Nightmare College Professor Stories you have

[AlCowlingsTaxiService]

Had a statistics professor at UB … apparently he was a world famous statistician from the former USSR. Gave 5e same final exam every year and obviously, it made the rounds. The year I took his course, he brought students who scored 100 into his office to explain their answers. Gave out plenty of F’s after that 

[qwksilver]

I had a newly minted PHD in MIS. His class project was ridiculous. So bad someone sent him an envelope form "Aids Clinic testing center" as he was a known gay. He was extremely pissed. At the time I thought it was hilarious and envious of the sender. 30+ years I still remember this PHDs full name.

 

 

[oldmanfan]

I just hope no one would ever write a story about me.

[Sweats]

A professor of mine ended up in the hospital with kidney cancer, so we got a temporary replacement.

 

The problem was that she ended just about every phrase and every sentence with "ish".

And here's an example........."the peopleish are walking up the mountainish, leftish, rightish up the mountainish"

 

My god, it was so annoying and one by one, we got kicked out for trying to answer her questions the same way.

[ProcessImproverMan]

I once had an African American history professor for an African American history class show us the same documentary (slavery by another name )four times over the course of a 15 week semester because she kept forgetting she showed it to us. She was older and may have started on her path to serious memory issues. Who knows. She isn't there anymore. It was pretty funny though to see her repeatedly ask if we had seen the documentary, us basically lying and saying "no we hadn't" and then her showing it again and basically doing whatever at the back of the room while we worked on course work for other classes. I and other students had saved our older work sheets on the film and would just copy the answers over very quickly. Basically got us study hall work sessions.

 

She also gave As to most of the class if you simply agreed with her and said "black people had it bad and still do because A, B, C reasons." I simply wrote a paper on Slavery by Another Name for my final to really show I had learned the material and paid attention the four times I watched it in class....I had a classmate who was foreign who all of this was new to (she literally said MLK was the nice black guy and Malcolm X the mean one during the first week) and she even got an A by the end simply parroting whatever the professor said. 

 

I had another professor who taught French (Gen Ed requirement) who came from the Congo. Dude opened up the first day about how he came to the US and that his mom and sister was raped in the Congo years ago by soldiers.....real ice breaker discussion there....Dude played alot of African French language movies and had us basically try to answer questions in French. Mind you we were all beginners of sorts. Dude also used to work as a school for troubled people and told us a story of how one of his female students tried to escape and when he went after her, she started screaming "there is a large black man chasing me trying to rape me" as she ran the school and school yard. Another lovely ice breaker topic that first week of class 

 

 

 

[Mr. WEO]

had a calculus TA who had us in a small group and was shouting at us for answer to a question none of us could understand.

 

The answer, apparently--as he started yelling over and over, was "eeeksa secare"

 

(X squared)

[Irv]

Most of the graduate student "professors" I had at UB looked like they slept in their clothes at the lab the night before.  The textbook was their lecture. Nothing prepared in advance.  Just read the textbook.

 

I also remember clearly the professors smoking like chimneys in class.  That was back in the 80's.  I had a night real estate gen ed class.  As soon as the lecturer took a break my buddies and I made a beeline to Third Base.  It was Thursday night.  Five dollars all-you-can-drink.   

 

    

Edited January 4 by Irv

[Wacka]

 About 40 years ago,I TA'd  a lab in general anatomy. The  students were all  prospective PT majors and had to take the course and lab  to apply for the major.  I had to teach cat dissection to them. I would go in on Saturday afternoon  and do that weeks dissection myself. One day I had to look at the lab manual to be sure I got the correct muscle when a student asked me what its was.  They then said why did I have to look it up. I said  I have to waste my Saturdays  teaching myself this. 

A few students got squeamish when we had to pith a frog or start the dissection of the cat. I told them "Get used to this, next year you have to dissect a real human body". After a quiz once, I was cleaning up the lab and found the answers to the quiz written down in  peace on the black lab top. Had to wipe down the benches before and after every quiz.

Did have a little fun. There was a skeleton in a box that we had to use when we were talking about the skeleton.  Found a shirt and put it on it. Got a Burger King  crown and also put it on it and rolled printer paper to make an enormous joint. Would have the box at the front of the class and wheel out the skeleton.

I felt old when I  did PT after my transplant this Feb. I realized that the students I TA'd were probably their bosses or had retired recently.

 

Edited January 4 by Wacka

[4merper4mer]

I had this old dude who taught about anatomy but he didn’t know a lot.  He asked me why alligators were so aggressive and I got the answer right but then he said it was really hakuna matata or something and treated me like I was stupid and insulted my mama.  I beat the crap out of him and got in trouble. 

[DD4Bills]

Toughest professor I had in college (waaay back when, in the dark ages of the 1980s) was one of my engineering profs Junior year. He gave overly hard 3 or 4 question tests, and each question required several steps and calculations, etc. He also gave zero partial credit for any question...you either got the question right (fully credit) or wrong (no credit). So depending on the number of questions on the test, you either got an A (100), a C/D (75/66) or an F (50/33/25/0). When asked about this policy, he would always say "You will be engineers. You design a bridge, the bridge falls down, no partial credit!" I squeaked through that class with a C-...don't worry, I am not at engineer and I don't design bridges.

[Augie]

My first real girlfriend and another buddy growing up became professors. I haven’t talked to them in decades, but it was pretty fun to look them up on Rate My Professor. The theme with him was “WTF does he think he is to require so much work for 2 credit hours!?!?” Yeah, that sounds about right. 😂 

[teef]

i've been lucky that i really have had great professors.  i've only had an issue with one in grad school, and he wasn't really a professor.  in your last two years of school, you spend a lot of time working on patients.  there are local dentist that will teach on the floor and an walk you through procedures.  he may have taught a one credit lab, but i'm not even sure about that.

 

the guy and i just didn't get along.  i could see that fury in his eyes when realized he was stuck with me.  he was just one of those guys that was put through the ringer when he went to school, so he felt others had to go through the same.   well...very early on i learned that if i simply acted like i didn't care about his nonsense, it would send him up the wall.  he once told me to take a pencil, put it in my ear and push it until it hit my brain.  that ***** is hilarious, so i laughed.  i was honestly laughing because i thought it was funny, but it happened to be right in his face, and he ***** lost it.  i had to have a "talk" with the guy that ran the clinics who i was a teaching assistant for.  it wasn't a big deal, but that was my only lousy experience.  

[Another Fan]

On 1/4/2025 at 4:17 AM, ProcessImproverMan said:

I once had an African American history professor for an African American history class show us the same documentary (slavery by another name )four times over the course of a 15 week semester because she kept forgetting she showed it to us. She was older and may have started on her path to serious memory issues. Who knows. She isn't there anymore. It was pretty funny though to see her repeatedly ask if we had seen the documentary, us basically lying and saying "no we hadn't" and then her showing it again and basically doing whatever at the back of the room while we worked on course work for other classes. I and other students had saved our older work sheets on the film and would just copy the answers over very quickly. Basically got us study hall work sessions.

 

She also gave As to most of the class if you simply agreed with her and said "black people had it bad and still do because A, B, C reasons." I simply wrote a paper on Slavery by Another Name for my final to really show I had learned the material and paid attention the four times I watched it in class....I had a classmate who was foreign who all of this was new to (she literally said MLK was the nice black guy and Malcolm X the mean one during the first week) and she even got an A by the end simply parroting whatever the professor said. 

 

I had another professor who taught French (Gen Ed requirement) who came from the Congo. Dude opened up the first day about how he came to the US and that his mom and sister was raped in the Congo years ago by soldiers.....real ice breaker discussion there....Dude played alot of African French language movies and had us basically try to answer questions in French. Mind you we were all beginners of sorts. Dude also used to work as a school for troubled people and told us a story of how one of his female students tried to escape and when he went after her, she started screaming "there is a large black man chasing me trying to rape me" as she ran the school and school yard. Another lovely ice breaker topic that first week of class 

 

 

 

 

[Pete]

I had an anti-male feminist teacher.  She starts the first class bashing men- “who abuses women?  MEN”. “Who are serial killers?  MEN”. She continued this bashing.   I started marking every time she bashed men.  Students were writing this madness down.  After over 10 man bashing opinions by this lunatic, I interrupted her.

”who are kleptomaniacs?  Women.”  “What do serial killers have in common?  Abusive mothers”.  “You obviously have a bias against men.  Im here to learn knowledge, not hate.  See you later”.   And I walked out and dropped the class

 

Edited January 9 by Pete

[Another Fan]

1 hour ago, Pete said:

I had an anti-male feminist teacher.  She starts the first class bashing men- “who abuses women?  MEN”. “Who are serial killers?  MEN”. She continued this bashing.   I started marking every time she bashed men.  Students were writing this madness down.  After over 10 man bashing opinions by this lunatic, I interrupted her.

”who are kleptomaniacs?  Women.”  “What do serial killers have in common?  Abusive mothers”.  “You obviously have a bias against men.  Im here to learn knowledge, not hate.  See you later”.   And I walked out and dropped the class

 

At the risk of the thread into PPP territory I still think today this teachers views are really quite common in colleges.

 

Plays a part I think why younger men have been documented to struggle as much they are now.  

[Wacka]

18 hours ago, Another Fan said:

 

The air consdtioner was invented by William Carrier while he worked at Buffalo Forge. He's buried in Forest lawn.

[Fleezoid]

I'm still waiting for the story that sounds like a Penthouse Forum submission. 

[Irv]

I went to UB in the mid-to-late 80's.  Some of the instruction halls (you could not call them classrooms) were so big, you could barely see the professor if not right up front.  For all I know, they could have been holograms.  Think of Knox 20.  If you had class there - you know.  

[4merper4mer]

This crazy history prof I had asked a question about the Vietnam war in class.  Some goody two shoes girl answered it right out a politically correct textbook.  At first he looked a little ticked off but was sort of nice to her.  But then he snapped and started screaming at her about rice paddies and stuff.  It got really loud.  I stepped in to help her by criticizing General MacArthur.

[Wacka]

1 hour ago, Irv said:

I went to UB in the mid-to-late 80's.  Some of the instruction halls (you could not call them classrooms) were so big, you could barely see the professor if not right up front.  For all I know, they could have been holograms.  Think of Knox 20.  If you had class there - you know.  

I was 10 yeats ahead of you. Amherst campus opened my sophomore year. Deifendorf Hall  was about 500 seats. Had an anthropology and psychology class there. Bio 101 in Caoen hall was just as big,  The classrooms in Achesom Hall (Gen and Organic Chem) were also just as big.