I teach at a college, but I’m not on campus every day. One day after class, a student asks to have a meeting with me on a day I’m not on campus. I suggest an online video call meeting, they agree, and I set up a meeting and send them a link.

That day, I log on at the appointed time. The student is a few minutes late and seems flustered when they log on. They’re getting their notebook and book and pencil case out of their bag, and they start flipping through the notebook. I wait, assuming they need to find the page with their questions.

Me: “Let me know what your questions are when you’re ready, no rush.”

Then, the student starts to write. I’m not entirely sure they heard me, so I wait a minute.

Me: “What are your questions?

Student: “Hold on…”

I wait. And wait. The student is still writing. They haven’t even made eye contact yet, which isn’t unheard of since the online meeting format can be awkward anyway.

Me: “Did you have any questions?”

They finally look up.

Student: “Yes, let me just find them.”

And they continue writing. I sigh and pull out my phone while I wait.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes of this, I decide that this is the most pointless student meeting I’ve ever had.

Me: “I have another meeting in a few minutes, so I’ll need to log off soon. Do you have any questions I can help you with?”

Student: “No, thank you! I’m all set.”

And they logged off.

I later spoke with a tutoring center advisor who works with that student, who said they like to do their homework in the presence of their instructor in case they have questions. And I should absolutely sit there in silence while they do that. I was pretty annoyed, since that’s a complete waste of my time.

Fortunately, that was the only time the student did that. The next time they tried to schedule a meeting, I was actually unable to fit them in, so I told them to do their homework, write down any questions they needed help with, and THEN come to me. They never did, though.

I had a professor who was a Sigmund Freud fangirl. She taught a class that had nothing to do with psychology, but she liked to relate the material to Freud and his discoveries (including reading a book from him that had no relation to anything else being taught).

By then, Freud had been thoroughly debunked. Every now and then, there would be a student who had enough background in psychology to refute what [Professor] said about Freud. Each time, she would pause, and then, while maintaining a bright smile and tone of voice, she passive-aggressively made it clear that the door was closed on all further discussion down that avenue.

Someone even brought up Karl Jung, to which [Professor] outright said that there was no such person. Apparently, the mere mention of Jung was a button of hers.

On the subject that [Professor] taught, she welcomed discussion and debate. But where Freud was concerned, we all had to pretend that he was the only psychoanalyst to have ever lived, his body of work was perfect, and all psychology and psychiatry worth talking about was Freudian.

I recently adopted a four-year-old bully breed mix named Tank. He is a big boy, about eighty pounds, and has some basic training, but he lacks awareness of his size and gets very excited when people greet him. I decided to enroll him in private training lessons at my local pet store.

On our first walk around the store, a man comments on how cute he is and asks to pet him. 

Trainer: “He is in school right now, so [My Name] is setting the boundaries on his greetings.”

Man: “What does that mean?”

Me: “I’d like people to greet him when he is sitting or lying down. If you could let him sniff the back of your hand first, and then give him a scratch under his chin, that would be great. If he jumps up, I need you to turn away and remove yourself until I get him settled again.”

Man: “Okay.”

I get Tank into a sit and tell the man to go ahead. He offers his hand, and Tank licks it. [Man] immediately goes for the ears and vigorously rubs his head. Tank jumps up into [Man]’s arms and kisses him. I call him back into a sit and step between them.

Man: “What?”

Me: “That is not how I want him to interact with people.”

Man: “I don’t mind.”

Me: “I do. I don’t want him jumping on people.”

Man: “I’m a big guy; I can take it.”

Trainer: “But a small child or an elderly person can’t. If one person encourages him to jump up, he will think it’s okay for everyone.”

Man: “It’s not that serious…”

He leaves us.

Trainer: “That is a common issue with training. Cute little dogs get away with a lot, but… being what he is…”

She gestures to Tank, who is now licking his butt, oblivious to the world around him.

Me: “I know the stigma, which is why I’m here.”

Trainer: *Relieved* “Right. Unfortunately, some people will see Tank as an issue no matter how good he is.”

Me: “I know. He really is a good boy. He just needs some fine-tuning.”

Tank is now laying on the floor, belly up, wiggling back and forth like he’s trying to scratch his back. 

Me: “What a monster, huh?”

Trainer: “Oh, the worst!”

Me: “I’m more afraid of his farts than his face.”

Trainer: *Laughing* “That is the true danger here!”

We practiced polite greetings a few more times that day, and he started to get the hang of it.

Eventually, Tank started asking people to greet him by going up and sitting in front of them, tail wagging and waiting patiently. Some people were thrown off by a big dog staring at them expectantly, but most found it funny and greeted him the right way.

When I was in college, back in ye olden days, my professor for Chemistry 101 assigned lab partners. We were also expected to “help” each other, tutoring as necessary. He had access to our transcripts from both college and high school.

He assigned me a tall guy we’ll call Bill. Bill was… not good at Chemistry. Every single lab consisted of me telling Bill how to do it, correcting every little thing he did wrong, and basically doing it all myself while Bill “helped” by writing down what I told him (after I spelled way more words for him than you would expect).

Bill would constantly chat about stuff — not chemistry-related stuff, just random stuff. I was venting to my fiancé one day and mentioned something Bill had said.

Fiancé: *Giving me a weird look* “Do you really not know why you were assigned to keep Bill passing?”

Me: “Why?”

Fiancé: “Football.”

This was a big football school, division 1. Bill was their starting quarterback.

He went on to a fairly unremarkable pro football career.

Something similar to this story happened to me in fifth grade. Two smart students and I got to take a pre-test for every math unit, and if we got above 95%, we could skip the lesson and instead play on the teacher’s fairly fancy (at the time) computer, mostly on typing games. (I was probably not as smart as they were, but my older siblings had taught me their math to help themselves retain it.)

This was great fun because the following year, my middle school put us all in a typing class with the stated goal of getting us up to 30 WPM.

I was already at 60 WPM. So, again, I got to play.

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Slow Down, Whiz-Kid; The Computer Can’t Handle It!