oh, you have to have some. I know I have plenty.
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.
