The Easter break, relatively short though it may be, offers me an opportunity to introduce another raft of characters from the Athenian University to join my previous lists of Dramatis Personae/ character assassinations. Here I describe variations on the theme of University lecturers, although of course that title is not meant to say anything about an individual’s seniority, merely that their job is to lecture. These now join my other characters, so far encompassing Group Leaders; Professors; University committee members and committee chairs, as well as members of external grant-giving committees.
Dr Energetic
Dr Energetic paces up and down the lecture theatre, their arms waving wildly as they try to put an important point across. Not for the sleepy student who wants to be permitted to doze quietly at the back of the lecture theatre, Dr Energetic will make a quick kip after a hard night’s drinking hard to come by. The advantage of a lecturer such as this is that even boring or turgid subjects may come alive enough to render them intelligible. The disadvantage is that strident tones and histrionic actions may merely irritate not inform.
Dr Inaudible
Dr Inaudible’s offering is very different. They may be the most intelligent person you will ever meet, with a solid grasp of every fact they are trying to convey and a neat turn of phrase to illustrate difficult concepts, but if they are not audible beyond the first two rows in the lecture theatre (and disdain being wired up with a microphone), all this is in vain. Alternatively they may be inaudible because they totally lack confidence in the material they have been assigned to teach and want to be unheard and unremarked. Dr Inaudible needs a stiff talking to by those in charge of teaching, plus subsequent follow-up to check that instructions to use a mike have been taken to heart – as well as a check that their lectures are indeed comprehensible as well as audible.
Dr Dusty
I am of an age to have once been lectured to by a gentleman in a gown. I was exposed to only one such example, I hasten to add, by someone then already close to retirement. The dust – chalk dust- was obvious. For others the dust may be less visible or more metaphorical, but, many lecturers look as if they have been curled up in a corner for many years and are only let out on license for their annual lecturing duties. What they do the rest of the year may be a mystery (in Cambridge of course they can hang out in their college rooms, and may be assiduous in teaching generations of students there). Closely related is Dr Dry-as-Dust, old in character if not in chronological years, probably pernickety and dull, these characters do tend to take their lecturing duties seriously, indeed teaching may be their lifeblood (if not in a style attractive to many) and may be all they wish to do, not least because they aren’t interested in research and possess the leadership and administrative skills of a baby mouse.
Dr Absent-minded
Dr Absent-minded has a reputation for forgetting to turn up to lectures. One such I encountered myself encouraged me to come and find him if he didn’t show up, although that was something I found too embarrassing to contemplate. They may also turn up with the wrong lecture notes (a sin I myself once committed, although the class was amazingly tolerant) or forget to keep an eye on the clock and run over the stated time, despite the audible collective rumblings of the audience’s stomachs. They may be an irritating class of lecturers, but they can also be excellent value. Their failings are in their personal organisation not their teaching ability.
Dr Ultramodern
When the world was using blackboards, Dr Ultramodern had progressed to the overhead projector. As their colleagues caught on with this they were already contemplating the joys of Powerpoint (or should that be ‘joys’?). Dr Ultramodern is never satisfied with the current teaching tools and no doubt will now be dropping in Audioboos to enliven the lecture theatre, relevant or not, and eyeing Google Glasses with interest (will the teaching budget run to them?). That is the trouble: in an ever-changing technical landscape, this particularly lecturer is more interested in showing off the latest technology than mastering the actual content and delivering it with clarity, a failing that can become tedious for the audience.
Dr Famed-as-Charismatic
Word of mouth commentary amongst generations of students is ubiquitous, and a lecturer who starts off as wonderful – enthusiastic, accurate, charming and comprehensible – can notch up a stellar reputation. This can be unfortunate if they start to rest on their laurels, no longer sweating over their lectures to make them first class, but relying on their reputation and a wing and a prayer to get them through, year on year. This is of course particularly disastrous if the teaching admin are so mean as to give them a new course to prepare. What, they have to start from scratch, mug up some new jokes and prepare new slides? Their reputation may take a rapid nosedive after such an unfortunate turn of affairs.
Dr Careless
Dr Careless may have an excellent grasp of their subject, and be hard-working at getting a good course structure with illustrative examples and clear explanations. But where they go wrong is in all those irritating little details – in physics, minus signs incorrectly placed are a particular bugbear; I hated this sort of sloppiness as a student myself, but again I’m ashamed to say it is a sin of which I have not infrequently been guilty. In handouts or in slides these little errors regularly lurk, to the students’ frustration. They do not want (although it may be good discipline for them) to have to check through every equation to ensure that all subscripts are present and correct and factors of 2 or p – as well as those minus signs – have not gone AWOL.
Dr I-don’t-want-to-be-here
This person believes they are too important to have to lecture, and they are going to make this manifest. They look down their noses at the scruffy audience they have to address, to convey the fact that they are Important Personages who are conferring a favour merely by turning up. Their style of lecturing is peremptory, unenthusiastic but probably efficient enough. But they are never going to convey a love of the subject to the lecture hall because their love is for themselves first and foremost, and they would vastly prefer to be furthering their ambitions by jet-setting around the world than by being chained to the lecture theatre dais.
Dr I’m-not-here
This one is the ultimate manifestation of Dr I-don’t-want-to-be-here because they aren’t, in fact, ‘here’. The students turn up only to find that their lecturer has indeed got on that plane and vanished, without troubling to find a stand-in (let alone notifying the powers-that-be that they were heading off so that they could find a replacement themselves). Their diary is too full of opportunities they deem more important to permit them to fulfil their lecturing responsibilities; their lack of a sense of duty is such that it never crosses their mind that their own self-importance should be subservient to their obligations to the student body. This one is a hard nut for a Head of Department to rein in, but vital that they should.
Yes, Athene, we have seen them all! I can now admit that as a Head of Department, my alleged random allocation of peer review of teaching was directly managed to expose some of these miscreant individuals to a category apparently not present in the Athenian University – Dr Conscientious!
Nigel
All my readers know what Dr Conscientious looks like – no need for an outline descriptor for them – since I’m convinced all my readers fit that category themselves, even if (like me) occasional weaknesses slip in resembling some of the others.
Although this has been carefully written as gender-less (and not STEM specific), I still initially assumed they were male.
I was shocked when I realised I was thinking this (half way through Dr Inaudible).
Is it that my ingrained thought patterns assume any Dr to be male? Or is it that nearly all of my lecturers were male?
If I, who have a PhD and know many brilliant female Dr’s and lecturers, make this assumption, how can we possibly get through to those who don’t?
Then I looked at my own experience of lecturing – and I suggest Dr Imposter Syndrome should also be included. :/
I knew an old Dr Energetic who could be more correctly described as Dr Stripper. At 9am lectures in winter he’d bound into the lecture theatre straight from the train in all his warm clothes, take a piece of chalk out his top pocket and begin writing. Then, as the lecture progressed, he would slowly take off his hat…then scarf…gloves…
…then the top coat would come off. A little while later the tie would be loosened, maybe the top shirt button undone. Then the tie would come off. He’d take off the jacket, and eventually his jumper so after half an hour he’d be lecturing in just rolled-up shirt sleeves behind a big pile of clothes.
We were glad lectures were only an hour, if they were any longer who knows what else he might’ve taken off!
When I was a student (long ago and far away, Maths in the 1970’s) we had two versions of “Professor I-look-as-if-am-winging-it”. This was in the olden days, when learning outcomes, handouts and powerpoint had not been invented, though we did have a syllabus which memorably said “These schedules are minimal for lecturing and maximal for examining”.
The successful one gave every impression of having rolled straight out of bed, and turned up with his shirt hanging out and no visible lecture notes, to give fluent clear explanations that have stayed with me 40 years later, and wrote enough on the blackboard, but not too much, clearly laid out in a way that allowed the taking of reasonable notes. I suspect he wasn’t really winging it at all. The unsuccessful one also had no notes, and a somewhat vaguer air, and just seemed to ramble, and didn’t write anything much on the blackboard at all, and left many of the audience in a complete fog. Both these people became rather famous…….
I may be Dr Enthusiastic-but-Kind, as I tell my first years in the first lecture that the WORST place for sleeping in a lecture is at the back of the theatre where they are sure to be in my line of sight. The best place for sleepy students is in the very first row, which always seems to be out of sight.
Dr. Ultramodern is especially annoying. They’re always lecturing us…excuse me, they are always giving pedagogical presentations with the goal of peer engagement…about the Latest New Fad. If they were just geeks who like new graphics tools, fine, but they always combine their new graphics or whatever with whatever the latest edufad buzzword is.
Where is the room for fundamentals? A good explanation of Newton’s Laws is a good explanation of Newton’s laws, and a useful and thought-provoking example (perhaps done in groups these days) is useful and thought provoking whether done on paper or a tablet.
How about Dr Wasp-a-lot? Quite literally. I once got stung three times by a wasp while lecturing and then did a merry dance to get the wasp out of my trouser, all the while continuing to talk and trying to look as if I was in complete control…
You have forgotten, or not yet come across, Dr I’m mates with the students – this species thinks every student loves them. They also think they are one of the lads/ lasses, but unfortunately as time roles by, they look less like them and in an attempt to re- integrate, dye their hair. Am I really the only one who spots these nutters?