View Full Version : TALES FROM COLLEGE
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 10:08 AM
oh, you have to have some. I know I have plenty. :hypno
The Hair Shirt:One of my undergrad requirements was to take a Geology class, 2 hour lecture and 3 hour lab. I was looking forward to it as an easy A because I was in the Geology club, it was a hobby anyway. It was taught by a new associate professor and when I walked in the door, she was sitting calmly at her desk behind a pile of hair. She was hacking off chunks of her own long hair with a pair of classroom scissors and twisting it into yarn. There was a knotted, spiky bundle of knitted hair she was already working on.
Someone asked her what she was doing and she said it was a "hair shirt" for her husband the "warrior" to "wear into battle". I got through that first lecture, during which she also peeled off thin sheets from a large block of mica and said she would take them home because they'd be "good windows for the buggy". Then I went to the department head and tested out of the class. :|
The Chemistry Screamer: I was used to professors being assholes for the first week or so until the students who weren't serious dropped the class. But then they usually calmed down. I had one Organic Chemistry professor who never did. She literally screamed her lectures, pounded on tables and sometimes jumped on them, and gave me the shakes hardcore. She liked to sneak up behind people and start screaming at them.
She did that to me once and I dropped an empty test tube I was transferring. Then she screamed at me for wasting a test tube, made me clean it up, then told me as punishment I'd have to go through the building and make a map of all of the fire extinguishers. I wandered the building for half an hour until I found a safety map that listed all the official ones. I started to go back to class, then got paranoid thinking that maybe she'd hid one in her office and would scream at me missing that, too. I was trying to peer in her dark office window when I realized I was a grown woman looking for fire extinguishers as a punishment, and I dropped the class.
She never did calm down, though. You could still hear her screaming from across the building.
The Last Student on Earth: Another of my degree requirements was to take a couple of Minority Studies courses. I took an easy Women's History course and saw an African Studies course that was taught by a professor I knew well, a really nice lady from Nigeria. So I signed up for that; it was a night class. Imagine my surprise when I was one of only two students who showed up, and the only Caucasian female.
After a week of very uncomfortable lectures (both because we were the only two students and because the other guy felt the need to say "yah, uh-huh, oh really? hmm, yeah" to fill uncomfortable silences when she talked), the other guy dropped out and then it was just me. Imagine being the only student in a big lecture hall, with the professor lecturing to Just You. Ordinarily they would have dissolved the class, but as I said, she knew me, and she thought she'd do me a personal favor by keeping the class going so I could get the credit.
She should have gotten an award for dedication, but it was a bad situation. You couldn't ever be late or miss class. You had to know all the answers, you couldn't hide. One time I called her and tried to cancel because I didn't have a ride home, and she volunteered to drive me home....45 minutes from campus, at night. I got an A+ in the class (how could you not?) but it's still one of the most uncomfortable classes I ever experienced.
A Very Canadian Final: I had another Geology class that was taught by a Canadian professor. He had worked it all out in his head that all Americans were either overtly anti-Canadian or else willfully ignorant. His lectures frequently went off on those tangents. However, we were all floored when we finished the very long, very complicated final, and had him tell us that in lieu of our final results, if we could name all of the provinces correctly (and say kwuh-bec, not kay-bec), we'd get an automatic A and he'd just throw our final away. I went for the A.:rock
McClain
Jan 7th, 2009, 10:18 AM
more plz
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 10:37 AM
lies, you don't want more. But I'll give you more to punish you for being a bastard about it.
"Tonight, on Dateline NBC...": When I had my first class at the med school (think it was medical anthropology), I was all prepared for some really high-intellect stuff. Instead, however, the professor simply wheeled in an AV cart and played a tape of the previous night's Dateline NBC. Every single class, that's literally all we did. No tests, no papers, just watched Dateline NBC.
Which is why I was so confused...I never missed a class, was never late, always paid attention in case he was waiting to spring a test on us (never happened)....I got a C in the class. The fuck? Maybe he gave everyone Cs.
Thanks for the Internship, Asshole: I did a summer internship with one of the professors when I was going for my performing arts degree. I was supposed to be learning how to house-manage a theater, and the class cost about $1000 for 3 months. Instead of doing anything useful, though, I spent my internship catering the professor's fundraiser parties. Seriously, that was all I did, put cocktail meatballs in crock pots and arrange flowers. I still don't know shit about house-managing a theater.
Getting Kicked out of the Art Institute: One of my Art History classes took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, where our professor was doing grad work. Because it was more convenient for her, we had to spend $20 on train fare a week and lug our huge books around with us (she insisted on us bringing our books to every class, and it's still the heaviest book I own). Even back then Chicago was fucking expensive. Anyway.
I was friends with this woman who used to be a guard in a women's prison. She was a giant, imposing black woman named Jamelba, and she was awesome. Her job in the prison used to be to escort inmates through an underground tunnel to court, and she'd drag them by their hair if they put up a fight. She just looked like she could unload a world of shit on you if you gave her a problem. Anyway.
Jamelba and I were bored one day, wandering around, supposed to find an artist from X period to do one of our many reports on. We would go from one painting to the next and try to pull stuff out of our asses about what was going on in them. Pretty soon we noticed we had a growing group of people around us who were writing down the absolute bullshit that was coming out of our mouths. Either they thought we knew what we were talking about, or it sounded good to them, I don't know. Anyway, Jamelba and I were having fun going from painting to painting, spewing nonsense to an audience. Jamelba eventually began acting as if she were a professional art critic, and I think some people in the crowd actually bought it.
Anyway, we ended up in front of this huge canvas, I can't remember the name of it. It was all black, at least 10 feet high, and had this trickle of red paint dripped down from one side. Jamelba started going off on how it represented black power, and she got pretty worked up. Even I didn't know if it was still theatricals or not. The frightened white people behind us started scattering when this scary-looking black woman started ranting about black power, and I didn't know if I should try to calm her down or what. She got so worked up she started yelling, "Kill whitey, kill whitey, kill whitey!" and pounding her fist into her hand.
The next thing I know, we were seized from behind by two guards and escorted down the big staircase and out the front door, with everyone staring at us. We were told curtly that we would not be welcome in the Art Institute again. We didn't know what to do, so we had lunch across the street at the Artists Cafe and went home.
A couple of years later I tried to get in, and I was nervous thinking they might actually remember me. But they didn't, I got right in.
Evil Robot
Jan 7th, 2009, 12:25 PM
I need help finding drivers for my HP laser printer, is this the right thread?
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 12:27 PM
I also had a professor who was curator of a big, big big exhibit at a big museum. After class he quietly asked me if I wanted to come see it after-hours. I demurred at the time, and didn't fully realize until later that I was probably being propositioned. I was pretty dense about those things back then.
And then there was the biology professor during the lecture class from hell. It was a summer session, so the lecture was 4 hours long. It was supposed to be two 2-hour lectures with a half hour break in between. This guy would show up 15 mins early, start lecturing, lecture through the half hour break, and keep you 15 minutes afterward. The tests were brutal and usually covered stuff like picture captions, footnotes, and any offhand comments he might have thrown out there...you couldn't afford to miss a second of it. As soon as the final was over, every single student in the class (including a Mormon) went to Applebees and got falling-down drunk. There were souvenir t-shirts in the bookstore for passing this guy's class.
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 12:28 PM
I need help finding drivers for my HP laser printer, is this the right thread?
Jesus and I love you, Evil Robot.
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn199/kitsa_for_imockery/jesusawesome.jpg
Tadao
Jan 7th, 2009, 01:28 PM
Great stories Kitsa!
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:15 PM
I'm going to refuse to believe that unless you guys start coming up with some of your own. I'm going to default to "any compliment paid on i-mockery is sarcastic".
DeadKennedys
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:23 PM
You make my college experience seem really boring :\
Sam
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:31 PM
One time I was in the quad reading and I casually glanced up at this girl who was wearing a skirt crouched down by her friend. I saw her pussy because she wasn't wearing underwear. Then made eye contact with her. Then looked again. Then went back to my book. :\
Tadao
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:31 PM
I took Anthropology at a community college just to learn. I refused to take tests. My theory was that I paid to learn and that's all I wanted. The teacher pulled me aside and told me I was bringing down the GPA and explained how damaging it was to the class. So i dropped it and never went to college again.
Sam
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:34 PM
My very first year of college I had this anthropology class in the morning. I had to wake up at 6 to catch the bus to get to the college. I was always tired and I would fall asleep in class, then wake myself up, and knock all of the shit off my desk. The teacher always glared at me, but I still got an A. :(
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 02:39 PM
lolz
I had one of the most ineffective math professors ever to be given the job, I think. She didn't really teach math, she just talked all hour about her divorce and her sportscar. When we took tests, she'd mark stuff wrong and we wouldn't know why it was wrong. The class after a test was always a "review", we'd ask about the stuff she marked wrong, and she'd work it out on the board. It usually wasn't wrong at all. She'd say "Oh, well, if I marked that wrong, mark it right and pass your papers back in". We had three or four of those per test. That class was an utter fucking waste.
Another class that was a total waste was an English class. We were supposed to write these papers, and the professor would mark them up with nonsense red scribbles. We'd ask what the scribbles meant, and she'd always give some noncommittal answer. When I persisted, she finally told me...privately...that she does that to everyone's paper whether it's good or not so that no students "feel bad" by seeing that someone nearby did better than they did.
11 years later, I still don't know how I did in that class :(
Big McLargehuge
Jan 7th, 2009, 03:39 PM
i had a calculus 1 teacher that could barely speak english and the little english she did speak was with a heavy arabic accent. no body in the class had any idea what she was saying and it would take a whole class to go over one problem. i remember one time somebody asked her where she was from adn she turned beet red and said "no no no, i cant" i went on with the class.
i also had a english teacher that was absolutly obsessed with robert frost. the whole semester we covered 5 frost poems we spent between 2 weeks and a month on each poem. for the first 30 minutes (of a 50 minute class) the teacher would read the poem over and over again, 5 days a week, for a month. each time he would use a different inflection he would literally have us dissect each word of the poem. the teacher had a thing where if you got above 95% in the class prior to the final you had an automatic A and didn't have to take the final. I was at about 98%, which was incredibly easy as i just took notes and reguritated what he said in class, but showed up on the final any way. i remember when i walked into the class room he said "you know you don't have to be here right?" i told him that indeed i did know and he said "well that is dedication". all i wrote on the final was "this was the single worst class i have ever taken, you have destroyed robert frost for me."
kahljorn
Jan 7th, 2009, 03:44 PM
I had this professor who was a total ass and emotionally immature and basically used profession to make friends among most of the students. He also had one of those woman warrior personalities you know guys that know everything about womenz and RESPECT them. he would often lecture us on the size of a clitoris and it's placement and shape inside the vagina. Including that many women could get orgasms from their vaginal walls due to the clitoris being more accessible and there's a certain percentage of blah blah also more women orgasm from lesbian sex than from men. that was like every class the first few weeks and him talking about rage against the machine concerts.
I was taking the class with this other girl and he decided he didn't like her (mostly because she caught him telling other students not to take classes from another professor who he pretended to be friends with) even though he was always talking to her and he knew a bunch of personal details about her (like that she was brutally beaten by some black burglar man and had issues about it afterwards) which she had told him, and he would say stuff like, "A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN ARE BEATEN BY BLACK MEN IN THEIR HOMES" and stare at her while he said that and various other shitty comments directed at me and her while staring. Plus if I had a question in class he would always answer it all shitty and if i told him i wanted to see him in his office he would say ok and then not show up.
so anyway since he would try to subtly fuck with us in class (like the burglar comment and lots others) i thought it would be funny to subtly fuck with him and i got this idea that because of his attitude that he was a weasel. So i took this science document that i found online that was like i dont know taxology for weasels and it sort of looked like a weasel maturing and at the bottom i put a bunch of comments about him like FANCIES HIMSELF LEADER OF THE PACK and SHOWBOATER and stuff like that but very scientific looking and it had a measuring stick that said 18 inches so i replaced it with 60 inches and at the very bottom of the page in dog print font i put IS DAT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU <hisname>?
also we started to make a comic of him as a weasel lecturing the class going, "And did you know that the vagina weighs 15 pounds: and then a student saying, "But what does that have to do with immanuel kant." he tattled on us before we gave that to him though :(
also we sent him an e-mail saying IS DAT UUUUUUUU containing the youtube video for womanizer by britney spears when it first came out :(
LOL IT WAS IMMATURE OF ME BUT HONESTLY IT WAS THE GREATEST COLLEGE EXPERIENCE I HAVE HAD
i got suspended from his class
Kitsa
Jan 7th, 2009, 05:51 PM
I once got a notice from the registrar that I was failing French Lit. Except, literally, the day before I had gotten an award from the dept. for achievement in French.
And also that particular semester I was teaching French.
Idiots.
ItalianStereotype
Jan 7th, 2009, 07:20 PM
I was taking Politics of South Asia the other semester and our professor left for China about three weeks into the course. He didn't tell anyone that he was leaving and it wasn't a planned trip, so there was nobody to cover the class for about a month. He came back in late April, about three weeks from the end of the term, and spent the rest of our time telling us about his trip. The final was about his time in China, but I don't think he bothered grading them. I got an A.
Zomboid
Jan 7th, 2009, 07:51 PM
I LIKE COLLEGE
WhiteRat
Jan 7th, 2009, 09:48 PM
I don't have many stories involving the academic side as I only went for 2 semesters spread out over a couple of years. I couldn't handle college as an immature 18-20 year old so naturally I flunked out/gave up.
The only stories I have involved drinking or smoking.
ZeldaQueen
Jan 7th, 2009, 11:58 PM
My English teacher published his book around the end of the semester (It's called The Urban Hermit, if you're at all interested), and we had a grand old time reading the reviews. One of the better ones was "MacDonald might seem like a chucklehead, but he's really quite savy". This prompted my teacher to say to us, "So if any of you ever thought I was a chucklehead, well now you know better". The reviews also mentioned him spending his college years (which were at Harvard, I might add) in a "drunken orgy", which he said was pretty ackward for him when his mom read those (he told us that this is why you should not write your memoirs).
Once, one of my classes was supposed to meet in a different building for a guest speaker. I went with plenty of time, but began to panic as I couldn't find the room we were supposed to be in! Time passed and I grew more and more frantic. With about 15 minutes left to the end of class, I realized that I was in the wrong building. >:
Shrubfest
Jan 8th, 2009, 09:37 AM
My costume construction teacher is this little 60-some year old woman.
She's a complete bitch.
A friend had buggered up a seam, because she had no idea what she was doing, as the teacher fails to tell us most of the instructions. When the teacher came over and asked why she'd done it wrong, she replied that she'd never been taught how to do it before. The teachers response- 'oooh! Nehnehneh!'
Like a 5-year old would.
10,000 Volt Ghost
Jan 8th, 2009, 03:40 PM
I went to I.T.T. Technical Institute. What a sham. The most I got out of there is killing a bunch of trees for paper, a hole in my wallet from loans and doing the milk challenge instead of class.
We took the bottles that were being recycled and returned them for money for ourselves.
Tadao
Jan 8th, 2009, 04:51 PM
My little brother is an I.T.T. graduate. He has the job but he didn't need that college to get it.
Sacks
Jan 8th, 2009, 05:02 PM
One time I was in the quad reading and I casually glanced up at this girl who was wearing a skirt crouched down by her friend. I saw her pussy because she wasn't wearing underwear. Then made eye contact with her. Then looked again. Then went back to my book. :\
That's hardass. I hope you nodded before you looked back at your book.
Grislygus
Jan 8th, 2009, 05:06 PM
I took Anthropology at a community college just to learn. I refused to take tests. My theory was that I paid to learn and that's all I wanted. The teacher pulled me aside and told me I was bringing down the GPA and explained how damaging it was to the class. So i dropped it and never went to college again.
What, you couldn't audit?
Tadao
Jan 8th, 2009, 05:08 PM
I have no idea. I always hated teachers anyways. I read the books I bought and bought some more. No need to go to class really.
10,000 Volt Ghost
Jan 8th, 2009, 05:51 PM
My little brother is an I.T.T. graduate. He has the job but he didn't need that college to get it.
I'll take a picture of my terrible student ID. I'm glad your brother made it. they didn't tell us they have a dropout rate above 80% until orientation.
ZeldaQueen
Jan 8th, 2009, 06:13 PM
My Psychology teacher gave us projects on stuff he hardly taught us. He'd also invite us to argue for a better grade, but never changed his mind.
He also had a fun cell phone policy: If your cell phone went off in class, he'd get to answer it. If his went off in class, we got to answer it. He nearly got this one girl, but she turned it off in time. Not that he didn't try to get there first. He jumped over chairs. :lol
Kitsa
Jan 8th, 2009, 10:56 PM
I had a history professor who was a dick about people showing up late. He was eerily like Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, only more rotund.
You had to set your watch by his classroom clock because that's what he went by. The second it turned to 11:00, he closed and locked the classroom door. This forced anyone who was late to make a big show of themselves by knocking on the door and interrupting the lecture. He'd also decreed that no one could sit in the front row...he made a huge deal of opening the door for the late person and ushering them to a seat front and center, then paying them an unprecedented amount of attention.
It all sort of backfired because most people, unless it was a test day, would rather skip class altogether than be subjected to all that.
The year after I graduated, I read a news story saying he'd been found dead on the front steps of his house after a "short illness". Part of me always wondered if someone had locked him out.
ZeldaQueen
Jan 9th, 2009, 06:42 PM
I had a history professor who was a dick about people showing up late. He was eerily like Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, only more rotund.
You had to set your watch by his classroom clock because that's what he went by. The second it turned to 11:00, he closed and locked the classroom door. This forced anyone who was late to make a big show of themselves by knocking on the door and interrupting the lecture. He'd also decreed that no one could sit in the front row...he made a huge deal of opening the door for the late person and ushering them to a seat front and center, then paying them an unprecedented amount of attention.
It all sort of backfired because most people, unless it was a test day, would rather skip class altogether than be subjected to all that.
The year after I graduated, I read a news story saying he'd been found dead on the front steps of his house after a "short illness". Part of me always wondered if someone had locked him out.
Sounds like karma to me. Maybe one of his former students did break into his house and lock the door...
WhiteRat
Jan 9th, 2009, 07:04 PM
I had a history professor who was a dick about people showing up late. He was eerily like Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, only more rotund.
I had an english comp professor like that during freshman year. My roommates and I all had the same class and we showed up at 8:01. We foolishly tried to jostle the door open and she just stopped talking, look over at us a for a few seconds, and then turned back to the class.
The next day she told us that her class is "her class" and not ours, so we had to get there on "her time".
TheBigMan045
Jan 10th, 2009, 03:53 AM
Luckily i didnt go to "college" just M.I.T, only stories about getting on the piss at lunchtimes and coming back only to be handling boxes filled with car parts. Strangely my tutor wasnt as hard on me for not doing stuff like my welding assignments (i still cant weld) the ability to text him and saying you couldnt come in was a hard night at the pub, or having bets about what would or wouldnt happen usual cost was a jug at the local pub Ahhh good times.... BTW its Manukau insitute of technology
executioneer
Jan 10th, 2009, 04:47 AM
hahaha you had me worried there for a minute
TheBigMan045
Jan 10th, 2009, 05:46 AM
gee im not that smart me failed english twice. also have sat in on a chinese class, sadly it was a small class so i did get picked on and it became a train wreck. Had my high school german teacher catch me as i was trying to stuff other peoples pens up my nose, had my friend ask in a packed classics class in a loud voice how did my vascectomy go.
Tadao
Jan 10th, 2009, 01:58 PM
Vasectomies are slut magnets. He did you a favor.
ZeldaQueen
Jan 10th, 2009, 04:12 PM
Luckily i didnt go to "college" just M.I.T
Quick question here: In my English Comp class, just before Christmas Break, my teacher told us that at Harvard, the year was arranged so that finals were right after the holiday break. A girl then told us that her brother went to M.I.T. She mentioned something called "suicide days", where they gave the kids the day off and locked all windows except ones on the first floor so that kids wouldn't kill themselves.
Is that true or am I mixed up on that?
kahljorn
Jan 10th, 2009, 04:16 PM
zelda they went to MIT in some weird foreign country so I don't know if your brother's experience is applicable to theirs ;o
Tadao
Jan 10th, 2009, 04:28 PM
Maybe that's when they all found out that the jobs they get from M.I.T. will never pay off their student loan.
kahljorn
Jan 10th, 2009, 04:58 PM
LOL
yea don't those technical institutes accept anyone, even retarded people, as long as they have the money for it?
glowbelly
Jan 10th, 2009, 05:38 PM
MIT (the american version) has a crapload of their courses online for free. just sayin.
Kitsa
Jan 10th, 2009, 05:56 PM
The online course thing was a big kick in the proverbial balls to me.
I went to the expense and trouble of going to a school across the country, only to have them offer the same classes online the next year for a fraction of the cost :(
TheBigMan045
Jan 11th, 2009, 03:21 AM
Yeah not the mega smart MIT in septic land just the one in a "weird foreign country" and yes they do accept retarded people sadly, these people are afraid of sparks, drop things when introduced to magnets, cry when they have trouble, stutter etc DARREN CRAIG king of the retards did all of the above
And Tadao it wasnt a he who said that, it was a she maybe you know of them?
Tadao
Jan 11th, 2009, 03:27 AM
w/e
ZeldaQueen
Jan 11th, 2009, 08:42 PM
zelda they went to MIT in some weird foreign country so I don't know if your brother's experience is applicable to theirs ;o
It wasn't my brother, it was the brother of a girl in my English Class. And I don't know how those things work, so I can't really say for sure.
Colonel Flagg
Jan 11th, 2009, 09:38 PM
Unfortunately, most of my stories don't travel well. They either consist of me or some of my cohorts getting roaring drunk, praying to the porcelain god, passing out on the bathroom floor, you know the drill. During one summer, I had one experience that might qualify as "interesting":
A friend invited me to play in a Renaissance Consort - don't ask, don't tell - after which I was invited to have dinner with him at the house at which he was living for the summer; it was a community-living arrangement, which unfortunately was quite common in those days.
So, we're sitting, having a couple of beers and shooting the breeze when in walks a naked man. Followed by a naked woman, and another naked man. All of whom have no business showing their bodies off to anyone.
I looked at them - how could I not - then I looked at my friend who immediately looked away as if embarassed. Imagine that. Well, I just had to stay for dinner, then, didn't I?
Kitsa
Jan 12th, 2009, 08:10 AM
Did dinner include the naked folk? That could have been awkward.
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