Jul. 30: Plinky ~ bad teacher

Plinky is back. Yay! Here’s my first one since it returned. It’s from a week ago, but I just now finished writing up my answer, so… sorry? (Pssst… I’m not really sorry.)

Describe the worst teacher you ever had.

I never thought anyone could top my fifth grade teacher in the “worthless” category, but that was before I took my first management class in college. The professor was the type who wrote up his class outline in 1965 and never bothered to update it again. Exams were always multiple choice—the ones that came with the textbook, because GOD FORBID HE PUT ANY EFFORT INTO TEACHING—and classes were all-lecture-all-the-time, straight out of the book. We never had projects or papers to do. I can’t even remember daily assignments, but there must have been some, right? Or quizzes? Maybe Mike Devitt can remember—he was in the class too.

What made this ineffectual and out-of-touch teacher even worse was that he was a male chauvinist. I mean, the guy was, like, 749 years old and never changed his way of thinking since the days it was okay to tease girls and punch boys. I was almost embarrassed for him sometimes. Almost.

The strange thing was that even with all of his old school ways, he was a really nice guy. I was a reader for one of the other professors in the department, and whenever he saw me working, he’d stop and chat for a little while. I guess not taking time to prepare for his classes gave the guy time to get to know his students.

I have one happy memory of that class: a new kind of M&Ms had just come out, and a bunch of us shared handfuls nearly every day. Yes, what I got out of my first management course in college was a long-term love of peanut butter M&Ms, and not much else.

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