While in higher education, I noticed something odd about my fellow faculty. There are quite a few who believe that they are more prestigious than their position dictates. This is not to say that what they do is unimportant. However, we need to reevaluate a few things. 

For those who are not privy to the professor game, there is a hierarchy that dictates who is elite and who lacks the chops to benefit from higher education. In addition, several factors play a role in determining what kind of professor makes up North American college campuses. Below, I list a few of the various types before I get to the group that troubles me and deserves derision. It is not a comprehensive list, but it helps to make delineations.

At the top are the academic rock stars. These people eat, sleep, research, repeat. Major institutions pine away for these people because their work is published in high-impact journals, and they are keynote speakers at academic conferences. They get paid to make their school look good by maintaining an audience in the tens of people, given their level of specialization. They are forging new ideas in their sleep. They earn tenure before the ink dries on their contract and wield their scholarly wisdom in ways that make a Jedi blush. They might teach once in a blue moon since that is not their focus, or they want to experience self-loathing. They are genuinely paid to think.

Below them are the two-way professors. They teach classes and do research. They may excel at one or the other but cannot master both. Some strive to be like rock stars, while others pour their energy into radical ideas of teaching disengaged students. Whatever their malfunction is, they tend to be workaholics. The biggest strike against them is that they tend to volunteer for everything to secure promotion, tenure, or a padded room.

Below them are the teaching professors who have one job: teaching. Some are awesome at it and can connect with students in ways that somehow penetrate the lead skulls some undergraduates possess. Then there are the bad ones who exist. That is what they do, occupy space and nothing more. At least, that is what I hope they do, but that is rarely the case.

I am dubbing the bad professors the Academic Millstones because they grind everything to a halt and are generally a pain in the ass (those poor donkeys don’t deserve to pull all that weight). Most millstones have a purpose in that they can turn grains into flour, but then some just don’t pull their weight. Many are massive burdens to have around and contribute nothing if they can help it. Rock stars are impervious to this designation because they were never hired to mingle with the Muggles. For the other 98 percent of professors out there, they can easily fall into this trap of complacency. If you believe you know one or think you might be one yourself, please check for the following symptoms.

Absent at everything/dips out asap.
If an event or meeting is on campus, these people will do everything they can to avoid it or leave as soon as possible. If they have enough warning, they will schedule appointments to get their pocket yip-dog a pedicure. They will sit near the back with quick access to the exit if they have to attend. I find this frustrating because I don’t want to be there either, but I also want to talk trash about them. They feel compelled to sit close to me, so I can’t. No, Danton, you can’t sit next to me because I am reserving this seat for my imaginary friend, and they need a lot of personal space.

If you thought the students were sly trying to find ways to escape campus after finals, then you haven’t met a millstone professor. They have all the course material done before the last week of class so that they can bolt before the students finish with their first exam. That feels skeevy to me because at least we are paid (somewhat) to be on campus. The kids are almost as burned out as we are. Just stay a couple of extra days.

Constantly complains about students.
I see this as a larger problem with most of the faculty I interact with, but millstones tend to be the loudest about it. They love to throw the word “engagement” around a lot. My first thought is that the students don’t show interest in your class because you don’t show interest in it either. If you talked with the students instead of talking at them, they might respond better. This point deserves its own post.

Has done nothing worthy of professional development.
When we were all younger scholars, we were full of vim and vigor. We wanted to get out there and do things with our newly minted Ph.D. Time has made a few of us jaded and cynical (I was already like that in high school), so we don’t go to conferences or conduct research like we used to. Some slow down, but then others stop. They don’t even attend state conferences which can easily turn into drinking trips. Most of them already hate teaching. Why not take a day or two to attend something of remote academic interest and escape? That’s what I do. I go to the conference. Present my work and then disappear into the host city. I learn more from the toothless guy outside the hotel about the area than anybody networking at the conference who is staring at their navels and sniffing other crusty butts.

Refuses to budge on anything.
After teaching the same courses since Jimmy Carter was in office, they tend to get stuck in their ways. Why bother changing when it has worked for so long? PowerPoint slides might have internet memes from the early 2000s, or worse, still be the textbook slides from waning days of the Gangnam Style. If they refuse to budge at teaching anything different, imagine how fun they are at faculty meetings where any idea is a bad idea. I mean, let’s face it. Things ran smoothly while President Farty McBean was in charge. There’s no sense in changing it now. 

If you identify with any or all of these symptoms, notify your local sadist to beat some sense into you. It is way easier to deal with a random mugging then to get strangled in the parking lot by a clique of faculty.