Ever Wonder What The Hell Your Professors Do Over Winter Break? Our Resident Prof Clues Us In

Students often forget that professors are actual people too. Many times students have tried to beg and plead in order to get an extension on the final research paper, even sometimes asking me the day of the end of the semester if they can submit a paper they hadn’t already. Although I am paid to help students grow and learn, and it’s a job I take very seriously, my life doesn’t revolve around my students, or more importantly, their schedule.

With that in mind, when the semester ends, it’s not like I go into sleep mode and sit in my office, waiting patiently until the first day of the semester in order to function again. Shockingly, I have a life, and it’s a pretty damn good one at that. And so, over the winter and summer breaks, there are quite a few things that I do.

Decompress

This is the most important activity on this list. I’m like George Costanza after he got fired from the New York Yankees and was given a handsome severance package. After I’m no longer shaking in the corner of my room like I have post traumatic stress disorder, muttering continually to myself, “No more papers! No more papers!” I take a week to unburden myself. I wake up at 10AM (which is the adult equivalent of a college kid sleeping until 3PM). I rarely put on pants. My workout consists of walking from my apartment to the nearest restaurant for take-out. I watch re-runs of Frasier. Oh, and adult films. Lots and lots of adult films—remember, I don’t have pants on.

Talk Shit About Students

At our end of the semester parties, professors congregate and trade war stories from our classes. I’ve had a student believe that onomatopoeia was an ancient city near Mesopotamia. Another professor had a guy ask her if the Pythagorean Theorem was the name of a rock band. My department chair had a girl in his class ask him where the Vietnam War took place. Ah having fun at the expense of the moronic things our students say is priceless.

Catch Up On Real Life

We professors encourage class discussion. Sometimes some students don’t know where to draw the line. Other times, people talk too loudly before class as if other people in the room can’t hear their private conversations. So now I know it’s much much easier to get laid in college, which was already incredibly simple, than ever before. There are social media sites like Yik-Yak where people can post anonymous messages, and, apparently, this often is used to send out invitations for casual sex in each other’s dorm rooms. The future of America, people.

Drink, Drank, Drunk

What turns from innocent “let’s meet for lunch” coffee dates goes to, “screw it, I don’t have work tomorrow; let’s get wasted!” Now, I’m not doing keg stands or beer bongs like my students probably are, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not enjoying my youth just as much as they are (just in a more responsible, adult-ish way, like with glasses of scotch).

Look Up Next Semester’s Student Roster On Facebook

You know how when you go swimming, you dip your toes in the water first to get a temperature of the pool in order to prepare yourself for what you’re about to experience? That’s what I do for each semester, and thank God for social media, which allows me to do that. Before I even hold the first class, I already know who’s going to be the class douche, the hot chick, the nerd, and the much-needed comic relief.

Professor William Delafield is an adjunct professor who works at several different academic institutions. William Delafield is not his real name, obviously, because he’d like to stay employed at those academic institutions.

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