Just as you realize that watching all those Breaking Bad episodes reading all your chemistry textbooks during break still doesn’t shake that feeling that you’re not quite so ready for another semester, your professors made another round of funny comments to get you back into the swing of things.

Couch Potato i.e. I know what you did last summer

Professor Richard Bulliet, History of America in the Muslim World 

“Hitler’s been the gold standard of evilness.”

Eric Blanchard, Gender and International Relations

On why weekend e-mail responses tend not to be so prompt: “Because sometimes we need to go to Tijuana, too.”

Brad Garton, Music Hum

“As you can tell, we’re going to spend a lot of time on avant garde stuff and contemporary music. Why? Because I have tenure! Muahahaha.”

Erik Gray, Literary Texts & Critical Methods

“Have you ever noticed how people pretend to eat babies?”

Norma Graham, Statistics for Behavioral Scientists

”We used to have a heavy contingent from Barnard. They must have learned—they have learned how to teach statistics.”

Read more…

We thought you might appreciate this auto-correction, Professor Kahn. Photo credit: Matt Hayto

Dear Professors,

We hear you. Sometimes we under-hear you (read: 9 a.m. class), but when we’re very lucky, we overhear you! And not just while you’re weighing in on important international issues; we also hear those cavalier comments you improvise in lecture. And since we like what we’ve heard lately so much, we thought we’d share:

• Shamus Khan, while talking about how sports and games allow for the expression of rivalries in society without violence and fighting: “You’re not about to go do a physical, hostile takeover of Harvard. Although if you do, I will lead you.”
• Alan Brinkley, in response to question about the interstate highway act: “Destroying communities is something I know a lot about, being Provost for seven years.”
• Ruben Gonzalez, giving a metaphor for chemical equilibrium: “Has anybody been to that new Joe Coffee shop? It’s sort of like an equilibrium situation—there’re always 100 people in line, but it is a dynamic, changing 100 people.”
• Lucius Riccio, prefacing an Operations Research lecture: “Today we are going to talk about forecasting. It is the fine use of divination, like Professor Trelawney’s class, in order to predict the future.”
• John Collins, in a metaphysics class: “In classical epistemology, it is assumed that every actor has unlimited access to his own internal thoughts, but in Jewish epistemology, your mother has access to your own internal thoughts.”

Tomorrow is the last day of class and therefore probably the first day on which you’ll actually be paying attention in class, and Bwog would, again, be most appreciative if you could keep your ears peeled for anything funny, sappy, or just plain bizarre that comes out of your professors’ mouths. You can send in interesting quotes as a tip to tips@bwog.net or drop us a line in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you!

Update: Oh and please tell us professor name and course name!

Photo via Flickr / George Eastman House

Bwog knows that you are “writing” your 25 page papers and “studying” for your heap of exams, so we came up with a little procrastination contest (and you don’t even have to open any extra Firefox tabs).  Just search your professors on Facebook (yes, we know you have it open) and post your favorites on the thread, with reasons defending your choices.  Bwog has a few examples.

French Lecturer Vincent Aurora has activities such as “Gesticulating bombastically over a few too many drinks” and status messages like “Vincent has survived 13 consecutive days alone with his children–an unparalleled feat–with no fatalities.”

Logician Achille Varzi, because his profile picture is inexplicably upside-down and he is in a group called ‘metaphysicists’ not ‘metaphysicians’. Read more…

Since the Eye doesn’t have comment threads, feel free to shout out/nominate/disagree here intead

Can we please not hear “Dave Eisenbach” and “sex” in the same sentence ever again

Choose-your-own mad libs

If all it took was “love and prayer” to make a good omelet…

A failure of fairnesss?

As per custom, Bwog unveils its list of the most outrageous and laughable comments made by professors at their first class meetings of the year.  Be sure to email us with all of the inspiring, hilarious, and insane things your professors say today to bwgossip@columbia.edu to keep our tradition alive, and please check back as we continuously update the list.

Christina Hunter, Art Hum

“This is a very easy class to fall asleep in, especially if you’re an athlete and have already ran 5000 laps. I suggest you sit in the uncomfortable chair in the front to stay awake.”

Self-described “quirky” Political Science Professor Mona El-Ghobashy, in Intro to Comparative Politics

(Explaining her thoughts on cell phones): “I’m probably one of five people in New York who doesn’t own a cell phone. I’m a cell phone hater, not a congratulator.”

(Answering why none of her works are on the syllabus): “You can look me up on Google!”

Read more…