Scenes from an accounting class

Alternate title: sailing the wide accountant seas

Our accounting professor, Manny, disproves all stereotypes about accountants. You would think accountants would be up-tight, anal-retentive, hyper-organised. You'd think they would speak in a monotone. Well, I would have thought that...

Not Manny, no. He's a really good teacher, but he's not what you'd expect.

He scribbles illegible notes onto the overhead, while standing in front of the screen. He's prone to digression. At one point tonight he was rambling along about GAAP, and somebody asked a question. He paused and said he hadn't heard it.

I think I'm losing hearing in one of my ears, which reminds me of a man I used to know. He was deaf in his left ear, and he'd always stand to the one side of me, and he could never hear anything I said. I think it might have been a personal statement. But then he won the lottery, but he wasn't the sort of person who would quit his job just because he won the lottery, so he kept working at the bank. But after that nobody at the bank would take him seriously because he'd won the lottery, and he ended up having to quit, which is really too bad.

I remember one time he bought a house for a dollar. Ya. It was funny. This was in Ottawa. He saw this ad in the paper really early in the morning, and so he called the guy up and ended up buying the house for a dollar, and just assuming the mortgage payments. It was funny. He was a such a stumpy little guy, but his son... He was short and, you know, not thin, and really plain looking, but his son was a male model. I always thought that was really strange. Anyways, he was deaf in one ear. Where was I?

Then we had more accounting class. Loser kept putting up his hand and asking the most stupid, long-winded, asinine questions. I was thinking of hurling my cup of coffee across the room at him. Just then Cathy leaned in close and whispered I heard a rumour that he was dead. I guess it was just wishful thinking.

Right now I'm eating scrambled eggs. From a shoe. With a comb.

Well, no. I'm not. Not at all, but it had to be said.

Comments

[astra]

See, Sars, you say good teacher, I say waffler and low standards of teaching in Higher Ed.
I'm sure he's a diamond geezer though.

[lisa]

I think this is pretty much what the students I teach blog about me. For some reason, teaching uses up insane amounts of energy. And for some reason, you halve that energy-use if instead of talking about the subject, you make coffee-talk about your life. I like tell cat stories to make the end of the hour get there faster.

[V]

There is a T-shirt that would go nicely with the cat stories. The front says: "Schrödinger's Cat is Dead". The back says: "Schrödinger's Cat is Not Dead". I thought it might be funny anyways.

[astra]

That actually IS very funny :))

[Jinx]

My clients are almost all accountants. It's not even a stereo type; as soon as you find one who seems to break out, just wait a little longer. They will reveal their colors...