The not so full-service professor

Professor [as he writes Latin term on the board]: I may have the spelling wrong, guys, and I really apologize, but I really don't care.

Come on, it was orientation day...

Professor [in a class of about 70 students]: This is the online directory. That's why I have trouble identifying you. Some of your pictures are so bad... Look at this one! This is [one of the students in the class].

Free class pass... and I get to make fun of you

Professor: Who can tell me what [the USSG] is? I won't call on you next class if you can get this one.

[hand shoots into the air]

Professor: [pointing at her] Oh-ho-ho-ho! It's the gunner!

A pretty good one...

Prof: [Student], were you here last class?

Student: No, I wasn't enrolled yet.

Prof: What kind of excuse is that?

Accounting textbook examples

"Our author and other authors love to kill off the key employee. It doesn't usually work that way, unless you operate in Baghdad, or somewhere like that."

Is it really that easy?

Prof: "My pet dog could do [a Schedule M-1]! The cats of course could do it, but the dog, with a little training."

What are we coming to?

Prof: [question about representing the wishes of a minor vs. the kid's best interests]

Student: I think that's an ethics question.

Prof: I'm not above raising those.

Is this how attorneys operate?

Prof (telling us about an excessively complicated legal document that he and other auditors couldn't figure out): "We wrote the opinion that that particular attorney had perhaps been tussling with the bottle too much. Maybe that's why we could never reach him--he was in the tank, drying out."

Homework

Miss Talbert: Lorie, did you copy your answers from the back of the book?

Lorie: Oh, no Miss Talbert. I did not.

Lorie's Answers:
Question 1. Answers will vary
Question 2. Answers will vary
Question 3. Answers will vary

Miss Talbert: Yup, pretty sure you did.

The Plan

A few nights ago I got a call from a student. John was telling me that Matthew had been at his house to play and accidentally took John's bag and left his own. So told him he could turn his work in the day after, instead of the next day when it was due.

"Is that a plan?" I asked.

"No." John said

Oooookayyyy....expained again, same question, same answer. Try again...same thing. Finally I asked him what he thought was a good plan.

"No, no Miss Straub. It was not a plan. It was an accident. Matthew not mean to take my bag with him. He have the same bag as me."

Ah language barriers...I did explain to him what I meant about "Is that a plan."

Every lecture should have a llama

Professor: [After drawing our attention to a headline article in the Wall Street Journal two years ago about how it was trendy to buy live llamas as lawn decorations] I digress. Should this client incorporate as a not-for-profit?

Say what?

"The tax law of the United States, like automobiles and hot dogs, is created in a multistep process." (Federal Tax Research textbook)

Business ethics

Prof: "We're trying to integrate business ethics throughout the curriculum, so this is my contribution." (As the class enjoyed listening to a Weird Al song called "Don't Download This Song.")

Collateral

Prof: "I have a cousin... He saved his money, and we were all broke all the time, so we'd borrow money from him. ... He foreclosed on his brother's tennis shoe once--buried it in a box in the backyard.... [His brother] would give you the shirt of his back, and [my cousin] would give you the shirt off his back, if you had collateral."

John

Hi all! This is the first posting of the Laura on Frittering Away, so I shall share a story from class yesterday. We were writing letters in class yesterday and I was going around and checking to see what kind of progress the kids were making. When I got to John I asked him, "OK, John. Where are you?" John, without skipping a beat, looked up at me and, with a puzzled look on his face, replyed, "right here." It was like I was asking him a trick question and he was trying very hard to figure out what the catch was. I need to be more careful about how I word things.

Nutty professor

"The other day I was busy all day and got home and realized that I hadn't talked to a single person all day. So I commented to my cat..."

That nutty tax code!

Tax prof: "This is kind of nutty, but there are a lot of nutty things in tax."

Run now while you still can.

Professor: If you look at our tax structure--and you're better off not to--it's rather curious.

What indeed...

Professor: [explaining that some homeschooling is now structured so that parents hire a tutor to come in an teach their kids] Some teachers love this arrangment. I can just see the teacher sitting out by the pool in the back of the mansion with the kids. I mean, hey, what could go wrong?

Class: *nervous laughter*

Your tuition at work

Student: [after prof corrects a grammar distinction in a student's answer] Thank you, sir.
Professor: That's why we're here. I'm a full-service professor.

Law school hiring practices

Professor: Neither of my parents had high school degrees. My mother went through third grade and my father went through ninth. Then I went to tenth and I thought that was something! Then this job [as a law professor] came up...

Advertisements

Prof: "My cousin... I mean, she took some cleaner back [to the store] once because it cleaned, but it did not shine. The ad said, 'Cleans and shines.'"

Valid contracts

Prof: "You all know I'm always offering A's for your firstborn child. I love babies, they're so sweet. ... Is that a valid contract? Yes, but it's not enforceable. ... I can't deal in live children."

Reasons for not grading papers in class...

My students had to write 10 sentences for Reading using Selling words and other vocab I give them. One of the 6th graders Chris used the word "depress";

"I depress my thumb into his back."

Jack used some English Vocab "imperative";
“I was imperatived by my sister.”

He used interrogative and declairative in similar ways.

Now that's noble advocacy.

Professor: There's a saying among defense attorneys--"Innocent until proven broke."

And no dinner, either.

Professor: Pretend you're [fictional character in complex hypo].

Student: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to jail.

At least some candy?

Professor: So you need the bag man to cooperate with you to make your case and he says, What's in it for me? What do you say?

Student: I don't know.

Professor: Well that's helpful.

Federal Criminal Prosecution: nutshell version

Professor: What does a federal prosecutor do?
Student: Prosecute.
Professor: Prosecute who?
Student: Criminals.
Professor: Okaaay...

At least he's honest

Professor: "That question [on course evaluations], 'Is the professor enthusiastic about his subject?' The answer is, 'No.' Having taught this for a long time, I'm not enthusiastic about it. ... but I'm paid to stand up here and tell you things."

The same professor, critiquing a sample letter in the textbook: "The people who wrote the book are in California, so everything is all loose and casual. ... 'By the way, half your family died, we're really sorry, see you at the barbecue!'"

quod erat demonstrandum

Professor: Normal people do not really speak Latin. We do have a professor visiting this afternoon who actually speaks Latin, but he's not persona typica.

The *other* sacrament

Professor: [Waiting for a student to volunteer an answer and finally getting one to raise her hand] There you go! Bless you my child.

When I was your age...

Professor: When I was being educated 100 years ago and I came home and said the teacher scolded me, my parents didn't say, "Let's sue the teacher." They said, "Well, the teacher was probably right, you little rascal," and they took away my ipod... Well, no, maybe my abacus.

Tenure

Newly-tenured prof: "For some people, tenure is kind of like taking a permanent sabbatical."

Product Alert!

Freudian slippers, anyone?

Thankfully...

Now am grading English papers. The assignment is to write one each of the four kinds of sentences (exc., interr., etc..).

Jason's Declaritave sentence - "I hate dung."

For this we can all be thankful.

New Kind of Instrument

For homework my 5th graders were to list things that are "harmonious to the ear"...

One answer: "mp3 player" listed along with violin, cello, piano and other instruments

Conjugating IRS provisions

Federal Income Taxation prof: The IRS code looks like it's written in English because there are English words in it. Don't be fooled. It's not.

Computer Orientation

I spent nearly two hours in "computer orientation" this afternoon, but at least the guy in charge of the session was entertaining! Here's a sampling...

• "That's like ignoring a gaping flesh wound." (on ignoring anti-virus scans)
• "I could treat that with medication, but I choose not to." (on his tendency to save important documents on his hard drive, his thumb drive, and a CD)
• "[Your laptop] doesn't like to be where you don't like to be. I don't like the trunk of my car in August, it doesn't like the trunk of my car in August."
• "If you need WeatherBug, try the window. It doesn't tell you the temperature, but you can tell if it's raining."

What is that supposed to mean?

"The ABC's of Finding a Good Wife... It just sounds like a Protestant book."

--my very Catholic friend

Bumper sticker of the week

Dyslexic devil worshippers sell their souls to Santa.