craziest thing you've seen a professor do?

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1) In High school & in middle school in fact, two teachers had sexual relationships with students. One was fired, i dont know about the other one
2) Imagine a fat computer geek, kinda like the comic book store guy from the simpsons. He worked at staples for the discounts on the side, lived in his parents basement. After the columbine incident, he said to a student, "people like you make kids spray bullets at you students". He was arrested and taken away with handcuffs lol.
3) Orgo professor who spent a large part of his career studying LSD and such drugs (so you can imagine how colorful a character he was) came into the lecture hall with a bright ass colorful shirt (think, im going to the bahamas type of shirt). The following monday, he comes back with the same exact clothes on, and he tells the class....that was a helluva weekend. lol
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Last semester, we had a professor for Cell Biology who picked up a kid's ringing cell phone, dropped it into his Nalgene bottle, poured in diet Pepsi, shook vigorously, and threw the bottle at the wall across the lecture hall.

Yep =)
 
In our gen chem 2 class someones phone kept going off, and eventually the professor blurted out "Put it on vibrate and enjoy the sensation!"
 
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In bio in high school, I sat next to a guy who was always talking in class and always teasing me and occasionally doing things like pulling the chair out from under someone as they were about to sit down, to dramatic effect. Well, the teacher disliked him, and on a test one of the questions was "how would you explain such-and-such process to your lab partner?" and I answered with a lot of "but, knowing him, he still wouldn't get it, and so then I'd further explain that..."s. I got 5% extra for humour. So weird.

On another test, there was a picture of a dissected rat, and the first question, so that everyone would get at least 1 mark (it was a tough test :p), was "Name this rat." Well, turns out that if you named it after the Chem teacher who she professed to dislike (only teasingly), she'd give you an extra point! :)

In uni, my Chinese prof was adored by all of his female students. Unfortunately, he was taken -- the year before I arrived, he got engaged to one of his students :p.

A math prof similarly was involved with a student, and after I happened upon this I got a suspiciously high mark which I believe was to keep me quiet :p.

Oh, the Chinese prof would do crazy things like if we were memorizing a skit which had a dog in it, he'd get down on his hands and knees and crawl about the classroom barking like a dog, sometimes going up to a "begging" position in front of someone or paw at their knee.

High school music teacher once was teaching some music history, telling us all about some artist or composer who was really risque and was connected to a lot of sexual adventures. She closed off her analysis with "well, that's how things go in jazz groups. Nobody isn't pulled into it." We all just sort of stared at her blankly, so she continued "I was *in* a jazz group, remember." A guy in class responds "Mrs. X, what are you trying to tell us...?"

I'm sure I'll think of more later.
 
I don't have any cool college prof. stories, but my Latin teacher in high school was pretty amusing. He was a cranky bastard at times. The first day of high school [yep, 9th grade....and slightly intimidated on my first day], I dropped my pen top in Latin class. So I got out of my seat to pick it up. He stopped the lecture and went into a tirade about how I threw the pen top on purpose to draw attention to myself, etc.... It was definitely an A-hole thing for him to do, especially during my first day of school...I was like, "GREAT, high school is so much fun already...."

But the FUNNIEST thing that he ever did came after a Latin club meeting [at my high school we occasionally had "club" periods where you got out for club meeting, so of course we joined tons of clubs....ha ha ha]. I was sitting in physics class when he stormed into the room demanding to see one of my friends. My Latin teacher was PISSED. He was practically screaming when he told my physics teacher he had to see my friend ASAP. Well my friend comes back in and tell us how my Latin teacher accused THREE kids from the Latin club of stealing his ink pen from his desk. He demanded their membership cards for the Latin club, etc. He was literally as worked up as someone could get. If that isn't funny/strange enough, he found his damn pen later that day in his briefcase and had to come apologize to them. Ahh, high school....

EDIT: I just read that and it sounds like I was in physics in 9th grade....the pen top story and the pen stealing story were from different years with the same teacher...
 
My chemistry professor has a policy of only answering questions that are submitted on 3x5 notecards and signed with the student's name. He says he will provide the notecards, but he never brings them to class. When I asked him a question on a no-notecard day, he told me to email him. When my friend emailed him a question, he told her to stop emailing him "frivolous" questions or he'd start taking points off for every email he got from her.

When someone in my class complained to the department chair, the professor responded by spending 30 minutes of the next class explaining why he's such an amazing teacher and that we're all racists for saying he's not.

I spend a good portion of my time in class (it's a four-hour lecture/discussion combo) imagining increasingly creative ways of killing him and making it look like an accident.
 
Hey Benna, I feel you. My friend and I thought of some pretty creative ways for our genetics teacher to go since he was such an a**. A sophomore level course that he decided to teach like it was graduate level. Fun.

My crazy teacher story is from high school/middle school. I went to a small school where in 8th grade one of the math courses was taught by a high school math teacher who was retired from being the wrestling coach and only taught part time. Early in the semester, he had my friend come up to the front of the room and put him in a wrestling move to demonstrate something about leverage and different angles. He kept the guy in the move for like 10 minutes and left a chalk handprint all over the back of the guy's dark colored sweater.
 
For the nitrogen guy, he didn't drink the liquid nitrogen. he put it in his mouth and let it boil off. He was protected because the boiling N2 formed a gas layer separating the liquid from his mouth. If you swallowed it, peristalsis would compress the N2 so that it came into contact with your esophagus/stomach. It would be a bad day.

I had a geometry teacher in high school who was lecturing on some proofs or something. Practically the whole class was talking. So, he screams at us, throws his yardstick across the room, and storms out. Needless to say, we were stunned. He came back in later and apologized. He was actually one of the coolest teachers we had, but for some reason that one day he snapped.

There's always this guy, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hut3VRL5XRE
 
Oh, also, med school story. We had a doc come in the other day to teach cardiac exam and peripheral vasculature exam. He got this kid to come up to the front of the class (170 students), strip down, then proceeded to basically fondle the guy for a good half hour. I know, I know, you have to touch for PE, but this was just weird. He really should have bought him dinner or something first. Now, to be fair, the prof reciprocated and allowed the guy to examine him, but he kept all his clothes on. Except his shoes and socks. He made the guy check his pedal pulses. Then he had to go sit down for the next hour while the lecture was finished. Nope, didn't get to go wash his hands.... How lovely, eh?
 
The professor stood on the lab bench down at the front of the lecture hall and funnelled a beer. He then proceeded to take shots of whatever students handed him. So many people showed up to class that day the cops had to break it up. It was an absolute mob scene. The professor later had to issue a written apology for his actions.

(nope. not kidding. we have a lovely tradition of the entire campus drinking themselves into oblivion on the last day of classes)
 
gujuDoc said:
If a TA did that at my school it would be cause for automatic dismissal!!
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I am sure it is at my school as well. No one ever said anything though.
 
youngnflyy said:
Today we had an exam in organic chemistry. After our time had expired, the professor calls for all the exams and begins to count down from 10. After he finished counting there were a few stragglers who had rushed down to the bottom of the auditorium to give him their papers. He took those and promptly wrote a big zero onto them. In his haste to leave he drops several of the papers he had from those of us who managed to get our exams in on time. A girl notices this and tries to hand him her exam that he dropped onto the floor, he takes it from her, looks at it, smiles, and then crumples it up before tossing it across the auditorium. He then exits the room with a mob of angry students behind him. I felt bad for them, but at the same time It was pretty funny.
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In my 1st year of undergrad, my physics professor shot a gun across the front of the auditorium to demostrate the transfer of energy from the high-speed bullet into a large wooden block set up as a pendulum. There was some plexiglass set up in front of the block so no fragments would splinter off into the audience, but I still couldn't believe it.
 
My undergrad calc physics 1 prof (british guy, if anyone here attended UM undergrad and took his 205 or 210 class, you know who he is) is less than bright. He would insist on always doing physics demos, even though he couldn't pull any of them off. He once tried to demonstrate conservation of energy using a bowling ball pendulum (ball hanging from a cord from the ceiling) and almost killed himself in the process. He stood up against the wall, back to the wall, and pulled the pendulum away from the vertical toward his face, making like a 60 degree angle with the vertical. The idea was to release the ball gently and bravely stand still against the wall as the ball swings back to within a centimeter of his nose (since energy is conserved, the ball should return to the same height it started). Instead he kind of shoves the bowling ball away, giving it an initial velocity. When he realized the ball was coming back waaaay too fast, he shrieked like a little girl, threw himself violently and awkwardly out of the way in just the nick of time and collapsed on the ground as the ball thudded loudly against the wall, making a nice round indent in the cement. He then limped around for the next two days, presumably because he pulled something during his evasive sissy maneuver.

He also tried to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum by standing on this round rotating platform and swinging his arms around one way to make the platform go the other way. On his third try, he slipped off and landed facefirst against the tile floor at the front of the auditorium. Everyone applauded.

I would actually feel bad for him...if only he weren't both a crappy professor and an dingus in one. He also repeatedly insisted that the cosine of 90 degrees is one and called a student a "bloody idiot" when he suggested otherwise...uh...precalculus anyone?
 
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during gen chem: prof brought in dry ice (i don't remember why) and starts talking about it.

after a while, he picks it up. talks a little bit, blah blah, then says that dry ice is cold (bit of an understatement), so we shouldn't hold it for very long.

he then proceeds to throw it at student instead.
 
during diff eq. my math professor goes into a huge simile about how a differential equation is like a tennis ball. If you look at the tennis ball on the outside it is hairy and rough, but you might be surprised when you take a closer look. So you stick your hands inside and feel around. Its all smooth and liquidy. Now open it and wow you see its pink. Now smell it.... Thats when people started giggling.
 
DocBR said:
In my Ochem lab I accidently spilled a tiny drop of 10M sulfuric acid on my glove and it ate right through the glove (I got it off before it burned me). Anyway, I was telling the guy next to me what had happened, the TA over heard me, and said "That rocks! lets do it again" so she put about 8 or 9 drops of it on a glove that no one was wearing and stretched it out about 10 feet until it broke. A few drops of the acid had hit the chaulk board about 15 feet away and burned indentations into it.

I have a feeling she will one day burn down a lab....somewhere.
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I could be wrong, but in my research lab we have nitrile gloves which protect against pretty much the strongest of acids.
 
lankan108 said:
my intro bio professor's laptop got jacked my some student at the end of lecture. The next lecture he came in and gave this long rant about how he was getting the FBI involved, which ended up being a bunch of bs and he never got the laptop back. here is the link of the video of his rant...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GUZRM67nZY
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ahh I feel bad for this prof, that is ridiculous that someone stole his computer. I wish someone would get in trouble for ir! I would be upset too.
 
Hurricane95 said:
My undergrad calc physics 1 prof (british guy, if anyone here attended UM undergrad and took his 205 or 210 class, you know who he is) is less than bright. He would insist on always doing physics demos, even though he couldn't pull any of them off. He once tried to demonstrate conservation of energy using a bowling ball pendulum (ball hanging from a cord from the ceiling) and almost killed himself in the process. He stood up against the wall, back to the wall, and pulled the pendulum away from the vertical toward his face, making like a 60 degree angle with the vertical. The idea was to release the ball gently and bravely stand still against the wall as the ball swings back to within a centimeter of his nose (since energy is conserved, the ball should return to the same height it started). Instead he kind of shoves the bowling ball away, giving it an initial velocity. When he realized the ball was coming back waaaay too fast, he shrieked like a little girl, threw himself violently and awkwardly out of the way in just the nick of time and collapsed on the ground as the ball thudded loudly against the wall, making a nice round indent in the cement. He then limped around for the next two days, presumably because he pulled something during his evasive sissy maneuver.

He also tried to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum by standing on this round rotating platform and swinging his arms around one way to make the platform go the other way. On his third try, he slipped off and landed facefirst against the tile floor at the front of the auditorium. Everyone applauded.

I would actually feel bad for him...if only he weren't both a crappy professor and an dingus in one. He also repeatedly insisted that the cosine of 90 degrees is one and called a student a "bloody idiot" when he suggested otherwise...uh...precalculus anyone?
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I never read anything you say. My eyes are always fixed on the avatar picture.
 
Johannen said:
Last semester, we had a professor for Cell Biology who picked up a kid's ringing cell phone, dropped it into his Nalgene bottle, poured in diet Pepsi, shook vigorously, and threw the bottle at the wall across the lecture hall.

Yep =)
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I love that.:laugh:
 
well im notorious for sleeping in class...english was my fav as it has the most pillowesque desks.. anyways i fell asleep like many times before cept apparently i was drooling so my prof came over and shoved a bunch of kleenex into my mouth...i woke up with this huge wad of paper in it..with everyone obviously laughing.....hard to be cool after that..
 
Tic said:
:laugh: Did a double-take on that one. You mean a real snake, right, like hiss hiss? I hope so.
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:laugh: Ya I meant real snake, but the story would be much funnier if I meant his one-eyed monster:laugh:
 
braluk based on the title of the thread "craziest thing you've seen a professor do? "...you actually witnessed #1?? :thumbup:
1) In High school & in middle school in fact, two teachers had sexual relationships with students. One was fired, i dont know about the other one
2) Imagine a fat computer geek, kinda like the comic book store guy from the simpsons. He worked at staples for the discounts on the side, lived in his parents basement. After the columbine incident, he said to a student, "people like you make kids spray bullets at you students". He was arrested and taken away with handcuffs lol.
3) Orgo professor who spent a large part of his career studying LSD and such drugs (so you can imagine how colorful a character he was) came into the lecture hall with a bright ass colorful shirt (think, im going to the bahamas type of shirt). The following monday, he comes back with the same exact clothes on, and he tells the class....that was a helluva weekend. lol
Click to expand...
 
josephlawrence00_1151055466.jpg


WHOA!
 
Lol, ANYWAYS

I had a professor in college who would talk to the other person on the line whenever someone's cell phone rang and engage them in semi-erotic dialogue. It was even better when it was someone's mom calling.
 
In a class where the grades were defined 30% first test, 30% second test, 40% final, the professor was upset that no one in the class was keeping up with the reading. He decided to give a pop quiz worth 5% of our grade on the reading we were supposed to have done over the last week. Outrageous to change the distribution 2/3 of the way through the semester.

Luckily after a storm of angry emails, he took back the decision.
 
seadizzle said:
In a class where the grades were defined 30% first test, 30% second test, 40% final, the professor was upset that no one in the class was keeping up with the reading. He decided to give a pop quiz worth 5% of our grade on the reading we were supposed to have done over the last week. Outrageous to change the distribution 2/3 of the way through the semester.

Luckily after a storm of angry emails, he took back the decision.
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That's pretty standard for my professors, they all make sure to include in the syllabus that things are subject to changes so that their a**es are covered.:D
 
This isn't really the craziest, but it was probably the meaniest thing I've seen a professor do. My bio professor in college told the whole lecture class to boo a student in unison when that student got an answer wrong. I mean, the answer was really far off, but still, I felt bad for him. 200+ people booing you is harsh.
 
At a Jesuit University, my microbiology professor gave us a lesson in Thomistic philosophy on the first day. The next lecture he went on a tirade about how evolution was not science and Jesus' walking on water was fact. He made us say a prayer every day at the start of class. He was old and died the semester after I had him.
 
melissainsd said:
Remembered another one (dating back to middle school). He kept a squirt gun at his desk to spray kids when they were chatting in class. When the year ended I gave him what I thought was a clever gift: a supersoaker. It wasn't until he opened it that I realized the flaw in my thinking. If anyone ever played with supersoakers you remember they need to be pumped. My teacher had one arm.

He ended up putting it between his legs to pump it, but I must have been so red when he opened it!
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I had a teacher in HS who used to squirt napping kids with a spray bottle. It was actually pretty funny. :thumbup:
 
Back in HS we had a business teacher who was diabetic and would let the class watch him inject his insulin if we were well behaved that day....

One of my psych profs well known for long winded lectures without distraction happened to notice a new tat on one of the female student's chests. right in the middle of a sentence he said "Ann, is that a dolphin?" and finished the sentence as if he'd never noticed anything at all. Very interesting guy. Then there's the other psych prof who looks and acts like a 250 lb richard simmons....
 
I had a psychology professor that would stick a long needle through his bicep to prove his mastery of mind over matter. He has sinced stopped doing this live because numerous students have passed out and such, but he will still show you the tape. He even narrates as its going through...."It's about the come out the other side...oh there it is...now there shouldn't be any blood"...blood begins to trickle out of his arm..."Oh, well just a little...."
 
Oh yea? I once had a prof. that knew how to travel through time.
doc_brown.jpg
 
I had a prof who called my lab partner a b*tch in front of the whole class.
 
Nickelpennykid said:
Anthro professor who wrote about the cultural implications of child birth processes told our class, in great detail, how he had sex with his wife in the hospital in an attempt to induce labor. Even went so far as to describe the way he had to have sex, because as he noted "she was too fat to do it missionary"
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: ok i just snorted my soda. omg this is the funniest thing i have heard all day...
 
Alright typical HS Chem teacher with the typical rumors that he got kicked out of his graduate program for synthesizing LSD in the 70's.

He carried around a sock puppet named Avogadro, and would have long discussions with it during the class. Avogadro had a fully developed voice, and character. It was only allowed out of its drawer at certain times.

During a test, he would sit there behind your back FOREVER and all of a sudden Avogadro would pop out around your shoulder and say in an evil laughing voice, "Nice try girl, looks like you're going to fail this one," and "you definitely got that one wrong.. meh heh heh"

He had that darn sock puppet forever. My brother 4 yrs older and my sister 3 yrs younger than me both experienced it. Then, one day during my sister's class in the middle of her experiment, he set Avagadro on fire with a bunsen burner whilst screaming, "I'm melting, I'm melting... 6..point..oh...two....two....aaaaaaahhhhh!"
 
My small engine repair teacher in HS gave a 6' tall kid a wedgie when he refused to *not* let his pants sag. He told the kid to stand up, went behind him and literally pulled his pants up till the kid cried out :eek:

Another time (on the first day back after a vacation) he brought beads to class. He then proceeded to flash the class his chest and award himself beads while laughing like a lunatic. We all just sat there wondering if we should bolt out of the room or not, lest the psycho go really crazy :laugh:

these are great guys, keep'em coming!!
 
Literally, same day sophomore year in college; two seperate classes:

Class 1 - Student A to Professor B: "State your sources BITCH!!" (not sarcastically either)

Class 2 (50 min. later) - Professor C to Student D: "Don't extrapolate, *******..."

The professionalism at my school is top notch.
 
In HS, my AP US History teacher really hated stupid people, so there were two sides of the room, a stupid side and a smart side, with assigned seating.. If you got an answer wrong, you were demoted (smart side to stupid side, stupid side to leave the class), and if u said something really idiotic you would get a marker or even a desk thrown at you!


In undergrad biochem i had a prof sing a very long song about glycolysis.. she also had us act out the entire process of cell metabolism where different ppl were different proteins/ions/compounds and had height/weight/sex requirements so we would be kinda like proteins/compounds we represented... I was ATP (small girl 5'0") and had to sit on ATPase's lap (big guy 6'0'+)...
 
This isn't something a professor did but rather a student.

A girl in my lab spilled sulfuric acid on her stomach and pants. Then, WALKED downstairs to the lab coordinator to ask what to do (there was a TA with us in lab).... Needless to say she survived...then tried out for american idol season one, got on TV, and wasn't one of the good ones.
 
This isn't something a professor did but rather a student.

A girl in my lab spilled sulfuric acid on her stomach and pants. Then, WALKED downstairs to the lab coordinator to ask what to do (there was a TA with us in lab).... Needless to say she survived...then tried out for american idol season one, got on TV, and wasn't one of the good ones.
 
Introductory religion class: whenever a cell phone rang, the prof would act as though the religious figure we were learning about was calling. i.e. ring ring, prof: Oh, its Jesus calling, hello, Jesus? Hi, how's it going? I haven't spoken to you in 2000 years. We should meet up again. Yea, I know. Remember that time when we ..... ... .. ...... For half the class. It was a riot.
 
During my senior year of HS, I had taken AP Chemistry and we would always have this substitute teacher (usually 2 times a month) who referred to himself as Dr. Crazy. According to our AP Chem teacher, he received his Ph.D. through an at-home study course (not sure in the truth in that). Anyways, he was always so radical with his teaching methods.. I remember one time he was explaining some type of simple organic chem theory (I forget what he was even talking about), and he said something to the fact that "these two atoms are heterosexual, but these two atoms over here are fags". Everyone stopped and a few students actually walked out in protest. We never seen him after that.

My sophomore year in college I had a cultural anthropology class and a world history class (both happened to be taught by the same guy). He was the oddest old man I have ever encountered. When he would lecture to us, he would usually face a wall and lecture to the wall, or he would lecture to the ceiling while whirling his chalk around and tapping his foot. Not sure if he had some type of paranoia about teaching or anxiety, but he was in his mid 60's, so I would hope he would have gotten over his teaching jitters by that point in his life.
 
Well I have quite a few...

I had this professor that ALWAYS came to class with his running outfit (smell included) and would start, right in the middle of class, to *touch* himself and make weird hip movements he called 'stretching'. Then he would say: "I hope you are not offended by my stretches, it's just that my bones hurt 'cause i'm soo old!". Whenever a cell rang, he would pick it up and start talking with the person and would always, always say: "Ella/El es muy buena/o pero bebe mucha cerveza" which is spanish for "He/she is very good but drinks too much beer".

I also had this advanced english teacher that was reaaaally into shakespeare.
One day she told us about Shakespeare's 500ish or so birthday and that we should come *dressed* like they used to dress back in his day. Of course none of us did that but the poor old lady (she was like 85) came with a super ridiculous dress and a CAKE! candles included...it was soo insane, but hey at least we got to eat b-day cake!...thank God for Shakespeare!:laugh: :laugh:
 
There is always my Organic Chemistry professor who took off his shirt in the middle of our third test and was walking around semi-naked... and let's say that his body was less than built... And also there is my biology teacher in high school who broke an overhead projector by slamming keys on it to wake up the students in the class.
 
well this is not a teacher i personally had, but my ap chem teacher told us about his father in law, also a teacher who was nicknamed dr. roadkill.

yes he collected roadkill from the streets at night, and he had a tank of flesh-eating beatles in his office he would use to clean off the flesh. then he would assemble all the bones together for animal skeletons. his classroom, not surpringsly, always smelled like rotten meat. yumm...
 
My high school science teacher was rumored to have been a stripper before he was a teacher and he liked to make up crazy stories about there being a bill-board advertising him in a local town and flying Playboy bunnies over to entertain troops during the Vietnam conflict. He had several crazy stories about his Nam days.
 
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