Instructors!

[Annie Ozone]

...and the weird shit that they do. Because, let's face it, the Armadillos have to learn it somewhere.

In fact, this thread came about because of my mother's awesome English Professor Story. When she discovered this forum existed, she was like, "GO. TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU KNOW."

Stephen F. Austin University, 197?: This is the story of my mother's first A in her sophomore English class. She, a geology major, had been out drinking the previous night, and is still tipsy, edging into a hangover. She gets to class late, sits in the front row, and drinks her "tomato juice". Ten minutes after class was supposed to begin, my mother sees, out of the corner of her eye, a window open. A man, dressed in a tuxedo, opera cape, and top hat, steps inside. The classroom is on the first floor, but my mother stops drinking her "juice" anyway. She looks around, but everyone else, being in better shape than herself, is busy socializing. She watches as he strides to the podium, undoes his cape, twirls it over his head precisely one (1) time, and hangs it on on the podium, then carefully places his hat on top of it. The class has now gone silent, but he claps his hands anyway.

"Your assignment for today," he says, "is to write out what you just saw. Once you hand it in to me, you may leave."

My mother writes out everything from the window opening to him speaking and adds the immortal postscript, "I think I may still be drunk?"

She skipped the rest of her classes that day.

I'm pretty sure my fate was sealed the moment she first told me that story. Of course, I don't have any stories like that for myself--I just had a professor from up North who told me not to "fake a Southern accent" while reading aloud for the class from The Awakening. Dead silence until a kid in the back was like, "You do realize you're in Austin, right? Texas?", and then the prof made the greatest d'oh face I've ever seen.

So, more awesome, ridiculous, or unbelievable stories of the Great Armadillos from whom we learn?

[onlyaworkingtitle]

I took an Early British Romance Poetry course a few years ago. The day we spent on marriage-based poetry, the straight-laced professor (who had never before told a joke) opened it with "Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevvah today."
Many sides were split that day.

[Fuck Yeah Dion]

I'd like to post in this thread, but I feel like I'd just type on and on about these characters who teach literature at my college. Haha.

[cyanea]

My Old English professor was...excitable.

She went on a five minute giggle-infused rant about the phrase "for þæm þe" meaning "because" complete with hand gestures examples and a high pitched voice. When the class wasn't engaged to her satisfaction, she would make us stand up and do shit like stomp our feet as we recited each word of whatever we were working on, or make us stand up and not let us sit down until we correctly translated a sentence without looking at the book.

Then there was my 70+ year old Victorian lit teacher who got...a little too excited when we started discussing sex in Dracula.

[Dodger Thirteen]

I still remember Dr. Grandma and her overly long gaze at the Adonis sculpture....

[Olive]

One of my professors (actually, the head of my department) is a zombie. I'm not kidding. He tells the story at least once a semester, and it's fantastic.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

Jun 15, 2011 7:39:48 GMT -5 Olive said:

One of my professors (actually, the head of my department) is a zombie. I'm not kidding. He tells the story at least once a semester, and it's fantastic.

What story? Details!

[devilishlybookish]

I had this one professor numerous times throughout undergrad. He taught Western Heritage Through Lit I and II(Basically the Western Civ. gen. ed. for Lit. majors), but his passion (and what he studied himself) was Science Fiction. So not only did this guy on occasion walk into Western Heritage dressed as a Viking, screaming in Norse and pointing a sword at everyone...but he also dressed up like a Star Fleet Captain and set his phasers to kill on the front row a little later that afternoon in Sci. Fi.

[Olive]

Jun 15, 2011 16:45:45 GMT -5 onlyaworkingtitle said:

Jun 15, 2011 7:39:48 GMT -5 Olive said:

One of my professors (actually, the head of my department) is a zombie. I'm not kidding. He tells the story at least once a semester, and it's fantastic.

What story? Details!

Well, about 6 or 7 years ago, he was having heart issues and went in for surgery. He had an allergic reaction to this dye that they were using beforehand, and went into anaphylactic shock. It got so bad that his entire body swelled and oxygen to his brain was cut off. One of the doctors did CPR for so long that he cracked most of the guy's ribs before a nurse convinced him to stop. They also had to open him up and pull out most of his internal organs so that they weren't totally destroyed by the pressure. I can't remember how long he was "brain dead" for, but I know at some point they "induced" a coma and were able to re-insert his organs.

A couple days later, a nurse was in the room cleaning up. They all basically regarded him as dead, but as he technically wasn't yet, they decided to let him hang out in the coma for a while longer. Well, the poor nurse jumped 5 feet in the air and ran screaming out of the room because my prof suddenly woke up and started talking.

They really don't understand what the hell happened, and the only brain damage that he suffered was to parts of his memory. He's in some textbook now.

And a zombie.

And one of the most entertaining profs I've ever had.

[Dodger Thirteen]

That is the best story I have ever read.

[andy]

Oh most of my English lit lecturers are pretty awesome although the college head who usually teaches Shakespeare is particularly awesome. He gives out prizes to people who answer questions correctly, made us sing songs several times (usually because it's raining and we look sad), makes lots of Doctor Who references and he tells us stories about how he cuddles with random cats. He doesn't even have a PhD, he has a Scottish Masters in English lit, a BA in philosophy from Oxford and an LRAM/Royal Academy of Music degree. And he's generally a really good lecturer. Then there's also the crazy queer theory lady who made us watch Lady Gaga videos in her lectures a lot and the Comp Lit tutor who showed up to a lecture with a plastic chicken thing on his head. And one of my comp lit tutors was obsessed with comic books and bondage for some reason so whenever he stopped talking about 'Gilmore Girls', 'The OC' and how Harry Potter is the escapist fantasy of an abused child, he talked about bondage in comic books. Plus last year was a particularly fertile one for our English lit department and four lecturers went on maternity leave, it was just bizarre, it felt like everybody was pregnant.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

Jun 16, 2011 12:37:20 GMT -5 Dodger Thirteen said:

That is the best story I have ever read.

Ditto.

[Dodger Thirteen]

I have a metaphorical ton of one-liners from a professor of mine...somewhere. I'll see if I can find them and post them. They're a riot, especially if you know anything about ancient history.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

There was an English professor at my school who was notorious for Never Being Sober. Sadly, I only attended one of his lectures (oh, registrar, how my hatred still burns), but here's a collection of quotes that I loved too much to forget:
"I'm at Wells, therefor I'm neurotic." (Wells being my college.)
‎"See, you all laugh! I just say the word 'Kentucky' and you all laugh. Talk about the bubble."
"We can raspberry the canon as we go."

[cyanea]

My Milton/Shakespeare professor was weird.

He'd recite the text in the front of the class in these really strange voices. Sometimes he'd get all dramatic and slow and start gesticulating. Sometimes he'd recite with a really high-pitched voice, and sometimes he'd go between them every third word. I think he was trying to be artistic/dramatic, but it was just weird.