Every lecturer you’ll meet at Warwick

You’ve probably read about the types of flatmate you’ll have at uni,  the types of student you’ll meet on your course, and even the sorts of people you’ll stumble into on a night out, but what about the people who get paid to teach us?

No matter what course you’re taking, there are certain types of lecturer that just cannot be avoided.

The waffler

These types of lecturers aren’t happy just sticking to the syllabus. They have a burning, near-overwhelming need to tell you everything about their children, grandchildren, recreational aeroplane, pet budgie called Tweety.

By the end of the course, you might not know about the finer workings of Vietnamese politics, or how to calibrate a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, but you will know everything there is to know about every aspect of their life.

Honestly, you probably don’t want to be in this lecture to begin with, but when you’re paying £9,000 a year to get a degree, you don’t want to be hearing about what they ate for breakfast at 9am every day without fail.

Oh God, here we go again …

The LILF

You’re not quite sure what it is: the skinny jeans? The beautifully-fitted shirt? The pretentiously-perfect level of stubble across the jaw? Do they subsidise their salary by working part-time as a model? Did you happen to catch their naked backside in the latest Warwick rowers calendar?

Maybe you’re just tired of the endless drudge of lecturers old enough and dreary enough to be your grandparent, and anyone under forty who wears jeans instead of corduroys is starting to look reasonably attractive by the time 4pm rolls around? Whatever the case, you’re certain you could lose yourself in those blue eyes any day.

Nevertheless, be on your guard around, because the fit guy you drunkenly got with at Smack last night might just turn out to be your lab supervisor the next day. It’s happened before.

The one-and-only female lecturer in the entire department

When you were a first year, there was an old tale passed down by your predecessors that the department isn’t actually devoid of women, they all just teach the specialist material in the later years.

Well, now you’re in third year, they’re still nowhere to be seen, and perhaps you’ve forgotten what women look like. What happened to them all? Why has no-one you known been taught by them? Where did they go? Maybe you’ll have one next year.

Few and far between

The machiavellian

Easily identifiable by the fact they sit in a spinning chair at the front of the class, stroking a cat in their lap, and laughing menacingly at you every so often. Maybe they have a classic villain moustache, or an eyepatch, or even a hook for a hand.

That, or they’re despicably prone to putting surprise topics on the end-of-year exams that definitely weren’t ever in the syllabus. Screw them.

The liar

Seems like your best friend? Provides fully-annotated handouts of their module? Has all the best banter? Wrong. They only fake care about you. Students? What are those? They’re here for one reason only: making money through their research.

They’re often found sitting on the Vice Chancellor’s knee, or buttering you up nice and good for when the lecture feedback forms come around and you can give them all a score of five, and then suddenly, they’re gone, lost to the cold, icy wind that rattles through your suddenly betrayed heart.

He’s only pretending to care about you getting your degree …

The newbie

You’re not quite sure if he’s actually gone through puberty yet, because he’s so darn baby-faced. He says he’s thirty, married, with two kids and a mortgage, but do we really believe him when he’s wearing Nike trainers and his voice has barely dropped?

But then again, he has at least five degrees, three PhDs, and a post-doctorate under his belt, and he could wipe the floor with your sorry ass at University Challenge at the bonny age of probably-not-more-than thirteen, so he makes you feel pretty inadequate anyway.

The oldie

Wisps of grey hair, elbow patches on their tweed blazers, and a leather briefcase in hand, these lectures spend most of your hour trying to figure out how to turn the projector on, as they’re apparently allergic to technology.

They tend to be perpetually bitter towards the rest of the department, but demand instant respect for the fact they’re the (only) world-leading expert in the reproduction cycle of some Amazonian tree frog. That’s cool. You think.

How does this computer work again?

The indecipherable

Indecipherable either because you can’t hear them, due to the fact they forget to turn the microphone on every damn time. or because they speak with an incomprehensible accent.

And we’re not talking about the lecturers speaking English as a second language – because at the end of the day, they’ve learned something you’re failing to learn, in a language that isn’t even their mother tongue – we’re talking about that one rogue Scotsman from so far north of the Aberdeen that you wonder how he copes with seeing so much sunlight this far south.

The waldo

This is the lecturer that disappears straight after lectures, never replies to emails, is always absent from the office to the extent where their computer is gathering dust, and takes immeasurable numbers of holidays that you’re pretty sure their salary can’t cover.

And they even resort to making a run for it when you try and corner them in the corridor to ask a burning question. The last thing you’ll see is the top of their head disappearing into the crowd as you lose them in the chaos outside L3 after lecture switchover.

Shit, I’ve lost him …

The bae

Picture the scene: it’s 5pm on a Friday afternoon, it’s been a long, hard week of skipping lectures for hangovers, and you’ve spent the day struggling diligently through the whole one hour of seminar you were obliged to attend.

You’re exhausted from all your hard work, and don’t think you have it in you to keep your eyes open for a moment longer, let alone for a lecture … but, as you walk (crawl) into L3, what do you see? A silver lining. It’s the Bae.

That one lecturer who is a rare gem of a human being. And they’ve bought in a bucket of chocolate bars for you to feed your starving self with. Bless the Bae for knowing the way to capture a student’s heart (or attention). You’re torn between wanting to marry them, and wanting to run into their arms and weep with happiness. Whatever the case, they’re the reason you stay on campus ‘till 5pm, and get out of bed for the 9ams.