Amanda Marcotte, filling in for Michael Berube, has a fun post about Film Cliches from Hell. Let's not forget what happens when professors wind up on film:
- The $1,000,000 office. All faculty offices have built-in, glass-fronted, mahogany bookcases, as well as executive desks and leather chairs. Moreover, all professors keep their antique books in their offices. Where are these offices, and, more importantly, when can I have one?
- Fashion. Professors either wear three-piece suits and ties (and the female equivalent) or blue jeans, polo shirts and sneakers. Because we're either stuffy or, like, totally hip.
- Office hours and the meaning of life. The purpose of office hours, apparently, is to discourse on Higher Things. Nobody ever explains how to use a semi-colon.
- Big houses. Being a professor is apparently a ticket to buying, say, real estate in Manhattan.
Let's not forget the photographic memory with absent-mindedness....
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner | May 26, 2006 at 05:28 PM
Other people might scream, yell and crap themselves when they see a reanimated corpse sit up and make ominous gurgling noises (while oozing pustulent goo), but a Professor merely finds it a fascinating application of a hitherto-undiscovered reagent.
Posted by: Richard | May 26, 2006 at 05:29 PM
Big houses. Being a professor is apparently a ticket to buying, say, real estate in Manhattan.
Apparently you haven't visited many Columbia prof's apartments. A lot of them get sweet deals on apartments with views of the Hudson as part of their contract.
Posted by: Dave Munger | May 30, 2006 at 09:57 AM
How about the class lecture that looks suspiciously like a Hollywood pitch session?
Arlington Road has a classic one of these.
Posted by: BenA | June 02, 2006 at 05:47 PM
As Dan Drezner's fond of pointing out: almsot every male professor in the movies except Indiana Jones ends up sleeping with a student.
Posted by: Jacob T. Levy | June 02, 2006 at 06:00 PM
Or the three-minute-long class: the prof (or teacher) has just barely begun talking about a subject when the bell interrupts them, leaving them to shout out a few homework assignments as the kids go streaming out the door. They always seem to be caught by surprise. It must be hard to plan a three-minute lesson.
Posted by: Rob | June 02, 2006 at 06:48 PM
While we're at it, how many colleges actually use electric bells?
Posted by: Omri | June 02, 2006 at 08:19 PM
Omri, Grinnell College uses high-school style bells, or at least it used to years ago.
In movies, a male professor (as noted) always sleeps with a female student, and almost gets fired, but then . . .
. . . when the happy ending of the movie comes, the President pats him on the back and gives him tenure.
Posted by: rm | June 02, 2006 at 09:46 PM
Oh, and all lectures are polished multimedia extravaganzas.
Professors don't usually have any particular discipline; they are just teaching classes on Intellectual Things. Architecture, philosophy, literature, languages . . . all the same stuff, basically.
In movies, no professor is ever there to teach Introduction to Mind-Numbing Technical Subfield, while in reality most of us are.
Posted by: rm | June 02, 2006 at 09:49 PM
Professors are brusque and arrogant, but deep down they all have hearts of gold. Or else are evil maniacs.
(Some of the classroom buildings at my recent school, LeTourneau University, have electric bells. They're incredibly annoying.)
Posted by: Wilson | June 03, 2006 at 12:15 AM
"Or else are evil maniacs."
That was my dream when I was a professor, but I never had the courage to be evil.
Posted by: robert the red | June 03, 2006 at 07:14 AM
the prof (or teacher) has just barely begun talking about a subject when the bell interrupts them
Modulo Omri's point about bells, this doesn't strike me as too unrealistic. What I mean to say is, this happens to me all the time. I leave ten minutes to start talking about next time's topic at the end of class, and start it seven minutes late.
Posted by: Matt Weiner | June 04, 2006 at 11:23 AM