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."
It’s probably all true though.
But I don’t get the joke. That’s pretty much how the Chemistry classes at my school actually worked ;-)
It could be.
The real shock will come when the students find out that he told them the truth.
Under Obamacare, standards will have to be lowered. Otherwise there won’t be enough doctors to run his clinics vs. going into private practice.
You can’t BS your way thru a chemistry class. Or other genuine science classes.
Guy I went to HS with went to a big engineering school. Said the first day of class the prof (the real prof) looked at them and said ‘this is a weed class. the person on your right and the one on your left probably won’t make it to next semester’.
Sure enough, only about 40% of the class passed. Rest of them dropped it after the first test or just didn’t bother to take a second semester of torture.
My friend was a pretty sharp guy though and passed. However, he overslept for the final exam and arrived when most of the time period was already done. He quickly worked through his test and finished about 5m after the prof collected the papers. Took his paper to the front and the prof said ‘time’s up, you failed!’ with a smirk. Friend of mine said ‘do you know who I am? ‘ Prof said ‘of course not!’. Friend said ‘Good!’ and picked up about half of the stack of collected test papers, put his completed test in the stack and dropped the rest on top.
He made an A.
Something like this happened to me my Freshman year, in my Engineering Physics class. Prof said, "Look to your left...not look to your right. Two of you will be gone by the end of the year."
He was off a little. We started with +/-140 students in EE, and graduated 38. Nearly all of them were weeded out in Freshman Physics and Calc. A handful got nailed in soft of the sophomore EE classes (I got a 'C' in Solid State Physics and declared victory....).
However .... when he gave this little speech, there were no shouts of disbelief. Might be the difference between students who earned their way through High School, and students who aged their way through High School?
See my post #9. GMTA.
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.
The tell is this...there’s only about 1/2 the number of chem 102 class sections the second semester. The rest of the kids are in the business school, some ‘studies’ department, or the education department by then...
soft = some. #@%$@#$ speel chckr.
It’s widely known that most ‘scientifically’ inclined kids are told to either be a doctor or an engineer. Few of them, however, really have the horsepower for either of those careers. Most every freshman boy you meet is either a premed major or an engineering major. Very few of the seniors you meet are premed or engineering.
This says something significant, but I'm not sure what.
Not too many 'Studies' majors when I was in college. That's likely not the story any more, though.
hmmm ... overslept for my Freshman BIO. same story. finished exam in 40% of the time period.
shows ya how fast ya can think when you have no choice.
Every professor makes some similar type of speech. It isnt anything profound, or some judgement on the intelligence of the people in the class that change majors. These days it seems more like an ego trip for the guy at the front of the class that isnt even working in the profession that they are teaching.
Sometimes you just find that that path isnt for you, and you find something better.
Yeah, no kidding. I'm an Electrical Engineer.
Haven't gotten a job within my major yet....and after 20 (cough30) I'm unlikely to. :-)
But, knowing how to physically and mentally handle the grind of required work was handy when I started my career in IT.
That joke’s been around since I was a freshman in college more than 25 years ago.
We might know the same dude ;)
Sadly, my frosh class wasn’t large enough for any shenanigans. But the failure rate was about the same.
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