GODDAMNIT: Quit taking crap from your college professors

Logically, there’s no reason whatsoever that a Professor or a teacher’s assistant should ever be condescending or douchebaggy to a student or group of students without reason. Sure, if the students act like assholes – being loud, disruptive, or ignoring/insulting the teacher – then the professor has every right to act like an asshole back. Respect given, respect earned.

Yet I’ve run into more than a few professors who have needlessly  acted as if their shit not only didn’t stink, but could heal the injured and perform Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony with only a day of preparation. Why? Some might say that having achieved the rank of professor or doctor thereby entitles the teacher to act a bit pretentious -- after all, they’ve earned it, right? Well, yes and no. A professor is obviously the most knowledgeable person in the room about whatever subject they’re teaching, and should therefore be listened to. However, just because they know a lot about the history of Incan pottery and have achieved a higher social and occupational position because of it, does not automatically make them better or more deserving of unconditional respect than the students they teach. The students pay for knowledge, and the professors are paid to deliver it. Imagine if a department store employee treated you like crap simply because you have to give them money, and they control what you receive in exchange; would this be logical, or morally right? Of course it wouldn’t. So, why take the same treatment from a professor simply because of their social position?

I had a professor who, in an infuriatingly effeminate tone of voice, often referred to us students as “silly little monkeys” and, when asked about why we had to sign an attendance sheet at the beginning and end of class (many of the students had missed buses thanks to the extra ten or fifteen minutes the attendance added to the end of the scheduled class time), he dismissively replied with the following: “Too bad. You can complain [in a mocking voice] ‘wuhh, I’m an adult and I don’t have to deal with this,’ but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter and I need your signature on that sheet, okay?”

And everyone in the class took it. Many of the students subtly turned to their friends and whined or ranted about the professor’s words, convincing themselves that by lambasting him in total secrecy they had somehow fought back, but nobody really did a damn thing about it; not one person spoke up. Why? Because he controls your grade? Because he’s older? More experienced?

My classmates were disturbingly willing to give up their desires to be treated like adult human beings, in exchange for the presumed safety of not receiving a lowered grade due to speaking out in class or seeing the professor during his office hours.

Consider it -- the promise of safer grades actually outweighed their goddamned sense of self-respect.

This would be less irritating if getting professors to change their behavior were actually all that difficult. I have a professor friend who has been teaching future English instructors for the past few years. She gave me some invaluable advice about college professors: “Most of them are lonely,” she said. “They’re pretty busy and they seldom have a chance to really get to know any students in the same way high school teachers do. All you’ve really gotta do is talk to them; actually engaging in serious, non-kissass discussion with a student is so rare that they’ll probably be a lot more receptive than you’d think.”   

And it's true -- so long as you don’t act like an insufferable fuckknob to them, or humiliate them during class in front of others, professors really aren’t that averse to discussing things rationally in private. After long periods of time without intelligent conversation with younger students, they tend to lump all students into their stereotypical groups, and then proceed to treat them like crap simply because it’s easier, and because they still stick to the assumption that “older” means “smarter, and therefore more deserving of respect.” Yeah, you’ll occasionally run into the 60-year-old curmudgeony fucktard who will refuse to change his ways or treat you like a human being under any circumstances, but they’re usually too old to remember your name and so speaking against them really has no negative consequence.

A female friend and I -- if you’re going to talk to a male professor, it always helps to have a semiattractive female friend in tow -- eventually went to the aforementioned douchebag professor and pointed out his behavior and how disrespectful it was. We didn’t insult him, though we wanted to, and we didn’t slash his tires, though we probably could have without getting caught; all you’ve really gotta do when dealing with a condescending asshole of a professor is to stand up for yourself, refuse to apologize, and deliver your complaints in an effective, marginally respectful, and rational manner. The day after my friend and I spoke to the professor, he didn’t call us “silly little monkeys” ever again, and he started passing the second attendance sheet during the middle of the class, rather than at the end.

I don’t point this out in some narcissistic gesture of “hey, look how good I am at manipulating college faculty,” but to point out how goddamn easy it is, so long as you grow some appropriately-sized balls. Most students are too petrified of losing financial aid grants or not getting accepted to grad school to demand respect as if they were actual human beings. This is complete and utter bullshit.

We take bullshit from high school faculty before college, and from our workplace managers after; college is one of the few periods in our lives when we are on a logically even playing field with the people in direct authority of us. Why squander that time by cowering from a professor’s side-handed insults? Or worse, kissing their asses?

We’ve all had at least one of these fuckheads in any given college class: the pathetic, sycophantic brown-nosers who think that endless compliments and concessions during discussion are some sort of substitute for demanding some simple human goddamn decency. Just recently, I had a class with absurdly unfair, needlessly specific objective exams which seldom, if ever, covered the material we discussed in class or through online discussion. As I stayed after class to talk to the professor about this, another student approached him first; he said that the tests were “a little problematic,” and that, “not to complain,” because “you’re a great professor and I respect that,” but…and so on and so forth.

His complaints to the professor consisted of about 80% passive, sycophantic hand-wringing, and 20% spineless concession everytime the professor gave him a bullshit answer to one of the few legitimate questions he might ask. In simply staying after class to talk to the professor, the student thought that he had somehow really proven himself, stood up for himself, earned some respect. He was so friggin’ proud of himself, in fact, that he forgot to say anything of actual importance. A few other students and I, on the other hand, managed to send a strongly-worded email to him explaining our problems with his teaching style and some suggestions for improvement. A week later, he was non-sarcastically asking us to help him write the exam.

As this is, of course, a pretty testosterone-driven web site, I have to assume that you, reader, don’t have these sorts of problems; that you know how to stand up for yourself and demand proper treatment in an academic environment. Still, I’d request that you let your weaker, more passive-aggressive friends know what we both know – that self-respect is not something to be bartered away in exchange for academic safety or mindless ass-kissing. That students deserve to be treated as respectfully as professors. In other words, to summarize the summary:

GODDAMNIT, QUIT TAKING CRAP FROM YOUR COLLEGE PROFESSORS.