Welcome to 13th Grade!

So my first day back to class, for my final semester as an undergraduate, began with a bang. To be perfectly honest, it’s the only class I have this go-round that isn’t English-based and it’s something I’d been putting off until the very end: the dreaded foreign language requirement. Now I really have no issue with having to take it – the requirement makes sense in the grand scheme of college education – and I have no issue with the material being taught – I think I got this. What I do have a problem with is walking into a classroom where, as soon as the professor opens his or her mouth, it becomes abundantly clear that you are not considered an academic but, rather, are regarded as nothing more than a peon.

Gotta love the ones who fancy themselves classroom dictators.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that one has to establish the rules, especially to a room half-packed with freshman, but there is a line between simply being authoritative and delving into the realm of pure megalomania.

To illustrate, here is a list of things you can do to show that you are on the latter side of said line on the very first day your class starts:

1. Before anything is else is done, even introductions, make everyone pull out their cell phones. Pretend that you are admiring them for a few minutes so that you think you’ve actually fooled anyone by gleefully decreeing that this is the last time they will ever see them in this class. Additionally, demand that they be off – not on silent – and not to be answered at any time – even if you excuse yourself – for any reason. Repeat yourself after a single mother in the class states that her daughter is being babysat by her terminally ill grandmother and she would just like to keep it on silent in case of an emergency.

2. Establish that you have a doctorate and, for that reason, you deserve more respect than your students.

3. Provide an email address for contacting you and follow that with an explanation of how you require a grace period of 32 hours (not 36, not 48. 32) to respond, unless those 32 hours occur on a Friday, Saturday or a Sunday. You have three day weekends and you needn’t be available during them.

4. Stop to berate someone coming into the very first class four minutes late, ignoring the fact that they’re probably a freshman, have no idea where they’re going and that the parking situation at CI is abhorrent.

5. Don’t post a syllabus or textbook requirements on Blackboard. In fact, don’t even activate Blackboard. Talk about how it is a ‘crutch’ and then become appalled when 75% of the class doesn’t have their textbooks yet. State they aren’t needed for the first class, but still use the opportunity to rant about how, in the ‘old days,’ students always came to the first class ready to learn.

6. Take some time to compare the classroom environment to a professional one. Draw parallels between tardiness and getting fired, and tardiness and being failed. Slip in the fact that the class has to wait at least fifteen minutes for you to arrive each day. Ignore the irony in this statement. Draw another professional parallel, this one about using staples on a paper and turning in a résumé.  

7. Begin your syllabus with:

************* TURN OFF CELL PHONES *************

Then, mention cell phones seven more times through the rest of the syllabus.

8. Spend 90 minutes making students read your entire syllabus aloud.

9. Point out the line, “All procedures and policies are subject to change if necessary...” and explain how that means you can either tighten or ignore the rules written therein at your own discretion. Take a moment to express obvious pleasure over this contractual victory.

10. Do all of the above while not having proofread your syllabus, so that it includes a slew of grammatical errors.