Bad Professors

There are some things for sure like taxes, social change, and death, but there are other things for sure too, like graduate school egomaniac professors. I had two of those certainties. One hated women, hated minority groups, hated the South, hated the other professors, and more importantly, he hated his students. The first day of class, he informed us that not once in his entire career teaching at our university had he ever read a paper worthy of an A. He also said that he gave A’s out of the kindness of his heart and if you made a B in his class, and he goes on to give us the name of a few of the grad students he had given B’s to, but if you made a B in the class, it was because you were a village idiot. One day he yelled out Pussy Power. Just like that, in class where, on that day, I was the only female. After class, I, and I know I shouldn’t have, but I told him that it was wrong for him to embarrass me like that and how would he feel if he were in a roomful of women and the leader of the women yelled out penis, but using the slang C word, power. Throughout the semester he attacked Native Americans as being sore losers, African Americans as being whiners, and women for being out of their place. I even told him that I was Jewish because of the conversation that he and a fellow student were having about the wandering Jew and how the stereotypes are not without truth. Then when he started about the Native Americans, I told him my husband was Indian. I mean, I wanted him to shut the fuck up about people he had no right putting down. He said he hated fat people because it showed they had a lack of control but found a few fat men funny, and he enjoyed being around them so he could laugh at them. I am fat, and so guess how awful that made me feel. He denied that ever has there been a good female novelists and resents that a few have been canonized. (He knew that I was a writer because one of his former students told him that I was a good writer, trying to pave the way for me to be on the guys good graces.)

My fellow students and I learned after the first week of class that no matter how much he bated us to participate in class, it was not worth the temptation because he was going to humiliate us and make us look and feel stupid. (He even laughed at the way one guy dressed and the way he cut his hair. The guy finally told him he couldn't afford a dress coat and his hair was that way because of a scar on his head from head trauma.) So, in his class, there was very little discussion, in fact, he would get angry because no one would volunteer to discuss. Once he even assigned students to discuss for that day. If we tried to discuss a critical approach to the literature he blew us down. (He even rolled his eyes and laughed at us.) It was a no win situation.

I saw him the other day, and he smiled and spoke to me. He asked me how I was doing and I said very well. I didn’t say what I wanted to say, because even though I am not in his class or won’t ever take him again, he can still damage me. I hate politics and I hate having to let assholes like that walk away smiling when what I want to do is tell them how I really feel. I really want to say that his arrogant narcissistic attitude must be for his lacking something and by treating others the way he treats them, well he might be compensating for that lack and maybe it would be better for him professionally if he just bought that Harley or that red corvette.

That’s all.