True story

When I was doing my undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Concordia University in Montreal, there was a Russian teaching assistant called Alexei. One day during an organic chemistry lab, he told us a story that has remained tattooed on the inside of my skull ever since.

When Alexei was doing his undergraduate degree at the University of Moscow, there was one particular professor who had the bad habit of coming to class drunk some times. It was easy to tell when he was drunk: if the blackboard was covered with incomprehensible scribbles, he was fine. If he was trying hard to write legibly, he was drunk. That day, he was drunk.

The class was given in a large auditorium with 2 doors on either side. The professor was writing on the board when suddenly, the last piece of chalk broke. Just that moment, a student entered through the right door, also drunk. The professor called to him: “Young man, can you go to the other classroom and get me a piece of chalk?” The student goes back out, reappears a minute later through the left door, and says: “Excuse me, do you have an extra piece of chalk, by any chance?” The professor replied that he did not. When the student came back through the right door, he reported that he couldn’t find any chalk. The professor said “Yes, I know, one of their students just came looking for some.”

33 thoughts on “True story

  1. What do Concordia students and McGill students have in common?
    - Both applied to McGill

    Great story btw!

  2. I had an Irish Philosophy professor who MAY have occasionally been drunk during class. Every once in a while, he would gesture wildly with his arms, always have long pauses after making a significant point, slightly slurred speech, and best of all, after quoting from the text, would throw the book across the room to a table, where, if needed again, would be retrieved, read from and thrown, he also threw markers after writing on the board. I liked this professor very much. What a fantastic teacher.

  3. I had a physics instructor in college (1971, get off my lawn) who would show up to class drunk. On day he announced, “… and that is haw we can measure our grams to the nearest tenth of a centimeter.”

  4. Richard,

    I thought you were emulating drunk-speech. Thank you for showing that you simply cannot spell.

    :)

  5. When I was doing my undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan I had a professor who was the grandson of a very well-known and respected author/poet. He used to tell us stories about the drugs he used to take and basically came out and told us that he still smoked pot regularly. Really cool guy and an informative class, found the anecdotes amusing though.

  6. “What do Concordia students and McGill students have in common?
    - Both applied to McGill”

    haha

    Mind you, the joke is only funny if you’re a science or math major. I wouldn’t attend it for art, lit, or philosophy.

  7. Since we’re all telling our drunk professor stories, I had a professor my last semester at Delaware that would show up, and announce that he was still drunk from the previous night, and therefore class would be ending at least 30 minutes early. Either that or he’d put on a movie and fall asleep on his desk.

  8. Pingback: The drunk and the chalk | myDrunkBuddy

  9. Why are Concordia students better than McGill students? Because they aren’t just a bunch of wanks from Toronto.

  10. @ nietzsche
    – I’m in Mech Eng. so its all good :P

    @ John
    – Hahaha, We like to bug concordia ppl.. its all jokes

    @ Jow
    -I’m from laval, and most of my friends are either from Mtl or Lebanon…
    I agree though the out-of-towners are quite silly….

  11. Hi Gabriel,

    I think I was in the same lab as you at the time (Alexei was awesome). How’s life? I ended up finishing my PhD at McGill, now I’m a post-doc at the university of michigan. It’s cool to see your story front-paged on reddit.

    Francis

  12. I found the joke about McGill students and Concordia students more entertaining than the whole story.

  13. I once got drunk and went to the wrong class. I even took notes without realizing that I didn’t have that subject.

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