I have been appreciating Floyd's litany of lazy professors, and thought I would add some of my own...
Orthopedic Otto: You’ve “needed” surgery on your knee for years. Why are you trying to schedule it at the last minute at the beginning of fall semester, when we just had the summer off? Oh, that’s right—you want a vacation until January. No deal.
Evasive Evan: You are a nationally-known scholar of modern poetry. Yet you let the students in your modern poetry classroom decide what poets should be taught, and you demand that they as well take turns “teaching” the entire course. Guess the onerous weight of that 1-1 load is getting to you.
Busy Bob: You were so eager to get away from campus that you stopped your students in the middle of their final, telling them you had “somewhere to go”. When some told you they weren’t finished, and wondered how the blank remainder of their final would be graded, you told them you’d give them full credit for everything they didn’t do. Why not just say you weren’t going to grade them anyway?
Insane Irma: Though you consider yourself at the height of your teaching powers, you are actually just old and crazy. Several of the students you have terrorized have ended up in my office, shaking. If you’d stop taking student laziness as a personal insult, it would help. Or, you could find yourself some nice horse tranquilizers.
SEC Sam: Yes, we all know you used to be a football player in college. That was a loooooong time ago. Stop bringing up panty raids and keg parties. You’re like, 55 now and it’s creepy.
Demanding Deena: Yes, we realize that your husband is an irreplaceable member of the faculty, and we would be up shit creek if we had to find someone else to do his job. This doesn’t mean that you, who do not have a Ph.D. and are not on a tenure line, get to teach special topics courses of your own creation while tenure line folk teach comp. Oh wait, it does.
Sigh.
Actually one is crazy, one is a gimp, the last two need a "tenner" in a gulag....the only lazy one is Evan, while Bob strikes me as a burnout case who probably had to run off to his mistress or a golf game because HE CAN'T STAND THE CLASSROOM ANYMO'.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right--I should have added "annoying" along with the lazy.
ReplyDeleteSEC Sam...yes, I know that dude.
ReplyDelete"Yes, you're right--I should have added "annoying" along with the lazy."
ReplyDelete- StellafromSparksburg
Well you are correct in labeling them as lazy - but only in a metaphysical-stereotypical sense....it seems to be a rule of US colleges that there is a crazy cat lady, an older guy angling to do the least amount of work, a star professor who lets everybody else do the dishes, a jock who can't get past his "Animal House" past, a total burnout, and the spasto-flake wife of the resident Great Scholar who treats the school as her own playground. Sometimes you get more of these stereotypes (the foreign prof who never says a word in English, the Dean who is a drunk/cokehead/fucknugget, etc.), sometimes less; it matters how old the institution is and where you are in the country. All I can say is just don't become one of them.
Strelnikov, you must be talking about the profs in R1s. It's even more of a freak show at liberal arts colleges. Some former colleagues:
ReplyDeleteFetid Frank: Dude, we all know you live in your office and wash your hair in the sink. Just do us a favor and don't leave your shaving gear on the vanity.
Spluttering Stan: Yes, you are angry. Angry that your pet theory, circa 1972, isn't so important to your junior colleagues. Angry that your genius has not been recognized, though you have not published anything. Please don't spit when you rant, though; it's bad hygiene.
Territorial Tara: Believe me, I had no intention of usurping your throne as Most Popular Professor Ever. Maybe your students realized you were, uh, too invested? Don't worry, though; they'll find out I'm a meanie when grades come out and your reign will be restored.
Ignatius J. Reilly: those who do not cherish Smollett are not your enemies.
Looking at it again, I'm going to have to move Bob from "burnout" to "Black Hole"; anybody who stops a final midway to give everybody an "A" has to be so crushed by their job/life that they must have the intense gravity and consequent warped view of spacetime* of an imploded star. I could make an event horizon joke, but seriously, if it's this bad the guy needs therapy.
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* 15 minutes feels like two hours, walking on campus is like marching in lead-cement shoes, the Dean starts sounding like a Godlike voice of reason, etc.
Marcia, we had our own Fetid Frank out at Blistered Rock Community College*; the guy treated his office (which he shared!) like a dumpster and looked like a grizzled wino, even in graduation robe and gown. As I said before, these people are all over American higher ed, and if you don't have any, you have to be working at a Mormon or "Christian" college (which have strage variations of these stereotypes.)
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* A satellite of Omnibus Semi-lowbrow CC, one of the finer CCs in the Southwest. And yes, he has since retired.
I really am starting to THINK of our Marcia Brade as THE Marcia Brady...is that odd?
ReplyDeleteNope...people think I'm Tom Courtenay, but I'm not. Just a nut who likes Russian literature.
ReplyDeleteI like Stella...and cats.
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