The 5 Professors You’ll Have in College

Feel free to call me a lame-o ala Rocket Power, but I actually go to most of my classes during the week. I get decent-ish grades when I show up without a hangover and feel guilty sleeping-in and half-assedly reading the power points online when my parents are paying all this money for a useless English degree, so I might as well show up. Now that I’ve ousted myself as moderately studious (…and I use that term very lightly) and since it’s my senior year, I can definitively say I’ve had every type of professor imaginable, from the ones who are so fresh off the boat from Latvia that their grasp of the English language doesn’t extend past the word “potato” to the ones that take it personally when you don’t show up to class because they had abandonment issues as a child, I’ve had them.

1. Ummm…. What?

That’s what goes through your head during lecture because you have NO idea what he just said since his Russian/Chinese/Spanish accent is so thick that it makes Honey Boo Boo’s Mom look like a bikini model. Usually these professors teach MASSIVE 500 person lectures where anyone who asks a question is automatically hated by the other 499 people with the logic of “shut the fuck up no one gets anything just join the party and wait for it to be done”, because, y’know, asking questions even when it’s a valid one means you have a vagina. If you’re a girl, you have two buttholes. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I never ask questions in class so stop thinking about that right now. Basically in these giant classes everyone just suffers through together and hopes that the curve gets them at least a C+ or so. For the smaller classes, well, it just turns into a joke. Everyone sits there confused and every question meant to start a discussion becomes automatically rhetorical about four weeks into the semester since everyone’s completely given up at this point and only show up since he counts attendance. It’s either that or the entire class period turns into a conversation about how to properly pronounce words completely irrelevant to the lesson like “chalk” and “bench” so the class can use the excuse of “We haven’t properly covered the material!” and get every paper, exam, and homework assignment pushed back a month. It takes a group effort though, and that one asshole in the back that actually takes his life seriously can ruin it for everyone.

2. Calm Your Tits, You Get Paid Regardless of if I Show Up

I like when professors don’t care if I show up. You know why? Because they’ve got their priorities straight. If it came down to “I become emotionally unstable when you don’t show up” versus “My panties aren’t in a bunch because I realize I get paid even if 1/1,000,000 people show up,” I’d go with the second option. I’m pretty secure with who I am as a person. If you’re a boring as fuck lecturer that speaks in a monotone and reads off the power point, then you really shouldn’t be offended when people don’t come running in droves to your class. You’re not fun. You’re also old and losing your hair. You don’t have much going for you at this point in your life, so why get mad about no one showing up? In fact, wouldn’t it make more sense if you tried to be awful and boring so that no one ever came? At least that way you still get paid and get to reclaim that 75 minutes you would’ve otherwise spent staring at a room full of 20-somethings trying to be discrete about dicking around with Twitter on their phones.

3. Professor Level: Beta

Picture a perfectly normal and professional looking professor, but then when class starts it all goes to shit because he’s the obvious bottom with the class being the top in this Lance Bass relationship. In other words, he has no presence and the class shoves its foot up his ass and tells him what to do rather than the other way around. Unfortunately it’s all the weird kids that lead class. Think about it, do any of the actual intelligent and charismatic people ever speak up and lead shit? No, because they’re smart enough to realize that this class is going to not only be easy, but hysterical at the same time if the weird kids lead it. So the kids that are way too into the subject matter for them not to have been sodomized with books by Chaucer as children speak up all the time and basically shut the professor down like the guy at chapter meeting who proposes more sober brotherhood events. The class basically turns into the professor trying to interject with ideas and attempts to direct whatever discussion is going on, and then everyone turns, laughs, points, spits, and goes on with whatever they were doing. He’d probably be more effective if he just left the room altogether.

4. Did You Get Your Teaching Degree From ITT Tech or Something?

This isn’t to say that he didn’t get his Engineering degree from someplace legit, just the teaching half of it came from someplace worthless. If you were to picture the diplomas side by side, one would be super official looking with that shiny gold sticker thing, and the other would be drawn with crayons and have some awkward colored pencil lines in there when he realized that crayons are the bitch of the 3rd grade art world and tried to switch halfway through. It’s honestly a painful and pitying experience to sit through this class. You know he knows what he’s talking about, but he’s conveying it so poorly that there’s absolutely no point in going to class because you knew just as much about the subject before you walked in as you did when you walked out. Sometimes these teachers just get completely off topic within the first five minutes of class and there’s no recovering. I’ve had lectures about Hamlet end with a discussion about whether the 2 for $20 menu at Applebees was actually worth the money. Consensus: it is, but then I went and got a C- minus on the paper we had due because the only thing I’d learned was that you can’t switch out the fried chicken for grilled if you order off that menu.

5. I’m Cool Too! I’m Hip! I Relate to Students!

False. You don’t. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being an old fuck that doesn’t understand that typing “google.com” into the Google search bar is completely pointless and the equivalent of running sideways when you’re trying to go forward. What is wrong on the other hand, are the professors that try to relate to students when they have no business doing so. You were born in the late 40’s early 50’s and are secretly convinced that every foreigner around you is a communist spy? Cool beans, embrace that shit. You talk about how you were out “twerking with my bff’s and listening to that dope beat by Dr. Dre”? Even writing that made me cringe so I can only imagine how awful hearing that come out of someone older than my Dad would be. There’s nothing wrong with having your students like you, but if they think you’re just a big floppy joke with a bad punch line then you’ve got a problem. Does Dr. Dre even make music anymore, or does he just peddle overpriced headphones with really cool commercials that make me wanna melt plastic shit in an abandoned warehouse? No idea, but either way your professor should be blissfully unaware that Dr. Dre is a person and not a knockoff version of Dr. Pepper.