Professor is either out of the loop or a hipster, irritates students endlessly
The syllabi rolled out and everyone thought it was a cute joke, but alas it is true: One professor is still shamelessly using Smartsite. An eruption of courtesy laughs then turned into groans when Professor Ahdarn proceeded to give a lengthy talk on all the “cool” features of Smartsite.
“There’s a chat room!” Ahdarn said. “It’s like a room where you can all talk to each other, but none of you have to go anywhere! Crazy!”
A few students sought out a camera to glare into like they were a character on some prank show or The Office, but it was all too real. At the end of the syllabus, Ahdarn had left her email, her office hours and the link to her MySpace account.
“It’s this hip new website that’s all the rage!” she said, giving the students the hot gossip. “Whoever gets the highest grade in the class is going to be added to my top eight! It’s going to be radical.”
Many students think that Ahdarn has absolutely no clue what any technology is, as she walked up the the projector and tried to turn it on with voice command. Or maybe she just had really high expectations? No, we’re fairly confident she has no idea, since she also asked where the keypad was on one student’s iPhone.
“I mean, the Smartsite thing is already irritating because all three of my other classes are on Canvas,” one student said. “But it’s even weirder because she’ll post announcements that I think are just, like, Google questions. Like there was one yesterday that said, ‘When do mushrooms expire?’ But this is an English class.”
Ahdarn walks into class every day wearing her favorite outfit: a colonial woman’s dress with a matching bonnet and some fresh-churned butter. She locks her horse and buggy to a bike rack out front.
“She’s been telling us that this harvest ought to be bountiful or else we will have to sell the farm,” third-year Michael Jackson said. “Perhaps it’s a play on our agricultural school? I hope so.”
Students are hopeful that Ahdarn will soon get a clue. For now, they’re just praying that Smartsite doesn’t decide that it doesn’t feel like cooperating for the entire month before finals again. And also that the harvest will be bountiful.
Written by: Olivia Luchini — ocluchini@ucdavis.edu Twitter: @olivialuchini
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
