Illustration courtesy of Gordon Johnson
MADELEINE LUCCHETTI | OPINION COLUMNIST | mlucchet@butler.edu
Let’s play Profile the Professor! Pick a college, any college. Put down a marker every time you can name an instructor who fits the description. First one to bingo wins a subpar salary and an elitist attitude!
Liberal Arts and Sciences
Most sport the trendiest haircut from a favorite literary era. Their shampooing and combing regimens also reflect those of the ancients.
Every week is Jordan Hall Fashion Week for these enlightened trendsetters. They’re more likely to abide by citation rules than seasonal style rules, exemplified by their usage of silk with corduroy, sport coat over bright polo, or navy on black.
I’m pretty certain they compete with one another to find the most obscure methods of commute. Some of the more mainstream folks just bike in, but there’s a solid percentage of PhDs rolling up to Butler University on toy-store scooters and pastel Vespas.
However, these icons of English, history and the like are often the kindest souls you’ll ever meet. Your GHS professor will never be too embarrassed to wave eagerly across Watami Sushi on Friday night. Seminar classes often devolve into really empowering group therapy sessions, and office hours into coffee club. Their incessant “study abroad interest meetings” leave out the class bar crawl itinerary scheduled on every continent.
Jordan College of the Arts
They can’t hear you, the music’s too loud. Your question is either stupid or will require a 15-minute lecture on the degradation of this generation’s talent. Points will be deducted if the student shows any inkling of self-esteem.
Each professor knows they dominated their respective field during the glory days, and spends four years pitying your sad attempts at doing so, too. Their most commonly heard adage is some variation of “in MY day” and this typically prefaces an insult directed at students.
Interesting: being as prominent as they believe they were in the 60s-80s arts scene probably meant getting away with a lot more than we do in Lilly Hall.
By my very calculated statistics, more tears flow in this building than any other. But no, there aren’t any tissues because we cannot afford luxuries like that. Go find some toilet paper. While you’re at it, hunt around for the couple hundred missing music stands.
Peasant.
Lacy School of Business
Alphas of the campus: just ask them. After partying heavily through undergrad, most enjoyed years of ugly suits in a wannabe-Wall Street environment they think was a lot bougier than it was. But they’re seemingly more well-adjusted to normal society than the rest of the professorial crowd; some even drive cars.
They’re also tech savvy — compared to LAS and JCA, anyway — and polished. Similar to JCA professors, their golden eras ended before they stooped to teaching. Watch the light come back into their eyes when asked about their private sector days.
Most LSB professors are resigned to the fact that the colony of hungover frat boys populating Marketing 380 won’t show up past Welcome Week. The rest of Butler does appreciate the sacrifices made by these titans of business. After all, they tend to teach the brattiest kids on campus.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve apparently never been subjected to the terrors of Real Business Experience. It must be hard to endorse the production of plastic, Bulldog-emblazoned crap year after year.
Dispensar– err, Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Weird nocturnal possums: rarely appearing during the day, these professors startle students at strange hours of the night in the dim PB halls. This habit probably began 30 years ago with Sci-Li all-nighters.
Now, their job is to stoke the “pharmacy, supremacy” fire lit under the backsides of their pompous charges. Cults — err, pharmacy fraternities — are born out of this mentality. In fact, a hierarchy has developed within these too. #PhiDex
These doctors will never be as cool as Walter White, though maybe they are struggling financially. Why else would you sleep overnight in your hole of an office?
There’s not much else to say. These guys were likely dorks while students, and continue to be a bit outcast as professionals. Pretty dull.
College of Education
Must be a tough job; plenty of people — students and faculty alike — picture the College of Ed as a crayon-sprinkled fairyland. The singsong delivery of some professors, though, makes it tough to take them seriously. Especially when they routinely burst into tears while teaching, leading to an impromptu, uncomfortable “feelings circle.”
This is the only college that tosses undergrads into the lion’s den — err, student teaching. If you’re fortunate enough to nab a spot at the Butler Lab School, you’ll permeate a happy utopia that teaches student teachers what not to expect at literally any other school. Good luck in Indianapolis Public Schools.
College of Communication
The kings and queens of irony: for all their preachy communicative ability, no professor seems capable of answering emails. Most CCOM students digest a handful of notifications with their breakfasts, sent by insomniac instructors at ungodly hours of the night.
It is also unclear what makes the major tracks “critical” versus “strategic,” considering that all methods of communication fall into these categories.
The whole of Fairbanks seems existentially confused as to how they got there, or where they’re going. In the meantime, most head the myriad activist efforts churning the community.
