About this time every semester, we students receive piles of syllabi from professors detailing course requirements. They order us to read, to attend class, not to plagiarize and other mean things. Now it is time to turn the tables. So, all of you professors out there, here is the syllabus for the course I am giving you, right here. Read carefully.
Professor Steve Sears Office: 453 Liam Ezekiel Hall Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Mondays, 1 p.m.-1:02 p.m.
Introduction: Want to stay out of www.myprofessorsucks.com? Want to endear yourself to thousands of apathetic, self-centered, spoiled-rotten students? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you are in the right course. Teaching the youth of today can be tough, but it is not impossible. I will show you what small steps you can take to become a better educator if you do everything I say.
Class Schedule: Weeks 1 and 2: Books. Or lack thereof, I should say. Remember back in high school when one textbook was enough? You had one book for science, one for math, another for English and so on. So what’s up with seven books for one course? Can’t find one you like, so you pick 10? Even worse, these books cost $40 apiece. This angers students. And try not assigning the most boring writers on the planet. Most of the authors I’ve been assigned to read the past five years would make John Kerry look like Jon Stewart.
Required reading: Every book ever written, including the “Goosebumps” series.
Weeks 3-4: Classroom procedure. How you conduct yourself in the class goes a long way toward engaging the fickle students of this university. Take wardrobe, for instance. Avoid the bowties and the plaid suits that scream, “I was beaten up in high school.” Then there’s the loudmouth kids who think everyone came to class to hear their senseless oratory. When one says something stupid, don’t mince words like, “Interesting point.” Say, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Speak again and you fail.” The other students will respect and appreciate this.
Guest speakers: The cast of the now defunct Fox show “Boston Public.” They aren’t busy.
Weeks 5-6: Grading. All students want As. Some refuse anything less than an A. If someone complains that you graded his or her paper too low, decrease the grade. That’s what I would do. On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than getting less than an A on a 10-page paper that has no marks or corrections on it at all. At least pretend you read it and didn’t just play alphabet soup on the front page with your red pen. Understand that the romantic ideals of students going to class to learn and not care about the grade are dead. Most of us are paying over $30,000 to get a degree that looks good to employers. If we truly wanted the educational experience, we would go to a library or watch the Discovery Channel, which are considerably cheaper options.
Midterm: Whoever kisses up to me the most gets an A. Everyone else is sent to the alligator pit.
Week 7: Fun. One of my faithful readers told me that some professors can ruin any class, no matter how great the material may sound. He said a course could be “Orgasms 101” and a teacher could make it boring. Conversely, a good professor could teach “Listening Nonstop to Whiney Crap Like Simple Plan” and make it fun. Take your students to Chuck E. Cheese. Swear during your lectures. Make lame jokes. Don’t assign work over Super Bowl weekend. (How would you feel if we gave you homework on weekends when there were Matlock marathons?) Never say the following phrase: “You can work on it over Spring Break.” Never.
Quiz: What is the Super Bowl?
Week 8: Fairness. Professors and faraway conferences go together like Chicken Lou’s and cholesterol. This means a lot of missed classes. So don’t complain if a student has a Madden 2006 conference in White Hall that will require a few missed classes. I will also teach you how to quickly and efficiently grade papers. Don’t demand timely work from your students and then take two months to grade the work. It’s much easier to grade a paper than it is to write one. Students know professors have no life outside of school. At night they go to their plastic bubbles buried miles into the ground where they are fed pigs’ blood through intravenous tubes.
Assignment: Convince students you are human and therefore capable of fairness, then recharge your battery, cyborg.
Final weeks: Evaluations. The final will be your students’ evaluations of your performance. The university holds these evaluations to such esteem that they only use the latest paper-shredding technologies to get rid of the bubble sheets immediately after they are received. If the students give you high marks, then you pass the course and will be well on your way to tenure (if you publish a few books and cure cancer). Once tenured, you can teach class naked and offer virgin sacrifices on desks and no one can touch you.
– Stephen Sears can be reached at [email protected].
