Last Thursday, Celebrity Professor graciously offered to come to my class and take questions. At the end of his visit, as class was letting out, this awful, awful twit came into the room early. His picture had been plastered all over campus for days; she had seen the announcements of his visit and thought she'd take advantage of the opportunity.
She confronted him directly. She opined as to how wrong his philosophy was. How happy she was that she didn't share his views! Didn't he agree that life would be ever so pleasant if he were more like her?
I ignored her and he turned her off. He's very good at brushing off flakes without attracting their ire, as I suppose he has to be, given how many of them he must encounter. Perhaps Celebrity Professor would be more charitable than I, but if this clueless twat enrolls in anything I teach, ever, I am going to make her life a living hell.
Monday, February 23, 2009
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24 comments:
Wow. Now I wish she were still in your class so you could fail her now. How do morons like this even get into college?
We could have her wacked! I know a guy who knows a guy!
Or maybe he doesn't. But you enjoyed the fantasy for a brief second, didn't you?
Celebrity Professor must have the patience of a saint. I doubt he'll be canonized, though.
Sounds like a sociopath. Definitely an idiot.
Oooh. Do you care to share just what her philosophy about life is? Maybe she's from the school of Clueless Fuckitude.
And though it would be hell for you, her enrolling in your class would make for fantastic blog fodder.
You made me laugh!
You can't get rid of this kid who is disrupting your class while auditing in an unauthorized fashion, yet you promise mayhem if she ever does enroll?
Ri-i-ight.
@Kitty, Imagine a young-Earth creationist confronting Richard Dawkins.
@Gail, you're not reading closely enough. She is not auditing my class; I was successful in kicking her out. She entered my classroom from the hall as class was letting out.
Yep. Definitely Clueless Fuckitude.
She's not enrolled in your class, right? So why don't you just call campus security and have her escorted out of the building whenever she shows up in your classroom?
@Anonymous: Really? If AP's campus security is like most places, they'd show up either five minutes or three days too late to be of any practical use. Bureaucracy does not move at the speed of necessity.
CP's ability to brush off annoying twits is admirable, and I admire it. If only it were an essence that could be bottled...
I don't think security would be willing to throw her out between classes, especially when she is enrolled in the class that meets 10 minutes after mine.
So apparently this student is annoying you, but do you need to resort to gendered insults (calling her a "twat")? I would not have respected any of my college or grad school professors if they spoke about students like that.
Ah. Professors are not allowed to engage in an activity that 9/10s of the rest of the working public engages in -- namely, calling a twit a twit?
Crap on that. If you can call the IT guy who screwed up your computer a dork, or the customer who's pissing you off an ass, then AP (or any other prof) can call a student a polka-dotted dickhead if she wants.
Cranky, I think Jessica is peeved with me for using the genitally-focused gendered insult "twat" rather than the non-genitally-focused gendered insult "twit." Should Jessica be able to find a non-gendered insult meaning "life support system for a set of reproductive organs" I would be happy to use it instead. Because I lost tons of sleep last night worrying about how she doesn't respect me.
Sheesh. This girl has shown herself to be 100% incapable of interacting with faculty or students on a professional level. She doesn't need a bevy of internet white knights riding to her rescue, she needs to get tossed out on her self-satisfied heinie.
I say go for the "living hell" routine, Angry Prof, it's the only way to maintain a semblance of order in the classroom at this point.
Jessica, I have some really bad news for you...
Why do you want a non-gendered insult meaning "life support system for a set of reproductive organs"? How are the reproductive organs relevant? If you want to say your students are stupid or arrogant, that's one thing. Perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes is another thing. That's why I call people out on gendered slurs, whether they are using them against Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin or some girl I've never heard of.
Is he like the CP I met once who was nicer to me than the prof was (who promptly was nice to me after that in class) and then hit on me later? That was a bit creepy.
Are you as confrontational about ALL gender-based insults, or just the ones you don't like? If you hear someone called a dick, or a prick, or a bastard, or a cock....do you get in the caller's face about it?
How about asshole? That's a non-gendered insult. Everyone has one, right?
I bet you're a riot at social gatherings.
This girl is a young earth creationist? It is a nice position to take if you don't care about science or things that are demonstrably true.
I cannot remember the exact verse in the Book of Proverbs, but there is a verse that says, Never argue with a fool, they will break your teeth with your words."
Discussions with folks like this are hopeless.
Using gendered insults to refer to women, no matter how annoying the woman, is usually rude and wrong.
By pointing this out, Jessica is correctly confronting a usually near-totally invisible form of misogyny.
This has nothing to do with the particular woman in question being insufferable or not.
Again, do folks all butt-hurt about twat get up in people's faces about "dick" and variants thereof?
Somehow, I doubt they do.
Again, do folks all butt-hurt about twat get up in people's faces about "dick" and variants thereof?
Somehow, I doubt they do.
No, I don't. I also find it different to work up the same head of steam for black people calling white people 'cracker' in the south that I do for white people calling black people by an epitaph considered too beyond the pale to spell out here. Also, I find it difficult to care as much about high school boys calling each other 'breeder' as I do about how casually 'fag' is thrown around between those same boys.
I would hope that it's fairly obvious why this is.
My father was for some years the holder of an endowed chair "...for the History of Magic and Experimental Science" (his field was-is History of Science and Technology). He got ALL the whack-jobs. Then he moved to Iowa State, and at least once a year had to say to some raving Christer who had invaded a survey course that touched on Darwin "I do not understand why you people wish to slight the Revelation of Genesis by calling it a theory."
But he had a great, gruff lecture voice, vast amounts of presence, and eyebrows that went long and tufty in his mid-forties. He terrorized the lazy, the inept, the Politically Correct, the self-important, and the dumb among students and faculty alike for four decades, until he retired from teaching.
I love him dearly, and don't get to spend nearly enough time with him.
Don't know what to suggest for people who would like to follow in his footsteps, except don't suffer fools at all, if possible, be scrupulously fair so that when it's time to fail some twit everybody knows they deserve it, and develop a growl.
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