Posted on 09/09/2013 12:36:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Freshmen students at the University of Rochester may have had a terrifying start to their college career, courtesy of a prankster posing as their professor.
The video has quickly gone viral, approaching seven million views in just four days.
The prankster -- a member of the "Chamber Boys" radio program at the university -- showed up a few minutes early with a briefcase. He erases the chalkboard, writes the name of the real professor and addresses the class.
"I'm Dr. Hafensteiner and I'll be your professor for Chemistry 131," he tells the class.
The fake professor -- whose real name is "Patrick" -- uses his limited time to terrify freshmen students on the first day of class.
"This class is extremely hard," Patrick says. "Last year, 55 percent of this class failed."
Patrick asks those interested in going to medical school to stand up. When the majority of the class stands up, Patrick uses a visual demonstration to once again frighten the optimistic students.
"I need everyone in the left-hand section and the middle section to sit down," Patrick says.
"Take a look at the portion still standing," he says with about a quarter of the students still standing. "That's the portion of the people who will actually make it to medical school."
His demonstration is met with gasps and shouts of disbelief from the first-year students.
The fake professor continues his scare tactics, telling students there will be strict consequences for students who bring laptops or cell phones to class. One by one, the video editors highlight students quickly hiding their laptops.
Finally, as the fake professor is about to start class, the real professor walks in.
"Who the hell are you?" the real professor asks.
When Patrick realizes the jig is up, he grabs his briefcase and runs out of lecture hall as students react with shock and laughter.
After taking control of his class, the real professor jokes about the prank just pulled on the class.
"At least he had the hairline down," he says. "That guy is not Dr. H. I'm Dr. H."
I stayed with Econ and wondered where every one went that semester.
"Journalism. Because Math Is Hard."
The ones who will treat their patients like human beings have to be weeded out.
The ones who can’t figure dose per kilogram have to be weeded out too...
First week of engineering school, one of our calc professors said:
“Look left. Look right. Say good-bye to one of those people, because one of them won’t be here by the end of sophomore year, so you might as well get the good-byes out of the way now.”
He was right. Over 50% of the incoming class of over 900 people were gone from the school or had retreated into easier majors (like business, economics, finance, etc) by the end of the second year. Most of them were gone by the start of the second year, actually.
And... here’s the harder truth yet: There were almost NO engineering courses taught in the first two years. It was all physics, chemistry and calc/diffEQ the first two years. Yeah, for the EE’s there was a course on orbital mechanics that was really a class on using Lagrangians in physics, which would come in handy later in energy conversions, but the truth really was that there was precious little in the way of real electronics/electrical classes for the EE’s, or materials courses for the MechE’s, or chemical processes/etc for the ChemE’s in the first two years. We were all in the same classes together for the first two years.
Yup. Organic chemistry is another weed class.
By the time they get to Analytical chem or P chem most of the idiots and lazy people are gone.
That was 30 years ago and I still have nightmares about making it through.
Organic chem was easy. It’s recipes.
And a big part of pchem is plug and chug.
I skinned-by for my BS-Chem.
CHM 131 was Freshamn Organic Chemistry.
Dr. H was telling them the truth.
Kids today are such wimps... When I was in college, I had two real professors who gave a speech like this. Nobody even blinked.
CH 101 was a killer in my freshman year in 1960. It did weed out playboys and playgirls from the more serious science students.
Even more surprisingly, English 101 was as much of a killer course in those days.
Didn’t know I had another handle on here. ;)
EE by degree, 20 yr computer software career.
Handshake.
Organic chem was easy. It’s recipes.
Stacks and stacks of 3x5 cards is all I remember.
75% of the folks in my PChem class (including me) sat there watching lectures with that Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot look on our faces.
Not everyone has enough hands to be an economist...
Ah yes, the index card.
I’d forgotten those.
I had a friend who got one of the ‘honk if you passed pchem’ bumper stickers.
“Mister Hart, here is a dime. Call your mother. Tell her there is serious doubt about your becoming a lawyer.”
All you need to learn to be a doctor is how to do what the drug rep tell you. (Some people would say you have to learn golf, but some doctors don’t like golf. And you don’t have to learn how to hate lawyers, that comes naturally.)
If they had stayed they would still be there over 40 years later.
I thought it was supposed to be funny. That was a waste of 3 minutes.
He was in his 60's..long and distinguished career..he'd been mentioned as a possible Nobel candidate a few times.
The second lecture...he walks in..stands in front of the class..asks a question about the material we were assigned on the first day.
Nobody answers, raises a hand..even dares to move.
He looks out over us, and says..
" There are two possible explanations at work. Either you are all brilliant, and understand it all perfectly, or you haven't bothered to read the material. In either case, there is absolutely no point in my wasting my time by being here."
And he walked out.
Subsequent classes were much better..
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