Student Worried About What Daddy Will Say in Class
Family weekend is just around the corner. For some, this means a shopping trip to Boston with mom and dad. For others, it just means no school on Monday and a chance to finally catch up on sleep, and for the rest it means the angry phone calls about not calling enough are now your parents telling all your friends about how they think you don’t love them anymore.
Regardless of how this weekend might go, most students are happy to see their parents. Even more so, most students are excited to flex in class while their parents observe. Although you might have a D in the class, it always feels good to put the easiest problem up on the board and pretend for your mom or dad that you actually know what you’re talking about. Additionally, this is the time when English teachers actually see the most participation, where students fight over talking about, “metaphor” this and “alliteration” that, rounding it out with a “the unparalleled struggle of [x] character really says that in our society we something something blah blah blah.”
The only thing more dreaded to students than the kid trying to show his parents why they’re actually the smartest kid at this school is a few words many teachers like to add at the beginning of class, or something some parents tend to just take upon themselves. The phrase, “feel free to jump in too,” is by and large the quickest way to make students turn back to their parents and mouth, “Do. Not.” Nonetheless, parents contribute to the conversations and for the most part, only their children suffer. Outside input can really liven up a class, and in certain cases it can turn out that someone’s parent has actually been studying complex polymers for thirty years.
However, as most know, some parents can hold some decently radical beliefs, causing some students to be especially worried for what they might say during class.
Specifically, a two-year upper named Ralph Schaumberg happens to be concerned by what his ogre father, Grug Schaumberg, will say and do in class. Schaumberg, the junior, is quoted saying, “I think I’m probably most worried about his tendency to break things when people look at him. They aren’t letting him bring his huge club anymore since he broke a Harkness table with it last year, but I’ve seen him level like a couple acres of woodlands after a bad day at work so I’m not really sure what good that’s gonna do.” According to Schaumberg Jr., the blue emergency buttons around campus actually exist because his father threw a golf cart at the student who pointed out that his son had done a math problem incorrectly. “He usually has a lot of problems with authority, but he tends to be pretty respectful to my teachers,” Schaumberg Jr. continued. “That being said, my English teacher found their car in the shape of a cube after the third time they asked, ‘But like, where are you from from?”
Schaumberg Jr.’s advisor relates, “Although Mr. Schaumberg can be a bit impertinent at times, I believe there’s something to be admired in every person. For example, I’ve yet to see someone devour an entire live lamb like Mr. Schaumberg did when I had the opportunity to catch lunch with him.
When Schaumberg Sr. was asked about how he thinks his son is acclimating in his second year of school he replied, “Grug don’t know. Grug more traditional. Grug think Grug son better off doing real life stuff, like taxes or fighting. Grug son only talk about college, book, college book, college. Boring. Me just hope he happy.”