Things you should know about lectures and lecturers at our University

Introductory lectures are intended to give you an impression of what your course, the lectures, the topics etc. will be like for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, they’re often misused by lecturers to give a misleading impression in order to keep attendance up, or the class in fear. The following is a warning.

- Lecturers don’t normally smoke pot in the lecture theatres, neither will they invite you to have a toke.

- Lectures consist of more than watching videos of ‘Noddy’ episode after ‘Noddy’ episode.  

- Lecturers don’t normally receive that many calls in the theatres during lectures, they got their friends to ring them there to look popular.

- Students aren’t even required to have a first born child, let alone sacrifice one to take law.

- Medical students won’t have to practice on children’s dolls, even if some dolls wet their own pants, that’s not a real digestive system.

- Although 20 minutes of the introductory lecture was devoted to it, Sociology has nothing to do with TV’s ‘The Golden Girls’.

- Students don’t spontaneously jump out of chairs and Rock and Roll dance, the authentic costumes they wore and 50s music that piped into the sound system were suspiciously convenient.

- Very few of the lecturers have “taken a bullet”, those aren’t authentic scars.

- Later on in the semester the dwindling student numbers may be due to drop-outs, you won’t be missing out on any eviction nominations.

- There aren’t any lecturers on campus trained in snake charming, it wasn’t even a real snake, that was a grad student in a body stocking.

- They weren’t anybody’s ex-boyfriends on the over-heads, the student crying was faking their humiliation.

- You don’t have to memorise the histories of randomly selected Eurovision winners to pass a Nursing topic.

- Operatic renditions of Patsy Cline tunes atop a human pyramid aren’t delivered every week.

- Given that those were clearly not human heads, and that the vast majority of enrolled Flinders students are humans possessing heads, it seems statistically unlikely those were former students.

- Although there are quite a few lecturers identifying as ‘smart-arse’, they aren’t so far gone to mime from tapes of the previous years lectures every week.

- Unfortunately, lectures will continue to be delivered in goofy faux Jamaican accents with the dodgy beanies with the fake dreads hanging out the back for the first few weeks

- The lecturer isn’t friends with Harrison Ford, he won’t be guest speaker nor will he help with the marking of second term papers, the lecturer just wishes he was.

- Your tutors won’t be glued together come tutorial time.

- There aren’t any mirror balls in lecture theatres, the lecturer imagined the whole thing.

- You don’t have to take the Pepsi taste-test challenge to pass mathematics topics, thanks to our shameless, member-licking allegiance to Coca-Cola vendors.

- If you find half finished bottles of whisky under your chairs, the lecturer isn’t generously handing out free booze to his class, that just means Casper’s taking classes in that room

- No former student has been transformed into a duck for poor marks

- If the lecturer is always under-prepared, they will continue to fake the crippling hunger pains every week

- The lecturer won’t spectacularly and flamboyantly commit suicide amid a flurry of gumboots and chicken feathers screaming “I blame you! I blame you” while pointing at the class with a large cutlass every week, they’re dead now and the class is cancelled.

- Lecturers won’t jig every time somebody asks a question

- Lecturers won’t paint themselves and the tutors blue and replace all adjectives and verbs in their prepared opening statements with

- Lecturer’s won’t accept “woof woof” as an acceptable answer beyond the first lecture, neither will they bring their dogs in and declare them the brightest student they’ve had every time they bark.

- Lecturers don’t dress like cowboys and demand students sit around on the large circle of hay-bales they’ve set up at the front of the room every week.

- Hi-5 won’t be back next week and you won’t have to do all the actions along with the lecturer.

- There’s not normally bowls of punch for drinking, there aren’t that many people in suits standing around chatting, and applauding when the lecturer speaks. Neither does the lecturer wear that many diamonds.

- The lecturer won’t stop every ten minutes and ask a random student “Did you just grab my ass?”

- Unfortunately Screen Studies lectures will continue to be mostly about the woman with three breasts from ‘Total Recall’.

- Tom’s not a real lecturer and nobody is required to attend his ‘Why Custard are so Cool’ course lectures, nor attempt any of the assignments.

- Lecturers don’t swap classes every week and try to renovate the theatres with a team of personable handy-men.

- Lectures consist of more than lecturers bringing along their ‘boyfriends’ and making out with them in front of the class for an hour.

- Course information booklets should be distributed, not K-Mart catalogues, you won’t be required to recite either word-for-word in the exam.

- The real desk was under the sheet, the desk chain-sawed in half by the lecturer who couldn’t get the overhead projector to work was a fake.

- You don’t get extra marks no matter how long the lecturer encourages you to hold your breath.

- Lecturers won’t sing, there won’t be judges in the audience commenting on their delivery styles.

- Physics lecturers don’t normally invite the homeless into the class and feed them soup, in fact weeks later they kick those same unfortunates.

- The majority of lecturers aren’t horribly deformed and any impression to the contrary should be referred to the cheap horror-masks available at most supermarkets.

- Lecturers don’t bring their Hungry Hungry Hippos to class and play them ferociously with limbs akimbo intermittently between points.

- You don’t have to like the same music as the lecturer to take the class, you can come back next week even if you loathe Yes.

- If you ask a question in class, the lecturer won’t begin every answer with “Firstly, stay away from my wife…”

- The theme from Harlem globetrotters won’t be played whenever the lecturer walks into the theatre, no matter how tall or how many tricks they perform with a basketball.

- Tutors will not continue to the refer to the lecturer as ‘Skipper’. Students will not have to imitate a dolphin to ask a question.

- Purchasing a student discounted magazine subscription isn’t a prerequisite for any topics, even if it is PC World.

- No matter how authoritative he sounds, no matter how many lectures he gives, even though there’s a café named after him, nobody has to pay any attention to Andrew McHugh whatsoever.

This article is a reproduction of an Empire Times article that was published in 2004. This article is published under the understanding that all Empire times articles may be reproduced if properly credited. We consider this to be proper credit.