My professor is unintentionally hilarious so I started keeping a list of things he’s said.
My entire department at my school is just filled with hilarious and genuinely kind professors. I am so lucky to have them teaching me a subject that I thoroughly love and enjoy so deeply, as they are so passionate and so dedicated to encouraging academic and personal growth. Not to mention they love a good rant. My friend and I literally plan our schedules around which prof is teaching the course bc we just love some of them so much.
(This is how we ended up both enrolling for a course about Greek & Roman science & technology, where we may have to write a 2000 word essay about olives. But yk, the olive was so important to Ancient Greek society, and I love olives, so it’s fine.)
But there is this one professor who stands out from the others. For some background information, this professor was one of my first professors at my university. In my first year, he taught me three courses (Latin & Classical Mythology), and I did a Latin reading group session with him, and I had my Greek Literature course with him (so I’ve spent a lot of time studying with him). Studying Latin can be so intimidating (for good reason, the case system is absolutely overwhelming when you first start learning it), but he created such a positive environment that I ended up being able to fall in love with Latin.
This professor is not always the most…organised (he left answers in our online tests by accident at least twice), and just goes on various tangents that take up most of our lecture time. (Although, I think this trait is common in the humanities. Literally look at what I’m doing right now). He likes to go on and on about literature and Hebrew and his years in grad school where he spent hours pouring over translating Plato or Aristotle or Gorgias. I personally find this entertaining and love learning from his little tangents. Plus sometimes he says some pretty funny things. Which I will now share a selection of with you.
**For Legal Reasons (ha), take the quotation marks with a grain of salt.**
“Conserve me sounds like you’re an autumn peach waiting to be put in a jar!”
(Context: we were translating the sentence: ‘Conservate me!’ which does directly translate to ‘conserve me!’ but ‘protect me!’ is just sooooo much better.)
“I suck.” *ends the Bongo meeting*
“Did I do something stupid? I do that a lot.”
*someone asks a question* “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Sometimes I get worried that nobody can hear me, so I have to ask.” *Five minutes after nobody could hear him and he didn’t ask*
“I was driving yesterday and I saw a vanity plate, in Latin! Latin is everywhere!”
“It was all leading up to this very high point of learning Latin!”
“Is anyone listening?” *No response* “Okay.”
“This is my cat Mango” (during online classes)
*Late for a lecture and Mango jumps up on his desk* …. “oh, mango!” *exasperation*
“Does everyone get that?” *No response* “Okay.”
“I get tired of hearing myself talk.”
“There’s a problem with calling it Archaic poetry. But, I’ve called it Archaic poetry.”
“How can class be over just when we’re going to talk about Socratic Irony?” *ducks head in sadness* “I’m just going to go outside and lie down” (it was raining) “…. okay class is over. Mark this as the most pathetic class you’ve taken at [redacted].”
(Context: he showed up ten minutes late and the lecture was very disorganised (I think he did a good job!))
*Begins gesturing to the blank title slide of his powerpoint* “Notice the nice ancient map I have with ocean all the way around, and then all the continents with a nice short kind of Africa, and everything kind of roundish, smushed together, with the Mediterranean (Old world) oversized, Black Sea oversized, and everything stylized once you get out to the East.”
“Some colonial asshole probably, who lived a really dull life and wanted to oppress people.
(I can’t even remember what lecture this was from. I’m thinking it’s our geographical literature lecture. And he’s right lol.)
“Don’t tell the bartender that you’re there for the Inklings, he won’t care. It’s not like I did that or anything.” (Talking about the Eagle and Child pub)
“Scholars are fairly certain there was no access to google at this time.” (Talking about the year 280 AD)
*Everyone in the class agreed that we hate Plato.* Someone says: “I have beef with Plato!” He laughs and just dejectedly says, “aw. I love Plato.”
“A hoplite was kind of like the middle class who could afford heavy armo– actually, you know what, we don’t need to talk about that.” *moves on and doesn’t finish his sentence*
Some other things he has done that I think are wonderful:
When we were studying Herodotus’ Histories he told us about how when he was in grad school, he used to read Herodotus to his daughter as a bed time story. It got to the point where she would ask for a Herodotus story.
Came into class, took out his laptop, wrote a website URL on the chalkboard, turned around, told us we had to go to that link and fill out a survey and then walked out of the room with all his stuff and didn’t come back for fifteen minutes.
Always had at least one typo in all his pop quizzes. On our quiz for Poetics he wrote ‘Aristotle’ as ‘ARistotle’ and my friend and I looked at each other and made pirate hooks with our fingers.
Hosted a Latin reading group in the summer and gave the people who had been studying latin for less than a year the Vulgate and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. (I gave up so quickly). But went on a ten minute ramble about the word ‘fiat’ and the subjunctive mood (which helped me a lot in second year).
While studying the Vulgate he went on a mini rant about St. Jerome and talked about his authorship when it came to his Latin translation, which spiralled into a 10 minute discussion about Hebrew and his frustrations with it.
Our pop quizzes were 5 multiple choice questions and we finished them before he finished handing them out, only for him to be shocked each time.
Agreed that the Greek Gods act like a squabbling family in the Iliad.
Laughed at my friend’s theory that between the Iliad and the Argonautica it was like they had grown up, and agreed.
Pronounces ‘circe’ like ‘sirsaayyyy’ (very long ‘ay’ sound at the end)
Whenever he writes words on the chalkboard he accidentally writes them in Greek (ancient Greek isn’t a pre-req for this class), and then has to take a minute to figure out how to write it in English.
Said: “Why does everybody read the bloody Republic? Read Symposium” only to realise like 5 minutes later THAT HE SCHEDULED US TO READ THE REPUBLIC.
TLDR - He’s a very funny man. And he’s a very good professor. He did create what is probably one of the MOST CONFUSING ESSAY QUESTION I’ve ever had the displeasure of creating a thesis for, but that’s beyond the point. I would go on forever, but this is already long.
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