So there are students (not mine) standing outside my door as I type this...waiting to speak with one of my department colleagues, who is on the phone in the office across the hall. My door is wide open; they know there's a professor in here.
This is why I can't believe they have the gall to talk about another prof (who is not in my department but who teaches a course that is cross-listed with it) like this, at the top of their healthy lungs:
Student A: I can't even believe it...Simon de Bouvar [sic]...The Second Sex is 700 pages...
Student B: I don't even read it.
Student A: It's an okay class, it's just the reading is ridiculous...
Student B: It's not even an okay class...I hate it. [Prof's name] is an idiot [enraged]...
Student A: Yeah, but isn't he going on sabbatical next year?
Student B: I can't wait to be a professor and go on sabbatical all the time... [!!!!!!!!]
Then Student B says, about the course taught by my department colleague, the one they're waiting for: "I love this class...it's the only one I don't show up hung over for..."
Then, about another of my colleagues: "I hate how she takes four hours to make one point...she's so boring...What is the point of that class, anyway?"
I can't get over students' lack of self-consciousness; doesn't it seem as if this is the kind of thing they shouldn't be shouting, to be overheard by my colleagues and I?
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3 comments:
(*chokes on her gulp of Coke Zero*)....sabbatical all the time, huh?!? Sure thing, kid. I love the way some students think that becoming and being a professor is A) Easy; so easy anyone could do it - especially them, and B) Basically not a real job because they get to go off on holiday all the time. Oh, and let's not forget how all professors must become *deaf* because that's the only reason I can imagine that two hungover, lazy little kids would ever say those things in the department! The walls do have ears and we're always listening...
Heh: it gets worse. Last night, in the elevator, the students were discussing their next exam, which just happens to be the exam I set for them and thus in the subject I taught them. They initially seemed oblivious either to the fact that I was in the elevator with them or that I had been the one to teach them.
Barry, your story proves it: they are completely lacking in self-consciousness. Now that I think of it, I remember being in class -sitting there at the table with them - in the moments before class began, and they had a completely unself-conscious discussion of another professor - making fun of her...I am flabbergasted by all this. I don't *get it*.
And MW, yes, that's one of my hugest beefs - the perception that we have it oh so easy. That's been enough to drive a major wedge between a non-academic friend and I. I'd love for one of these folks who thinks like that to spend a week in the academic blogosphere and see just how much work we actually do!
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