NYU Professor Responds to a Douche Student's Email

[JayJay]

If I were the prof, I would not have forwarded the reply to the entire class.

 

[pseudonym]

^ He had a sense of arrogance and douche-ness to do it, though.

No surprise, to me, actually. He looks like a wannabe kunk, except kunk is bigger and has a bigger heart (I'm assuming).


no mo

 

[FLMountainMan]

I actually support the prof in this case, but discussing students as customers.....Cool story bro time:

I attended law school part-time, at nights. My professional responsibility teacher was a wretched old crone who had a script (literally) that she read from. Furthermore, a kissass student chauferred her from home to class, which happened to be at the Tampa campus this semester (most of us lived across Tampa Bay, in St. Petersburg).
Well, many of us had the script (some nerdy kid years ago made it, I guess), so we received no benefit from the class. She literally read from the script and it got so boring that we would ask questions that set up the next line. Any attempt to get her to deviate from the script was met with a "let's stay on point."
I've been in school of some sort for 26 years of my life, and she was the worst teacher I could remember. It embarasses me that she was allowed to teach at my school.

Anyway, occasionally (about every other week) I would get stuck in rush hour on my way from work in St. Pete to class in Tampa. I'd come in late, still dressed in my suit, and try to quietly slip in. She'd glare at me and say nothing more.
Naturally, it came to a head. One day, I came in a half-hour late. This coonsha stops class and asks if I think its ethical to come in late. From memory:
Me: What?
C: I said, do you think it's ethical for a student to receive credit for class attendance when the student is routinely late? [Law students are required by the ABA to attend 80% of class hours]
Me: Are you serious?
C: Quite serious. Answer the question please?
Me: Yes.
C: Why is that?
Me: Are you kidding me? Me and everyone else in this classroom is paying you a $1.00 per minute, EACH, [it was actually slightly more than that] to teach us professional responsibility. Do YOU think its ethical to waste everybody's money on administrative nonsense like this that we can talk about after class?
C: Are you going to be this disrespectful to judges?
Me: Please. Unlike you I work fifty hours a week [a slight exaggeration at the time], every week of the year. Look at me? [tugged on tie] Do I look like I just came from the damn beach? Sorry I don't have a chauffeur, please forgive me, your honor.
Kissass student (now an adjunct, unbelievably): Why don't we just get back to class and discuss this afterwards
Me: Thank you.
C: [shakes head] As I was saying, before I was interrupted......

After class she attempted to talk to me and I walked right past her. I swear my hands are shaking now just remembering about that crap.

You know what, f**k it.

Ruth Fleet Thurman. Professor at Stetson University.

 

[FLMountainMan]

Originally Posted by pseudonym

^ He had a sense of arrogance and douche-ness to do it, though.

No surprise, to me, actually. He looks like a wannabe kunk, except kunk is bigger and has a bigger heart (I'm assuming).


no mo

Did you read the McQueen thread?

 

[Dakota rube]

I'm with the prof on this.
An hour late for the class is a deal-killer here. The student should've just let the thing die.

The prof may have been a little pricklish in his email, but the student was the first wrong here.

 

[RedLantern]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

I actually support the prof in this case, but discussing students as customers.....Cool story bro time:

I attended law school part-time, at nights. My professional responsibility teacher was a wretched old crone who had a script (literally) that she read from. Furthermore, a kissass student chauferred her from home to class, which happened to be at the Tampa campus this semester (most of us lived across Tampa Bay, in St. Petersburg).
Well, many of us had the script (some nerdy kid years ago made it, I guess), so we received no benefit from the class. She literally read from the script and it got so boring that we would ask questions that set up the next line. Any attempt to get her to deviate from the script was met with a "let's stay on point."
I've been in school of some sort for 26 years of my life, and she was the worst teacher I could remember. It embarasses me that she was allowed to teach at my school.

Anyway, occasionally (about every other week) I would get stuck in rush hour on my way from work in St. Pete to class in Tampa. I'd come in late, still dressed in my suit, and try to quietly slip in. She'd glare at me and say nothing more.
Naturally, it came to a head. One day, I came in a half-hour late. This coonsha stops class and asks if I think its ethical to come in late. From memory:
Me: What?
C: I said, do you think it's ethical for a student to receive credit for class attendance when the student is routinely late? [Law students are required by the ABA to attend 80% of class hours]
Me: Are you serious?
C: Quite serious. Answer the question please?
Me: Yes.
C: Why is that?
Me: Are you kidding me? Me and everyone else in this classroom is paying you a $1.00 per minute, EACH, [it was actually slightly more than that] to teach us professional responsibility. Do YOU think its ethical to waste everybody's money on administrative nonsense like this that we can talk about after class?
C: Are you going to be this disrespectful to judges?
Me: Please. Unlike you I work fifty hours a week [a slight exaggeration at the time], every week of the year. Look at me? [tugged on tie] Do I look like I just came from the damn beach? Sorry I don't have a chauffeur, please forgive me, your honor.
Kissass student (now an adjunct, unbelievably): Why don't we just get back to class and discuss this afterwards
Me: Thank you.
C: [shakes head] As I was saying, before I was interrupted......

After class she attempted to talk to me and I walked right past her. I swear my hands are shaking now just remembering about that crap.

You know what, f**k it.

Ruth Fleet Thurman. Professor at Stetson University.

Damn, thats a pretty good exchange. Kinda got me riled just reading it!

 

[Jekyll]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

This one guy had a particularly lazy attitude about him. He'd come in with his baggy jeans and baseball cap on backwards, plop his bag down, making absolutely no effort to be quiet. I wanted to ******* smack him on more than one occasion.

This is the main problem I have with students coming in late; it's disrespectful to other students. The students are paying to be there, the professor is getting paid to be there (albeit very little).

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I have to say, some of the best actual teachers I found, were in community colleges.

I sure as hell hope this isn't true.

Many of my CC professors have been idiots.

 

[Piobaire]

Originally Posted by Jekyll

I sure as hell hope this isn't true.

Many of my CC professors have been idiots.

Well, as Fok mentioned, good students bring out the best in teachers, so I can only assume poor students get a similar response.

Of course, I did say "some of" as opposed to "every" or "most," didn't I?

 

[sjmin209]

Originally Posted by LA Guy

Some professors like teaching more than others. In the hard sciences, the pressure to bring in money is greater, so the more onerous and unrewarding teaching seems. In softer fields and the humanities, you get less of this.

Perhaps true on the money front. But the pressure to publish in the humanities is no less than in the sciences.

 

[yerfdog]

Originally Posted by fredfred

Having taught classes, it's amazing what some students will do. And NYU students have the highest self-centered quotient I've ever seen.

80 students in my class... and I hear a weird clicking noise. I can't figure out what it is or where it is coming from. Finally I locate the noise... it's in the front row. I look down from the raised area to see.. somebody clipping their finger nails, with the clippings flying everywhere. Stopped me cold. Student finally looks up and says, "Should I do this later?".

amazing

 

[yerfdog]

Originally Posted by RedLantern

Damn, thats a pretty good exchange. Kinda got me riled just reading it!

Haha yeah, me too. I never had any law school professors that were remotely this ridiculous, maybe I just got lucky...

 

[Milpool]

Brings back memories. Business school seems to bring out the biggest of the overinflated egos.

Both the student and the professor sound like real assholes.

I only had a few jackass professors in business school, but they were jackasses of such epic proportion that they made me a real fan of the consumer model: **** you, I pay your damn salary.

 

[pseudonym]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Did you read the McQueen thread?

I'm assuming this one?

http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?t=165647


If not, link me.

 

[FLMountainMan]

Originally Posted by yerfdog

Haha yeah, me too. I never had any law school professors that were remotely this ridiculous, maybe I just got lucky...

Man, you've got me going:

I only had two, both of them long-term tenured professors. Ruth Thurman, the idiot I referenced above, was the first woman to graduate from Stetson or something, so I'm assuming they hired her for that. Several school administrators confided that she was awful, but they had to keep her. Apparently, two years before I got there almost the entire class walked out on her one day in protest.

The other was Robert Bickel. 5'3", roughly 280 lbs. He treated the class like it was Dead Poet's Society, thinking if he phrased a basic torts concept in as confusing and complex language as possible, we would all be so inspired by the law and stand up on our desks and worship him. This may have worked for starry-eyed 1L's with no real work experience, but failed to impress the part-time students, most of whom had real jobs and wondered how the **** this pompous windbag kept his.
He constantly spoke of civil rights litigation, while periodically dispensing anecdotes about his days as a successful torts defense lawyer (essentially, shafting poor injured people out of settlements). Also bragged a couple of times he was first in his class in law school. His "class" in law school was the first FSU Law School class and numbered (at least I heard) about a dozen students.
Almost three months in, the school's other torts professor Professor Lake (Harvard Grad, national expert on education law, etc...) comes in and writes on the chalk board "Duty, Breach, Causation, Damages" and says with a wry smile "You guys have all heard this, right?" The entire class frowns and shakes their heads, while Bickel nods his.
Lake then goes on to teach us the underlying theme of most tort actions. This was good to know, a few weeks before the final exam.

 

[Jekyll]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

Well, as Fok mentioned, good students bring out the best in teachers, so I can only assume poor students get a similar response.

That stings.