"Student evaluations are an unspoken deal by which students have professors by the throat." - one of my unforgotten former prof.
Students evaluations from the professors' perspective. Actually I don't usually write anything horrible in these evaluations, with one or two exceptions. One of them is some course called mechanical design and synthesis where we learned how to machine crap. Anyway there's this fat ass in the machine workshop who wouldn't help us when we asked for it, forcing us to figure things out for ourselves. And when we screwed up, he would come yelling at us. I think in the evaluation I wrote something on the order of, "(Name of that fat ass) is the ultimate waste of our tuition money." And I wasn't alone in writing that too. I don't think he was fired though, suggesting our languages were not harsh enough.
"High school physics teachers should watch more cartoons and read less physics textbooks." - Professor Ruina.
Some joke from my dynamics prof. It's from a conversation between a dynamics professor and a high school physics teacher. The teacher was complaining that his students got no comment sense in real life physics. As an example he noted a question about a gun firing horizontally over a cliff. When asked about the bullet's trajectory (path), some students said that the bullet flew horizontally for a while before falling straight. The correct answer (the teacher claimed) is obviously a smooth path curving downward. He blamed the cartoons for giving the kids the wrong idea, like when the coyote runs off a cliff, he keeps on running for a while before realizing he got no ground under his feet. You get the point. Anyway, in response the professor noted that in the "real world" there's air resistance. Given the typical density, viscosity, and whatnot of air and the typical exit speed of a bullet, the resulting bullet path will end up being closer to what the "dumb" students predicted. It turns out that the smooth bullet path is only good for "ideal physics" where air resistance is neglected. The professor's conclusion: high school physics teachers should watch more cartoons and read less textbooks.
"Ok who can solve this problem? Anyone?? Come on, it's not that hard! You guys need some motivation. Anyone of you play Cybertroopers or Street Fighters? Here, two arcade game tokens for the first person to work out this problem." - me.
My words when I was a math facilitator (kind of like a TA) in my junior year in college. I think a girl eventually solved the problem, but she returned the tokens to me since she didn't play arcade games. She probably felt sorry for me having to resort to this tactic to prompt reactions from my students. Haha! I don't really know about other majors, but in engineering everyone just walk into the classroom and expect to only listen. When the professor/TA challenges them to some question, they'll be like *blank*, and I'm sure most of the class knows the answer. I know I wouldn't answer cuz either I was asleep or I was too lazy. Possibly the only way to prompt me to answer a question in class is if the professor promises me extra credit, money, or bikini models.
HEV non-powertrain engineer: (saw me stuck in the powertrain "compartment"). Ho? What the?? What are you doing there?? How the hell did you get IN there???
Fellow HEV powertrain engineer: Now you see the secret of our HEV's powertrain drive.
Some stupid thing I did when I was working in the Cornell HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle) team. I was a powertrain engineer, and I was one of the few people small enough to fit into the powertrain "compartment" without lifting the vehicle. Most people found that surprising. Anyway, once I was having a little trouble getting back out, and apparently I panicked. This somehow caused my body to expand, and I got stuck even more. Eventually my teammates talked my way out of the it. They could've just lifted the car. Probably too lazy to do so.