Your Professor is Your Buddy

Okay, among many other fascinating things that I’ve encountered in the US, probably my professor is the one for me most worth sharing. It’s not that professors here are God-like or demigods, to the contrary for me they are more like buddies. Of course, maybe some students have more formal professors or advisors, so I better take precaution by saying that my experience here is probably not applicable to all US professors.

To begin with, I’d like to share three stories about one of my professors. The first story happened just a few weeks after the first class. That day, the professor was trying to explain something by drawing a diagram on the whiteboard. However, the marker run out of ink.
Professor: The marker run out of ink. Anyone have a marker?
Student (sitting at the back): I got one
Professor: Great, throw it
Student: You want me to throw it to you?
Professor: Sure
*and the marker flew to the professor*
Wew, surely I was shocked that time. How in the hell did a student throw a marker to his professor? But it happened apparently 🙂

The second story is again about this particular professor. He is kind of person who forgets to bring markers to class (if I recall it correctly, the only time he brought a marker was the day the marker run out of ink). So, every time he wanted to write something on the board, he always borrowed his students’ markers. One student that most often lent him markers was an undergraduate female student. I think she lent him markers in every class session. And came that day. The professor once again intended to write something on the board but didn’t bring his markers. Thus, he decided to borrow the female student’s markers again. However, to my surprise, that day the professor didn’t want to borrow the markers, he wanted to buy them!
Professor: I feel guilty for always borrowing from you. Let me buy them.
Student: what?
Professor: Name the price. $10 enough?
Student: what? umm, that’s too much
Professor: What about $5? I think that’s fair
Student: umm….
Professor: Okay, I take it as $5
*and he gave her the money in exchange for the markers*
That alone already surprised me, but what made it funny for me was that the next week, the professor once again forgot to bring the markers he had bought from the student 🙂 And as the consequence, he needed to borrow again from the student, who had bought another set of markers.

The third story –again, still related to that particular professor– happened during the last few weeks of the semester. We were talking about political ideologies, namely liberalism and conservatism. I forgot how it started, but the discussion led us to talk about some political figures, not necessarily politicians, but also news anchors or other figures closely related to political world. And there was that one figure; a very liberal gentleman whose wife is a conservative. The professor, out of nothing, spontaneously asked, “anyone has ever thought why those two people could really get along with each other?”

Well, that was a fair question in my opinion, because the basic psychological notion is that similarity attracts. So, one is more likely to be falling in love with whom one feels similar. In that case, because of the gentleman was a liberal, he should be more likely to fall in love with a liberal instead of a conservative. The fact that the wife was a conservative suggested that there must be something special between the two that serves to glue them together.

Provoked by the professor’s question, some students answered. Many rationales were proposed, such as the two had good communication skill, the two were very emotionally and politically mature so that the ideological difference didn’t really matter, or that the two actually had more basic similarities that overshadowed the ideological difference. The answers didn’t seem to satisfy the professor but nevertheless he decided to continue with the class as the question was actually an intermezzo.

So we had a usual class, at least until the class ended. When the class ended, the professor made a remark, “I think I know why that liberal husband and conservative wife can really get along with each other…” The class turned into silence, awaiting for the truth to be revealed…. “I think they really have good sex…” #dieees -__-”

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PS. This is a story of my Fulbright experience, for other stories of my friends, come visit our blog: http://warungceritafulbright.wordpress.com