A lot of colleges have alarm boxes/phone boxes in less crowded areas of campus, particularly areas with cell signal gaps. At one point at my college, one of those alarm boxes was busted.

Unsurprisingly, there was a sign on it that read: “Phone broken.”

Right below that, someone had scrawled on said sign: “Keep running.”

I am working at the computer lab help desk at my university. A woman calls the helpline from the lab.

Caller: “I can’t figure out how to turn on the PC.”

Me: “Are you pressing the power button?”

Caller: “What? Button? No, I’m putting money in the change slot and the computer won’t turn on.”

Me: “Umm, what?”

I went down there, and the woman was gone and only one PC was free. Suspicious, I shook the tower and it jingled. She’d been sticking quarters into the power supply fan cover for goodness knows how long!

Five years ago, I was in the second semester of the first year of my undergraduate degree. I was majoring in economics, so I was taking all of the very general first-year Intro To Economics courses. As a lot of other courses also had some first-year economics requirements, these classes were usually held in the largest lecture hall, which could fit about 500 students. My class at the time had about 300, but on average only about 150 to 200 usually showed up to the weekly lectures.

One day, my friends and I walked into the lecture hall as we normally did and paused for a moment. The lecture hall was looking unusually full. Thinking it was a bit odd, we went to find some seats near the back and took a look around. We recognized about a quarter of the faces — too big of a class to actually recognize everyone — but given we were first-years, we realized that a good bit of the group looked quite older than us.

Finally, our professor entered the classroom. He apologized for being a couple of minutes late and went to set up his slides.

Suddenly, someone else entered the classroom and walked up to the stage. He went up to our professor and they began furiously discussing things. The entire lecture hall started up talking, wondering aloud what was going on. It continued until the two men stepped to the podium.

Professor: “How many people are here for Intro To Econ Policy?”

About 200 people raised their hands. Immediately, everyone was very confused, as about a third hadn’t moved at all. Then, the other man stepped up.

Man: “How many people are here for [third-year computer science class]?”

Immediately, the other third of the hands went up, and the lecture hall erupted into laughter. When the professors were finally able to calm everyone down, they began explaining

Man: “As a third of you would know, our normal lecture hall was booked out this week for an external lecture, so we got assigned to this hall. Apparently, the scheduler missed that there is always a first-year economics class here.”

Professor: “As this is the last lecture before midterms, and the class is normally an hour long, neither one of us planned a full lecture. And since it would take way too long to try and contact the scheduler and find another room, we have a proposal.”

Man: “The first-years will get the opportunity to learn a bit of ‘Fuzzy Logic’ during the first half of the lecture…”

Professor: “And the third-years will get the opportunity to learn about European Economic Policy during the second half!”

And that’s how they did it! Both professors took the lecture very informally, taking questions from whoever had them, no matter how silly they may have seemed to the other group. It ended up being one of the most entertaining classes of my first year of college!

And don’t worry; both professors posted extra office hours to prep for the midterms in case we had more questions than the half of lecture permitted.

I am in my neuroanatomy class. The professor puts up a diagram of the brain with various regions highlighted in different colors for easy emphasis and differentiation. A student in the lecture hall raises their hand.

Student: “Is the brain really colored that way?”

They weren’t joking.

I go to an art school. A big part of our majors is giving and receiving critique, regardless of which major you’re in.

All professors tend to emphasize that if you plan to work professionally in your field, you will likely be given criticism of your work and advice on how to improve it. While you don’t have to take ALL of the advice or listen to all the criticisms, being able to do so graciously and not being overly harsh — i.e., not being a raging a**hole about it — is a good skill to have. They teach methods of critique and the general language of going about it, and a good chunk of your grade falls into whether or not you give critique at all during class.

My very first taste of critique came from one of my very first classes: a color theory class. Enter [Classmate]. During one of our first-ever critiques in class, [Classmate] got very excited and said, and I quote:

Classmate: “Ooh, I love criticizing people!”

And then she proceeded to rip another poor classmate apart. She criticized the composition, the color choice, and how ugly his art style was. Yes, she straight-up said that to his face!

It literally got to the point where the professor had to step in and tell her — well, the entire class, but everyone could tell that it was directed specifically at her — that that wasn’t constructive or actually useful.

[Classmate] continued to have an “I’m-better-than-everyone” attitude with everyone. She always rolled her eyes whenever someone critiqued her project, and she would laze around during class work periods, insisting that she’d ace the “very easy first project”. Also, she never updated her work based on the critique she’d received.

This was a few years ago, so I don’t remember exactly what [Classmate]’s final piece looked like when the final critique rolled around, but I do remember a very long, awkward pause when it was displayed at the front of the class for everyone to go over.

As more and more people critiqued it, it looked like she was about to pop. She just looked madder and madder.

That lasted right up until the professor gave her own opinion on the piece. Then, [Classmate] just looked comically shocked, as if she hadn’t expected the professor to agree with the rest of us.

There was a fun note in the syllabus that [Classmate] had overlooked. Around twenty percent of our grade was our professionalism, which did include coming to class and participating… but it also involved how we reacted to critique, how we gave it, and if we were implementing any critique.

[Classmate] looked very deflated in the class after grades had been posted. Then, she didn’t attend class for the rest of the quarter. After the first week she didn’t attend class, the professor stopped calling her name while doing the roll call. 

The remaining six weeks of class were practically blissful.