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.
[blatant unapologetic hijack]
How long ago? I’m maybe 15 minutes from Cburg right now.
[/BUH]
iampunha: Where ya be? Blacksburg? I hang out at Tech a couple nights a week; maybe we’ve met.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
That reminds me of my Junior High Band Director. He was constantly threatening to throw flute players at us (the low brass section).
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.
That is just brilliant! The best thing - there probably is scope for a film version of Animal Farm set in a university…!
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.
This one will surely go down in history.
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!
Said teacher came up to me once, eyed my Tool shirt, and said, “You listen to that shit music?”
“Huh?”
“'s Tool.”
“Ugh…”
Ha! I’m really tempted to file this one away for personal use… 
This is a great thread.
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.
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?)
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.
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!”)
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.