Remember This at 2:28 PM

Ten things to remember when I become a professor:

1. If students are quietly ignoring me, it's not my problem it's theirs.
2. They take time to prepare for the test. I need to take time
preparing for it.
3. Moving a test back isn't always a good thing for students. They
make plans based on the test dates.
4. Students have more than one class.
5. Just because the majority of scores are high doesn't mean the test
was too easy.
6. Books aren't cheap. Use the ones you assign and make it a short list.
7. Love what your teaching. If I stop loving it, it's time to get out.
8. Some students have to be there. Some want to be there. Teach to
those who want to be and forget about the others.
9. Remarks on papers and why you graded the way you did are always a
good thing.
10. The old students are suck ups. They really don't think your a
genious.

Vibrating Chairs? Sweet! at 4:56 PM

Has anybody else experienced the awesomeness that is the auditorium in UC? There I am sitting in class, a few hundred kids surrounding me, when all of a sudden my chair starts to vibrate. Seriously, no coins needed. At first I'm pumped. I get to sit through Texas Politics while receiving a free message. What more can a guy ask for? After about ten minutes though I had enough. After some investigation I realized you can't turn these things off. I tried everything. No panel in the armrest, no hidden switch, no knob to turn. I even tried the clapper method, I passed it off as being overly supportive of some meaningless point made in the lecture. "Right on, Classical Liberalism is the bomb." Now I'm starting to get worried (and the guy next to me is worried for a different reason). Thirty minutes of vibrating can't be good for you. The students sitting next to me seem oblivious to my troubles. WTF! Just when I start to think the freaking chair is going to drive me crazy, I find the root of the problem. The little #$@%^& next to me is tapping her foot at such a high rate of speed and with such force she is actually moving the entire row of desks. "No No don't mind me, you go right ahead and shake like your off your meds. No, I always look this pissed off in the morning. It has nothing to do with the fact your constant shaking makes me want to smack you in the face with my spiral." I have no clue what was talked about in class, because I spent 45 minutes, yes 45 minutes, trying desperately to use my psychic abilities to will her leg from moving. I swear if class had gone on for just a few minutes she would of had a college rule notebook planted upside her head.

Seasoned Students at 1:34 PM

*This could make some people upset. If it upsets you maybe you should take a step back and see if this really applies to you or not*

Dear "Seasoned Students",

      Props to you for going back to school. You have so much more to worry about than us young whipper snappers. You juggle work, kids, school, and real life all at once. You have overcome stereotypes and fears to return to school and better yourself and your situation. You Go! With that said I have a request. Stop talking about yourself and your wonderful kids in class. I don’t care that your kid is a genius sports star that can speak three different languages at the age of 2. I get your proud of him or her. What parent wouldn’t be proud of giving birth to the second coming. "Really the economy is in a recession? Well little Jimmy can walk on water." wtf?
      And don’t think you kid-less old farts are off the hook. We all see you trying to get buddy buddy with the professor. Just because you sit at the front of the class and were born within the same decade as them doesn’t mean your their friend. Do you not notice how they roll their eyes every time you raise your hand to make some stupid remark about when you were a kid, or how your life experience has brought you to such and such conclusion? Just so you know. Every time you start a story with the words "my kid" or "it used to be" all those punk kids behind you are thinking "here we go again". We don’t care that your husband is a doctor and owns his own practice and worked his way up from dishwasher, or that gas prices were 10 cents a gallon when you got your first car, that didn’t have power locks or air conditioning or seatbelt and that you had to crank to start. Has your life become solely about your kids and what life used to be. Thats hard to believe. You work, have friends, watch tv.
      Here’s a general rule for you "seasoned students". When you walk into a class pay attention to the size of the room and number of students there. The importance of your comment, story, or personal experience is inversely related to the size of the class. The more of us that have to listen to you talk the less we care to hear it. If there are only a few of us with ya, be my guest and speak up. Those types of classes actually are designed for you to tell us how little Kris "spelled with a K" reacted to his first day of daycare.

Sincerly,
The Kid Who You Know So Much
More Than But Is In The
Same Class As You

Applause?!? at 1:31 PM

     I was in Economics the other day and the professor got on some tangent about smoking. Well the T.A. started talking about how he used to smoke and all this other crap about his life that nobody really cared to hear about, then he says how he has been "sober" for 15 months. The response he gets? The whole class applauds him, wtf.

     I reserve my applause for people who deserve them. Come on people, you clap for people who do things that require skill and effort. It's an easy way to say, "good job" "well done." Don't applaud for the dumb guy who quit smoking. Some of you are thinking "hey I quit smoking, it's really hard to do and takes commitment." Your absolutely right, it takes commitment to stop killing yourself and messing up your future. It takes commitment to stop doing something incredibly stupid that you decided to do in the first place. Know what? Good job at no longer being a dumb ass and quiting something you knew you shouldn't be doing in the first place. Yea good job *clap clap* Don't clap for recovering drug addicts, yea thats what you are smokers, drug addicts. They started the habit, they knew what they were doing, its their own fault they were addicted. Its simply retarded to clap for that.