#75912: Uncomfortable moments in class

[Amity]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/75912/

I can top those stories.

Background: I'm a graduate student (not at BYU) and this course was taught by a professor with a serious misanthropic streak. Usually I would attribute it to him being on painkillers the entire course because of a knee replacement (to the point where he would occasionally doze off), but my other interactions with him have told me that he was just born this way.

Uncomfortable moment #1: Bragging throughout the course that his sweaters cost more than our monthly salary (we were all poor graduate students and he was the most well-paid professor in our department).

Uncomfortable moment #2: He started out one of our classes by asking who had a $5 bill and if he could borrow it, who had a $10 bill, a $20, and a $50. He collected somewhere around $200 from the class (of, again, poor graduate students). He then said, "Okay, I have your money. Now convince me why I should give it back to you."

Uncomfortable moment #3: The topic of the day was marketplaces. He somehow he steered the discussion towards talking about buying and selling humans and it culminated in a remark about selling my classmate's two-year-old son to be a sex slave.

Phew. That was therapeutic.

[mic0]

O_o

Those are indeed uncomfortable!

[Concorde]

Reading the first two I was like "Eh, professors have done worse in some of my classes." But then I read the third on and choked on my oatmeal.

Talk about inappropriate!

[Dragon Lady]

Mine wasn't inappropriate kind of uncomfortable. My most uncomfortable moment was on 9/11. I had already heard the news, but hadn't heard specific details of where the flights were headed, etc. I was sitting in my Calculus class when a friend, who I grew up with leaned over and asked, "Aren't you worried at all? You're much more calm than I expected." Confused I asked why I should be worried. Then she told me that one of the planes that been hijacked was on its way to Washington DC this morning, and wasn't my dad flying to DC this morning? I was horrified. She was right. And I had no idea of the flights to have made the connection between the two.

I was a new freshman and didn't realize I could just get up and leave. And I was in the middle of a row, and don't like making a stir, so I didn't want to get up in the middle of class and make everyone move to let me out, and be the center of attention. So I suffered through the entire class period, wondering if my dad was on one of the hijacked planes. If he was even still alive. This was way before I ever got a cell phone, so there was no way my family could have gotten ahold of me until I got home.

Class finally ended and I ran through the building trying to find a phone so I could call my mom. (Thankfully she wasn't long distance.) And then I stood there in the hall bawling as my mom told me that he was fine. He had been in the airport that morning waiting to get on his flight when an announcement came on that all flights had been cancelled indefinitely because of hijacked planes. He was on his way home as we spoke. I have never ever been so grateful in my life. He missed death by a few hours. And it was by far the worst class I have ever sat through.

[Whistler]

D-: