I am currently taking a journalism class that was once explained to me with “It will take over your life and make you want to stab your eyes out.” However, the science class that I had to take was way worse, and it was all thanks to the professor that taught it. For this article I will refer to my class as Basic Science Class (BSC) and my professor as Prof. Psycho.
I arrived to my first BSC of the semester and sat down happily, knowing that I would be on my way back home in no time at all, because it was syllabus week.
Prof. Psycho arrived at the very start of the class, not a minute late, and he wasted no time at all. For this class session, he lectured for an hour on how all of us won’t have jobs because robots are taking over.
Yes. Robots.
He went on to explain that any of us that do not have a science, math, or health-related major are wasting our time and should not expect to find a job. He then also went on about all the specific majors he could think of that will end up being a waste of time. I’m not saying that he didn’t have a point, but really, is this how we are going to start this class off?
There were countless times that earned him the nickname "Prof. Psycho" in my book. The first day of class was enough for me personally, but if you aren’t sold yet, here are some more examples.
On the day of the first exam, he yelled at his teaching assistants if they weren’t hovering over the students enough to make sure no one was cheating. Keep in mind that this is a giant lecture hall filled with at least 300 students.
In the same respect, he ran around the room yelling at individual students if he felt they were not covering their answers enough.
At the end of class, he would have a short quiz to take attendance and to test you on that lecture. It was done electronically with clickers that sent your response through a polling system. As a new question would pop up, he would give about a minute to answer it. After he yelled the question out a few times to make sure you heard it, while you were trying to answer it, he generally yelled the following phrases:
- You should know this we just went over this.
- Come on, answer the question already!
- Going once, twice... All right, I’m closing the poll.
- Better luck on the next one.
So if you needed a little quiet to think about what was being asked, well, “better luck next time.”
Lastly, for the cherry on top, if you wanted to take notes, he went through them so fast that as you tried to jot things down, he would somehow be three slides ahead from where you finished writing.
