Cliche

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.

Comments

[Jonathan Dresner]

Let's not forget the photographic memory with absent-mindedness....

[Richard]

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.

[Dave Munger]

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.

[BenA]

How about the class lecture that looks suspiciously like a Hollywood pitch session?

Arlington Road has a classic one of these.

[Jacob T. Levy]

As Dan Drezner's fond of pointing out: almsot every male professor in the movies except Indiana Jones ends up sleeping with a student.

[Rob]

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.

[Omri]

While we're at it, how many colleges actually use electric bells?

[rm]

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.

[rm]

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.

[Wilson]

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.)

[robert the red]

"Or else are evil maniacs."

That was my dream when I was a professor, but I never had the courage to be evil.

[Matt Weiner]

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.