Back to School - part 2

I just spoke to my counterpart at a major seminary college (the name of which, at his request, shall remain known only to the Lord), and he was in a tizzy. It seems that he is behind in his theological research and is rushing to publish a much needed paper, without which, there is a very good possibility that he will be reassigned as a priest to a congregation somewhere in the boondocks.

He told me that this situation affected most of the Brothers at the college, at one time or another, just as it affects many professors at universities and colleges all over the world.

That's right. Even at a religious college it's either publish or parish.

A physics professor at a state university in Michigan was famous for his animated lectures. He was short and thin with wild white hair and an excited expression. In lecture he would through himself from the top of desks and throw frisbees to students in the back row to illustrate various principles.

One day in class he was spinning on an office chair holding weights in each hand when he lost his balance and tumbled into the first row. He apologized to his class for going off on a tangent.

A student got me with a good one in class. I don't bother to make seating charts, because I noticed that students tend to sit in the same place every day anyway. So I learn my students' names by reading each name out loud and looking in the direction that student normally sits, in order to force my brain to associate the name with the face. The name in brain lies mainly in a plane. It takes me a few weeks to learn a whole class full of students' names, because I'm week-minded. It takes longer if they're absent, because I'm absent-minded. One day I called out "Jesse Brown" and looked to my left, but I didn't find him there. Instead, Jesse was sitting to my right. "Over here," he said. "Moving around on me, eh?" I chided him. "Brownian motion," he explained.