know, and you've already shown me that you DON'T know this stuff."

Ouch.

Take care,

GES

[robertliguori]

I think I know the guy you're talking about. Mr. Rhea, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech, right? My friend and I always referred to him as PrickMan for his tendency to lay the verbal smack down on anyone he felt was beneath him. Note that that doesn't mean I didn't like him. He was a prick (Man), but he was a funny prick, and he knew what he was talking about.

Note: I no longer attend VT, so it's safe for me to post this, in case you were worried ;)

Yup, that's him. And he was indeed funny. And a prick sometimes. But words cannot describe how cool it was to hear him refer to a student's prevarications as "Horseshit!" and move on to the next.

Heh. 'Nother example: once when he did that to me, I wrote up a formal logical proof of my conclusion, and presented it in the next class.
Rea: "Yup. Still horseshit."
Me: "Formal logic is horse shit?"
Rea: "When it's you doing it."

[Helen's Eidolon]

Oh-so-witty asshole says "So we can understand Mommsen better.*"

Read.. Cicero... to understand... MOMMSEN?

If that isn't the most misguided thing I've heard all week.

(PS: You're a grad student in Classics?)

[Melandry]

Read.. Cicero... to understand... MOMMSEN?

If that isn't the most misguided thing I've heard all week.

(PS: You're a grad student in Classics?)
Well, he was German, so maybe he was really keen on Mommsen...I still have no idea if he was serious or not, this is the same guy who once told us that there's no evidence for worship of Athena outside Attica before the 5th century so Athena's role in the Odyssey must be an interpolation (of the so-called "Athenian Recension'). He could say all kinds of crap with a straight face.

Yup, 4 years into a PhD program. Do you do Classics also?

[Tuckerfan]

This guy knows how to do the smackdown. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/15/boffin_god_911/)A physics professor at a Louisiana university has been suspended and is being held for evaluation after allegedly flying into a fit of rage in front of his students.

Louis Houston, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette boffin, apparently let his emotions get the best of him during a Wednesday class. The professor is said to have slapped one student before claiming he was a god.

"Then he told us if we got out of our seats he's gonna kill us," student Kacie Spears told KATC-TV. "He went on the black board and wrote "911 now," so we were really in fear for our lives."

(snip)

It should be noted that the University's theme for this year's homecoming is "Feel the Rage!". ®

[Scarface Z]

"alright you little shit-heads, we're going to do something different today and maybe 3 or 4 of you are going to think 'hey that was pretty cool' 5 of you will say 'that was okay' and the rest of you are gonna say 'that was the stupidest thing i ever did, he is a asshole!' but i don't fucking care, we're doing it!"

the immortal crazy calculus teacher....

[Helen's Eidolon]

Well, he was German, so maybe he was really keen on Mommsen...I still have no idea if he was serious or not, this is the same guy who once told us that there's no evidence for worship of Athena outside Attica before the 5th century so Athena's role in the Odyssey must be an interpolation (of the so-called "Athenian Recension'). He could say all kinds of crap with a straight face.

Yup, 4 years into a PhD program. Do you do Classics also?He sounds like a weird, weird man. Yes, I'm in Ancient History, finishing up my BA and applying for grad school this year.

[Krinthis]

I had a very bizzare Physics Professor for Wave Mechanics sophomore year. The following exchange was probably the best:

Student: Whats on our midterm?
Professor: Uhhh, exactly 29 questions.
Student: Multiple choice?
Professor: Yeah, you can choose to suffer or you can choose to die.

We actually wrote down all his more interesting quotes - most are more strange than abusive though.

[Marley23]

My 11th and 12th grade English teacher was named Mr. Dietrich. He liked to style himself as an old-school type, but he was pretty quirky about it. For most of those two years, he would penalize students for all sorts of minor infractions and tell them as he did it. Since this was high school, chewing gum was probably number one. He did chew gum himself, but explained that none of his rules applied to him "because I have a high school diploma." He never said a word about college, and sometimes denied having gone to at all. Late senior year, he finally admitted he'd attended St. John's. The two incidents I remember best:

Once, my friend Wasim fell asleep in class. Wasim's last name started with an A, so he sat in the second row. When Mr. Dietrich noticed that Wasim was asleep, he quited down and moved toward his desk. The class noticed what was going on and fell silent. Finally Mr. Dietrich was directly in front of my sleeping friend. There was a pause. And then, at the top of his lungs, he bellowed "WASIM!"
My friend woke up with a frighted start and almost fell out of his chair. Great laughter ensues.
In high school, I imagine every school had that one girl who, while not being the smartest, prettiest or most talented, convinced herself that she was all of those things and more. This made her very unpopular, so she considered herself everyone's victim. She was in the class too. One day, while we were reading The Crucible, Mr. Dietrich began explaining Abigail Williams. A girl who was self-centered, needy, felt persecuted... and very slowly, a remarkable thing happens. Every eye leaves Mr. Dietrich. And finds this girl. By the time he's finishing up his explanation, everyone in the room was looking at this one girl, who didn't have a clue what the 25 us were thinking. We've never been sure if this was the most brilliant and subtle abuse in history, or a bizarre coincidence.

My 12th grade AP Physics teacher had to be the best at being mean. The year before I had him, he refused to accept a student's lab. He said there were mistakes on it. The student protested, because of course he knew better than his 50-something-year-old Physics teacher.
"Anyway," Mr. Young said, "there's a hole in your paper."
"No there isn't," the student said. Mr. Young immediately took his pen and stabbed a hole in the paper.
"There is now." Later on, for reasons I forget, he threw the student's pen out the fourth floor window.

I fell asleep in his class once and was told "Marley, the next time you fall asleep, I'll set your beard on fire." No repeat performances there.

One student in the class was accepted to UPenn early, which basically mooted his entire senior year. So he never paid attention and often went to sleep. One fine day, Mr. Young stopped writing on the blackboard when he saw the man sleeping. He took a piece of chalk, threw it, and hit the young man between the eyes. Good afternoon!
Some time later, he repeated this trick with a friend of mine who was talking instead of sleeping. After he threw the chalk, he told my friend to stand up and turn around so the class could see. There was a yellow chalk spot right over his heart. Mr. Young, you see, was an artilleryman long ago.
But the most fun was the long-running antagonism he had with this same friend. My pal thought he knew everything about physics, and by high school standards, he was probably very close. So he would often tune Mr. Young out and play games on his graphing calculator. You could do some fun things with those. Whenever Mr. Young caught him, which was often, he would erase the calculator's memory, which didn't do anything except require my friend to get the games from someone else's calculator again the next day. Near the end of the year, Mr. Young got tired of doing that, and decided this calculator was going to pay the Ultimate Price.
He confiscated it again, as usual, and deleted the memory. Then he turned the calculator around and pulled out a small screwdriver. He took something small out of the back, then returned it to my friend. I wish I remembered the details, but in so many words he explained he'd deleted the calculator's memory. He hadn't just erased the games this time- he'd erased everything. The numbers were gone. The TI-85 was now completely useless, none of the buttons did anything except On and Off. The year still wasn't over, and we had finals to do.

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

This kind of response has always bothered me. I know for sure that I wouldn't ever drive on a bridge that had been designed in 50 minutes with no references.
Ah, no references. I had a high school calculus teacher that told us everything would be open book, but that 50 minutes would not be long enough to finish the test if you had to look everything up. It was great when there was just one thing you needed to check, but you certaintly couldn't coast.

He uttered one of my favorite lines I ever heard from a teacher: "Ten years from now, you won't remember most of these formulas. If you remember where to find the formulas, though, I've succeeded."

Then, in my first year of college, I had a physics prof who wouldn't allow any books or references at all. He handed out three sheets of blank paper with each exam, and we had to do our work on those sheets and hand them in. On one of the tests, we had to calculate the volume of a sphere. I couldn't remember the formula, but since I was a year ahead in math, I knew how to derive it. I was mighty proud of myself, but he marked the question wrong. I was outraged, figuring being able to derive the formula was more important than just remembering it. He disagreed. He said that we were told to memorize the formula, and I hadn't.

4/3 pi-r-cubed. I still remember it 20 years later.

[Kythereia]

We had wrestling bouts with our history teacher in high school. No joke.

My seventh-grade math teacher threw chalk at us...

I think one of my elementary teachers pushed a kid down a stairwell.

[NinjaChick]

Then, in my first year of college, I had a physics prof who wouldn't allow any books or references at all. He handed out three sheets of blank paper with each exam, and we had to do our work on those sheets and hand them in. On one of the tests, we had to calculate the volume of a sphere. I couldn't remember the formula, but since I was a year ahead in math, I knew how to derive it. I was mighty proud of myself, but he marked the question wrong. I was outraged, figuring being able to derive the formula was more important than just remembering it. He disagreed. He said that we were told to memorize the formula, and I hadn't.

4/3 pi-r-cubed. I still remember it 20 years later.

:eek: :confused: :(

[Burrido]

Not real abuse, but my pharmacology teacher is such a boring speaker. He constantly yawns and looks out the window and generally just looks bored as hell to be there. He'll launch into a lecture, walk over to the window, stop talking and look outside for a few seconds and then continue again. Sometimes he will practically sleep on his podium and gab on. He's also a very slow speaker who will constantly pause to gather his thoughts. I just wanna shake him, slap him across the face, and yell "Get it together man!".

[little_a]

One of the tutors I had last year was somewhat condescending towards us, and he also really liked the Divine Comedy. So after one of the first Dante lectures we were treated with this remark-

"I know you're all emotionless beings that have been corrupted by the media, but please try to be moved by this."

you're a johnnie?!

[Hostile Dialect]

Haven't had a particularly abusive professor [yet], but my basketball coach in high school was rather disappointed in our enthusiasm and (particularly) our running during practice, so he would bring his 12-year-old son to practice and say "If my son beats any of you, everyone runs again." Worked like a charm.

[ErinPuff]

Algebra II in high school:

"Latus because it's a line, and rectum because it relates to you!"

"A matrix just sits there, like some of my students."

I know there were other good lines from that teacher, but I don't remember them.

My old band director:

"If I were a Marine, and I heard you playing 'Semper Fidelis' like that, I'd shoot you!"

"mp does not stand for 'mounted police'!"

"I should have been a surgeon, to take heads out of butts!"

The math teacher I had sophomore through senior years was a very nice woman who would occasionally threaten to beat the crap out of people. "Don't make me come back there and smack you guys around! I will if I have to!"

Tenth grade English teacher:

"My God, you were *born* faster than that!" -when it took someone a long time to answer a question

"They're the cheap dictionaries--they're not in alphabetical order." -when someone was looking something up--she believed it, too

"This is not the Shakespeare 500! Slow down!" -when we were reading Shakespeare really fast

My 10th grade American history class only went up through the Civil War. First semester of junior year I had modern European history. Our teacher would keep referring to things like World War I, and we would have no idea because we didn't get that far. So he said, "Do you remember—oh, I'm sorry, you're the class that never learned American history."

My philosophy teacher senior year was much with the snarky comments, but I can't remember any.

This year, my French professor is very much with the snarky comments, and I do remember some (like in the OP, these should be read with a frustrated-Frenchman accent):

"I should get half the salary of whoever teaches your next class, because who woke you up? I did!"

"What does it mean when something is silent? It means it DOESN'T MAKE ANY NOISE!"

"Je travaille, et vous… dormez, oui!"

"Now you can go around and tell everyone you know that you're wrong, and you can say it in French."

"Friday you're out of it; Tuesday you're extinct..."

"Memory gets weaker as you get older, so I'm seriously worried about you."

"Are you on downers or what?"

"Genève est en France? They must have moved the border last night."

[praxim]

My probability teacher probably didn't mean any offense by this, and it wasn't really an insult, but it did sound odd:

"I don't fail nobody, man! ... [much later] ... Hey, you were in my class last semester, tell them!"

[Sternvogel]

Some people doodle. I'm not an artist, so when my mind wandered during lectures, I'd do such things as trying to list all the Davises I had ever heard of. During a discussion of Emily Dickinson one day, I decided to draw a grid, black out a bunch of squares, then fill the remaining spaces and construct a crossword puzzle. As Dr. Harkey walked around the room, he noticed my little effort, and deadpanned: "Mr. Sternvogel*, a four-letter word for 'Student who does crosswords in class' is F-A-I-L." Fortunately, the prof had forgiven (if not forgotten) the little incident by the time I graduate. Not only had I aced the class, but I was voted the outstanding senior English major, and Dr. Harkey even announced the award by reading a bit of doggerel he had composed by explaining what each of the letters of my name stood for. "S because he's studious, T since he's tenacious", etc.

* not my real last name

[Lazlo]

Heh... This is bringing back fond memories.

There was this kid in my Fluid Dynamics class that had the annoying habit of asking difficult questions that had nothing to do with the material at hand. One day he asked a particularly bizarre question and while the prof was thinking about it, made some kind of smug remark about it being too difficult. Dr. Leslie just looked at him and said, "You know, if you were one third as smart as you pretend to be, you wouldn't be at a public school in Shitwater, USA."

Everyone started to laugh, then a few of us stopped as we realized the implicit insult to the rest of us.