The Unlonely Professor

Just a forewarning: this gets pretty mean, but has a good message.

Before I went back to campus for my final class of the day, I needed to swing by my apartment for a quick bite. What's on the menu? Leftover chicken and dumplings from Mom... for the third evening in a row. Hey, you can't beat free food. Especially on a college kid's budget.

Before I heat up the leftovers, I had to get this story of my experience with a professor out of my mind and onto the blog. Out my of mind and onto the blog... seriously Mike? I think this blogging thing is doing something strange to me. Hey! There is a blog title right there, "I Think This Blogging Thing Is Doing Something Strange to Me." Kinda long, but I digress.

I had a class last night from 7:15 PM till 9:45PM. The class name: Optimal Resource Management. Sounds cool, right? Wrong. I quote from the course description: "This course focuses on optimization modeling and sensitivity analysis to help managers craft well-formed, well-justified decisions. Students design optimization models for realistic cases, implement them using spreadsheets, and write the results in the form of a nontechnical recommendation to management backed up by clearly organized technical appendices."

Here's my version, "This course is like that one last semester, remember the one you thought you were going to barely pass, but for some reason the teacher gave you a B. Business Analysis? Yeah that one. Well this class is like that one but ON STEROIDS! Oh, that's not bad enough? After you do all that spreadsheet modeling, technical work, and pulling your hair out (if you had some), you then need to present it in a manner that a second grader can understand."

There were only five people in the class, so apparently I was the only one who didn't get the memo that this was, in fact, not a "cool class." Maybe if I had read the course description before registering for the class this wouldn't have happened. Wow, what an idea! Lesson learned. It only took me 3.5 years. Some lessons I guess are learned the hard way.

The professor said there were so few students because this was a "protected class" because it was part of the University's "critical thinking through writing initiative." Great! By that time I had a pretty good list of reasons to drop this class.

Let me take a minute to describe the professor to you. He had a beard. (As all good professor's should. I think even female professors should start growing them. It helps add to their legitimacy.) But not just any beard, his was borderline burlesque, unkempt, Old Man Time lookin'. It was unattractive. He spoke very slow and told jokes that weren't very funny. My favorite was, "I think the reason I like linear programming is because we are both the same age (Long awkward pause) We were both born in 1942."

Additionally, he was at least 150-200 lbs overweight but not in a jolly Santa Claus way. He was overweight in awkward locations. For example, he looked normal from the shoulders up, but the rest of his body was very shapely. And when he sat down his belt buckle was about six inches below his chin (at least that's where I thought his chin was). He was obviously was going for the overweight Steve Urkel look.

But wait, there's more! Not too long into the class the professor informed us he was legally blind. Which explained the two sets of coke-bottle thickness glasses that he switched between, and why he had to have his face (even with the glasses on, seriously not joking) four to six inches from the screen! Seriously?

He suggested since the class had so few people to just blurt out questions if we had any because he probably wouldn't see our raised hands anyway. Now at this point, I just started to feel sorry for the guy. I thought, 'This must be a lonely dude, and the true reason he likes linear programming is because he doesn't have many friends.' Terrible, I know. But there was no way I was going to be able to make it through this class. Not with the subject material and definitely not with this guy teaching it.

Convinced I was going to drop the class (don't worry Mom I don't need it to graduate), I tuned out about halfway through. I couldn't leave early there was only four of us in the class by this point. But the more I sat and watched this guy, the more I felt sorry for him. It really made me appreciate my health and wellbeing. And as he was rambling on about how many painted widgets and gadgets we should make, I realized... he had on a wedding ring.

Wow! This guy, who has so much going against him, still managed to find someone to fall in love with and get married. That is really cool! Unless of course he managed to find a mail-order bride. Or he thinks he actually looks like Fabio, and only wears a wedding ring to keep all the ladies off him (because he's legally blind... get it?).

But seriously... all I really want to say through this story is this:

Thank goodness Love is blind. It has helped a heck of a lot of people get through this thing called Life.