The Four Types of
Students Every Professor Hates
http://angryprofessor.wordpress.com
I have
a confession to make right off the bat: I’m not a professor. However, before you jump to the conclusion
that my writing of this article is as logical as a priest giving marriage
counseling or Aunt Jemima recommending lubricants, I’ll have you know that I
spent two years as a Teaching Assistant while in grad school. Why am I not a
professor now? These students.
1.
The Sage- We all know this asshole. The kid who can’t seem to put their hand down
like they shot their arm full of Viagra and your class material is the most
arousing thing they’ve seen since they walked in on their cousin
showering. The only way to get rid of
their throbbing arm-rection is to call on them, and that’s when the trouble
really starts. The Sage doesn’t just
give answers and make comments, the Sage dispenses wisdom and makes
pronouncements. From their Tower of
Truth, the Sage looks down upon us mere mortals and, taking pity on us, tells
us how it really is. Meanwhile, the
sheer volume of bullshit spewing out of their locked-open maw could choke a
sarlaac. Don’t get me wrong though, the
Sage can be a very useful individual. I helped
teach philosophy classes, so on those less-than-rare occasions that I walked
into the classroom without having recently read the material I was about to
cover, I could let this perpetual-speaking machine carry the entire 50 minute
period. Plus, no professor wants to face
a hostile class, and nothing draws the sullen masses’ ire away from you like
the kid who won’t just shut the fuck up.
http://4sbccfaculty.sbcc.edu
4 out of 5 students in this class recommend shutting up before your lips are stapled together.
2.
The Exasperator- Much like a freshly neutered
dog chasing a rocket-powered nut-sack, this poor bastard knows he or she is missing something vital and desperately but
futilely pursues it. I don’t want to say
this person is dumb, because not every Exasperator I’ve taught was dumb. They just give off the subtle impression that
one day you might find them crying outside the classroom because they forgot
how to open the door. Every new concept
is pure torture for this student, and that means torture for the
professor. Painstakingly dissecting minor
points in front of the class with this person is bad enough, but that party is
only 50 minutes long. The real fun
happens during that long, dark waterboarding of the soul known as office hours. I’ve often found that Exasperators are those
kids who are really good at memorizing facts, but really bad at connecting
those facts to other facts or understanding them as part of larger concepts. The only thing to do with them is treat them
like the glorified zip drive that they are.
Make sure they know exactly what to say, and they’ll spit it back out on
the tests. They'll always get points off for not developing their own opinion on it, but this is the real world damnit, even if they had their own opinion no one would care.
www.teara.govt.nz
"Excuse me sir, I think this is job is impeding my natural right to self-determination...Yessir, I'll get back to work."
3.
The Crusader- This student is basically The
Sage, but angrier and more specific. If
I were to compare them to a dog who kicks his leg when you scratch that one
spot on his belly, this person’s belly is their brain, the scratching is the
mere mentioning of a certain topic, and the leg kicking is them hulking out in
rage. So…not really much like a dog at
all. More like a person with a steam
burn stepping into hot shower, and then trying to argue the shower into
submission because the shower got water on their burn. Analogies are hard. Harder than a priest at a playground…nailed
it. Anyway, The Crusader may sit
silently in class for the whole semester, and then on the last day, when you
walk in and say “’Sup, cats and kittens?
Who’s ready for Winter Break?” they suddenly have a mass grave’s worth
of bones to pick with you about why winter break is counter-productive, the
various civilizations destroyed by winter break, and the way in which you, as a
professor, are a terrible person for mentioning it.
Winter Break at Bergen-Belsen, 1942
I once had a student who almost never came to
class, but one day he showed up and argued furiously for the whole class period
because he thought that Existentialism didn’t have a satisfactory method of
establishing moral limits. This despite
the fact that he clearly didn’t quite know what he was talking about. Finally, as I imagined round-house kicking
his face in slow motion, I explained that he didn’t have to like it, but it
would be on the exam so he should probably try to understand it. He didn’t.
4.
The Lost Puppy/Best Friend- I am a magnet for
these poor souls. I know that most of
you picture me as an enormously-muscled, tiger-wrestling, hyphen-abusing
man-mountain with features so rugged you could use them as a blueprint for the
most effective snow tires ever, but as it turns out I’m rather non-threatening
and approachable, with features so rugged I am routinely out-intimidated by
kittens. In a University environment in
which the students are new (this was especially true of my intro classes), and
in a subject like philosophy, which can be intimidating and difficult, some
students try to attach themselves to anyone who seems both knowing and
nice. Being as intimidating as legless
baby rabbit, I collected my fair share of hangers-on, some of whom weren’t even
my students! One girl actually told me
that she came to my office hours instead of her assigned TA because I was less
intimidating. My inner bad-ass wept,
which doesn’t say much for my inner bad-ass, and kind of proves her point. That was a mild case, however. The troubling students were those who tried
to develop and maintain a relationship with you outside of class. I was invited fishing, invited out to lunch,
and invited to meet with students to discuss other classes they were in. Some of those things sounded nice, but I could
also get my small, non-threatening ass sued for doing that shit, so they were
turned down. On the other hand, if I
ever go back to teaching in a university I’m going to use those powers for good
and get all the free shit and hook-ups I can.
I meant good for me…
www.nypost.com
"As it so happens, I also need tutoring in anatomy..."
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