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 
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
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.
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…
Existentialist philosophy class:
Prof. was one of those who tried to make his course as different as possible.
The assignments for the term:
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.”
[sub]Oh, that’s a thing of beauty. Truly it is.[/sub]
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.
What a coincidence, it happened at WMU, which is in K-Zoo.
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 
God, that is funny! Every few minutes I get the giggles again. He’d have had to kick me out.
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…
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.”
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.” 
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:
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.
What can I say? We raise the best asshole professors in Michigan.
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."
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.
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.
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.