The Seven Professors You Meet in College

The blond chick is still unconscious.

Don't panic, it's seven AM on a Tuesday, and said blond chick is my sleeping roommate, Audrey. I can't blame her for sleeping; I wish I was still asleep. But no, I've got to do this Spanish worksheet that's due today. And I can't do it in another class, because Spanish is my first class.

Yeah, sometimes I do work for other classes (or my blog) in class. It depends on how good the professor is. Fun fact: there's only seven professors in the world. The rest are just faceless robots standing behind a podium. Here you go.

The Communist

This professor emigrated from the USSR in 1991 and believes Gorbachev was a CIA plant sent to destroy the greatest empire of all time. Lecturing in a thick Eastern European accent, he's nearly as hard to understand as the thought process behind the Bay of Pigs. No matter what class he teaches, he will find room in every lecture to explain why the West is corrupt and evil. You will learn a great deal about American imperialism, mutually-assured destruction, and Karl Marx.

Every dude in the class will try to grow this beard.

For a few weeks, you will hang a hammer and sickle over your desk, until you get your tuition bill and realize that only through the ownership of private property will you ever pay off your student loans.

The Overpaid Humanities Professor

She's finally got tenure and no longer has to pretend to be interested in students. Makes eighty thousand a year teaching classes like 'Television in Society' and 'Early Modern Erotica', and 'Introduction to the French Cinema'. Despite being a tenured professor, she nevertheless pretends that she's no older than her graduate students and feigns a kind of manic enthusiasm for practically everything. Her specialty is something like 16th century Ottoman rug designs or traditional Mongolian fashion design, yet her work is considered much more valuable than that of a high school teacher in the inner city, trying to encourage students to escape poverty.

The Cool TA

This is the TA who comes to class every day wearing a tee-shirt from a classic rock band and prefers chilling with students as to doing any work. She will never mark you absent nor take off points for late work. Will teach you several innovative curse words and the locations of the best bars on campus. Best professor imaginable until you go on to the next level in that class and realize you didn't learn anything at all.

The Lame TA

A hipster just out of graduate school who can't keep his eyes off the curvy Indian girl with the plunging neckline in the front row. He'll read the types of genetic mutation off the Power Point and get the definitions wrong. If this is a subject matter you know very well, you will be supremely irritated by all these little errors. He'll keep looking over his shoulder as if he hasn't yet internalized the fact that he, and he alone, is the only teacher of the class. Now the scantily dressed Indian girl is talking about her favorite poem, using language from her Feminist Studies class and explaining that she likes how defiant said poem is, because it's about defiance. The Lame TA stares at her in reverence, says something flirtatious, and hopes that she'll teach the class for him.

The Mad Scientist

Everyone's favorite professor. Welcoming, low-key, and eager to direct students to follow their passions, it's nevertheless difficult to take him seriously because he looks like this.

It's like his hair is trying to run away from his thoughts

Will have a lab on campus and several species of bug named after him. He's the reason the bio department has a walrus skull sitting in a cabinet, along with a ratty stuffed platypus and the head of a miniature deer (I'm pretty sure it's a dik-dik, and I'm pretty sure the name comes from what you have to be to cut off one's head and toss it in a cabinet). An expert on animal communication who knows nothing about the mating patterns of his own species, The Mad Scientist is the only person who knows why the word 'sperm' is written in tiny text in the corner of every lab manual. His breath also smells like old gym socks.

The Made Up Professor

This professor only ever appears in bars and at parties, usually right after some kind of bet has been made. From about 9:00 to 10:30, he's known as Professor Daniels or Doctor Morgan. Then the good stuff runs out and you hear about Doctor Chair and Professor Beer Pong. A longtime member of the Trivia department, he's an authority on everything from the Oscar winners in 1977 to the main exports of Tajikistan. Only possesses a 50/50 accuracy ratio (as compared with Wikipedia) at best. The accuracy ratio declines over time.

The Professor Whose Tests Are Easy (For The Professor)

This man wants everyone in his class to get an A. If only the students wanted it as much as he did! Seriously, people, these questions aren't that hard! They're all true or false! Unfortunately, this professor teaches biology, and so the answer to about half the questions happens to be It Depends On A Wide Variety Of External Factors, Which May Or May Not Matter, Depending On How The Question Is Worded. As you struggle to pick apart the minute inflections of grammar, you'll get an excellent course in English and psychology. You will develop excellent critical thinking skills (starting with thinking critically about your professor). Despite the fact his tests are perfectly easy, he will nevertheless interrupt the final exam six times to explain typos, clarify ambiguous wording, and strike questions from the test after he's realized we didn't actually cover the material. By the end of the semester, you still won't know what the ADH/RAAS cycle is, but you'll be secure in the knowledge you can always look it up in that two-hundred dollar textbook he made you buy.