Citaciousness
[from the word citacious, adj. quotable. This word does not exist yet.]
In my freshman year at college, I took a course in Computers for Management (it’s a sob story).
My professor was an old man, a sweet guy who was actually my advisor for the year. More than a little senile, but I’m not judging. Bottom line: he rattled off more funny quotes than actual, useful academic information. The margins of my notebook were more full than the center part. Here’s the harvest. Give each the attention of a sip of fine wine.
First, you must know that this Professor “Kruger” was self-aware enough to realize his advancing age and shifting worldview:
“I’m too old to learn new things.”
“The alphabetical ordering of this kind of gets me sometimes.”
“It’s called glaucoma.”
At the same time, his age was the source of an endearing pathos:
“I don’t know why the lights are so cantankerous.”
“I don’t know who these guys are. Leave me alone.”
“I think this is toyish and annoying.”
“Oh no! What happened to my function wizard? Oh, shoot.”
But also the root of a contagious whimsy:
“We’ll let the first person flunk, what the hell.”
“There are limits but we don’t care about those in this course.”
“I don’t even know what the hell it’s going to look like.”
His modesty was admirable:
“This is a picture of me. That’s better than pornography…not much.”
“I’m trying to pretend to be stupid. Well, I don’t have to pretend.”
“I have a lousy sense of humor.”
“You could do a bubble chart. I don’t know what the hell that is.”
But he wasn’t a pushover, either:
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“Thanks for messing up my example.”
“This is a horrible bunch of colors…I picked them on purpose, because of their horribleness.”
“Are there any questions about how arithmetic works…It’s not particularly complex.”
“I can go through this stuff faster than anyone here can get it.”
Sometimes he was nuts:
“Make sure you have that in your notes: Net Present Value is not Net Present Value.”
“I’m jumping ahead to what you may not remember.”
“No caps and no beard, especially you women.”
“That’s a cat, and it goes ‘meow’.”
“You would expect the Swiss to cause trouble.”
“If you give me a pie chart, I’ll probably give you a pie in the face.”
Or downright nihilistic:
“That’s nice. I like it. Let’s get rid of it.”
Or even pseudosexual:
“I’d like to throw in a slight hooker.”
“This is horrifying if you haven’t seen it before.”
“You can puzzle this over when you’re in the parking lot tonight.”
“Are you willing to have help from the rear?”
In the end, though, his compassion shone through:
“In spite of the fact that I started off a bastard, let’s make this a friendly class.”
“I’ll tell [the grader] to go easy on you for not figuring out what I didn’t tell you.”
And his Words of Wisdom will echo through the ages. Some I took to heart as a liberal arts graduate student:
“Reading doesn’t mean you have to read every word.”
“There’s more to life than exams.”
“If you have a lot of trouble, just cheat.”
“This kind of cheating is ok.”
“Plagiarism is from one source, Research is from two.”
Some were diplomatic:
“You’re allowed to make fun of each other, it’s okay.”
“Blood is thicker than spreadsheets.”
…obvious:
“Bill Gates is rich and we’re not.”
…backhanded:
“Some of you have wasted your youth, that’s good.”
…and some were just brilliant:
“When you ask a question, you tend to know the answer.”"We don’t want computers to make all our decisions for us.”
Goodnight, Professor, wherever you are.
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