This happened in 2010. Almost all of the professors of this one particular degree course are pretty lenient: you get to write stories. That said, if you don’t turn in a certain number of physical printer pages per semester, your grade will plummet. Rough drafts, finished stories, it doesn’t matter. Not to mention that you must have multiple copies of everything printed out so the other classmates can read and comment, meaning you’ll go through a LOT of paper. 

A rather frazzled classmate of mine is handing her six-page rough draft out to everyone in the room, all twelve or so of us. She realizes she doesn’t have quite enough copies for everyone. 

Professor: “That’s okay. Do you have it saved somewhere? Can you print it in the library?”

Classmate: “Well, uh, no, you see, uh… I don’t have a computer.”

Professor: “…what?”

Classmate: “I live with my grandmother. She doesn’t believe in technology. She lets me use her typewriter.”

Professor: “…you typed all of these out by hand?!”

Classmate: “Now you know why I look so tired all the time! I’ll get everyone more tomorrow. Also, I think we’re out of paper, so I might have to get more…”

Professor: “No. You’re going to get these to us when you can, and we’ll talk about it when you get them to us. Okay?”

That classmate changed the policy for that degree: rough drafts didn’t need to be physical paper, could be sent over email or cloud, and only the final draft needed to be printed!

I am in college studying IT, and I am a student worker at the help desk. Like most universities, we have a lot of online students. This semester, we rolled out two-factor authentication. It’s been causing some issues, but for the most part, they can be resolved in two minutes.

A lady calls and says she needs a bypass code. When they get to this bypass code screen, that means they didn’t activate their account on their phone in time and we need to activate it for them. If they didn’t enroll with their phone number, we can just add it with their username — but they need to know their username.

Lady: “I’m trying to get into my account and I’m getting a screen asking for a bypass code.”

Me: “Okay. Can I have your username, please?”

Lady: “I don’t remember it.”

Mind you, she JUST logged in if she is seeing this screen.

Me: “All right, can I get your phone number, then?”

She gives it to me, but it doesn’t pop up in the system.

Me: “Did you change your number recently?”

Lady: “No.”

Me: “Is there any way you can remember your username? That’s the only way I can activate your account without your phone number listed.”

Lady: “F*** that s***! I’ve been dealing with this s*** for two months now! I’m just going to transfer to [Other School] because you guys are f****** useless.”

She couldn’t get in for two months? Why is she just now calling? Was she missing classes for two months and didn’t think to contact anyone? Plus, the refund period has passed and midterms are next week. I don’t think she’s getting her money back.

The good news is that I probably won’t have to deal with her again.

I have been working as a sound engineer since 2010 — for thirteen years now. It doesn’t pay well, and I have social anxiety, fibromyalgia, and sound sensitivity, probably due to being autistic.

I decided to return to undergrad and get an engineering degree, and I am now a senior. Most of my classes are in the same classroom, and I’m dropping a class due to the teacher using a mic while acting like the feedback and echoes aren’t there. I tried to help once, but the system was unfamiliar, and after that, the teacher was just patronizing and uninterested in my help. I didn’t make it worse.

It has been bothering me that I couldn’t figure out the sound system.

I was in a different class but in the same room, and the teacher could be heard fine without amplification. He was teaching about circuits and gain. Gain changes the amplitude of the signal and works on a log scale. Turning down the volume wouldn’t get rid of the feedback since the signal is already there, but turning down the gain can prevent the sounds from the speaker being amplified through the microphone, preventing feedback.

In any case, I ask my teacher after class where the gain for that sound system is. Not only is he clearly aware of the concept, so I thought, but he takes care of a lot of AV issues in the building.

Teacher #1: “The volume is right there — the round knob.”

Me: “I know about it; it’s labeled. But surely there is at least one gain that can be adjusted. I think even little karaoke speakers have a gain.”

Teacher #1: *Patronizing* “Well, there is also a volume in this other place that’s hard to see. I have a sheet in there saying what all the volumes should be set to.”

Me: “Not volume. Gain.”

Teacher #1: “They are the same thing.”

I am SHOCKED.

Me: “No, they aren’t.”

Teacher #1: “Usually, they are.”

Me: “No. I’m an audio engineer. They are not the same, I assure you.”

Teacher #1: “Well, there is the main speaker volume, the microphone volume—” *he means the balance knobs; bass, mids, and treble* “—and the volume for the microphone on the amp.”

Me: “…the one on the amp is probably the gain. Thanks.”

I don’t know what he said next; I was so flustered. I really respect my teachers, so when they say something false, I am unreasonably shocked and appalled. Shocked!

I start to doubt myself. He is the teacher, after all. But Googling volume versus gain immediately explains the difference.

Oh, the other reason I’m dropping the class with the mic feedback is that teacher said something false, after dismissing me and acting like I was dumb. He gave an example about surface tension using a bubble as an example. He then asked how one could change the surface tension of a liquid without changing its physical dimensions. 

Me: “Like your last example, adding soap to water changed the surface tension.”

Soap is a surfactant, which I believe literally means that it changes the surface tension.

Teacher #2: “I’m not sure I understand.”

Me: “Water without soap has too much surface tension and doesn’t like to form bubbles… but add the right amount of the right kind of soap, and you can make huge bubbles.”

Teacher #2: “I guess I see what you mean.” *Switching to next slide* “So, there is no way to change the surface tension of a liquid without physically changing the volume.”

Me: *Raising my hand* “What about temperature? Ice has more surface tension than gas, so within the liquid before phase change, that would still be true.”

Teacher #2: “No, it doesn’t work like that.”

Me: “Well, what about if some parts of the liquid evaporate at different temperatures than others?”

Teacher #2: “Let’s move on. We are going to talk about using surfactants on silicone chips to change the surface tension, as well as changing the composition.”

I’m shocked but doubting.

In my next class:

Teacher #3: “Look at the wine; those are called legs. That happens because, when the alcohol evaporates from the wine that sticks to the glass when you stir it, the surface tension changes. Less alcohol means higher surface tension, and the liquid holds together more tightly, creating drips.”

Me: “I knew it!”

Teacher #3: “What?”

I just shook my head. He continued to talk about all the ways I had mentioned to [Teacher #2], including temperature.

I just… I’m paying so much money, which I earned at $10 an hour — several thousand a semester after scholarships — for people to be very confidently incorrect at me. I should know better, but I’m always shocked!

When I was in college, there was a guy in one of my classes who would ask questions several times every class session. That in and of itself isn’t bad, but his questions were, frankly, STUPID, and they wasted lots of time — like ten to fifteen minutes of an hour every class.

These are not the actual questions (it was a class about discrete mathematics in computer science), but these are about the level of the real ones.

Professor: “…and that is why two plus three equals five. Now we…”

The dude raises his hand and the professor calls on him.

Dude: “Why does two plus three equal five?”

Professor: “As I just explained, [re-explains in more needless detail].”

Repeat several times per class on basically every topic.

Finally, the professor just told the dude to come to his office hours to discuss his questions. But by then, the harm had been done, and we were three weeks behind at the end of the term.

Grrr, it still irks me.

At my previous job, I worked for a university as a network engineer. It was a large campus with lots of agriculture. Because of some of the distances between buildings and the nature of the “farm” on the south side of campus, fiber was not run everywhere.

This is the story of one such building that was provided with a point-to-point wireless link. The shot was just over a mile in distance. Everything worked as expected, and they really only had issues on rainy days.

One bright sunny day, we got a ticket that the Internet was out at the farm building. We went out there, and everything looked fine. We left.

A few days later, the same thing. Okay, odd.

A couple of weeks later, we got the same report. We thought maybe foliage from a nearby tree was causing issues; it was springtime and the link had been installed during winter. So, we trimmed the trees.

But we were still getting reports of outages. We realigned the access points. I didn’t help. What gives?

One day in late summer, some coworkers were out there and noticed a very large bull lying on top of a hill — the same hill that the wireless link shot over.

LIGHTBULB!

They asked about the bull and were told that was his favorite place to lie down. Face-palm.

They raised the access points higher in the air, and the problem went away. A dang cow was blocking the wireless signal!