We at The Quipster sometimes get interesting emails. Case in point:

My Professor is Too Pretentious for me

From Jessica Silverstein

Despite Professor Prestridge’s superficial air of affability and sublime intelligence, I have discovered that he is no more than a pompous fool. After our acquaintance progressed beyond a novel student in his English course on the Victorians, I began to realize that his pretentious airs were unsurpassable. No other professor can top Professor Prestridge’s sesquipedalian diction, his sisyphean syntactical arrangements, and other various perfunctory maneuvers unknown to those acquainted with an iota of normalcy.

Professor Prestridge’s expectations regarding classroom etiquette had distinct flavors of arcane traditionalism to the extent that they were ludicrous and unreasonable. A particular policy he upheld was that students, upon his entrance into the classroom, should arise from reverence of their elder and educator. He posited that respect was essential for the proper functioning of a classroom’s operations; however, he disregards the obsolescence of such archaic customs. These days respect is not earned through age, as we live in a society predominated by precepts regarding equality to be the principle of choice supplanting attitudes necessitating hierarchical structures.

Another element comprising Professor Prestridge’s pretension is his implausibly inflated view of his own intellectual prowess. Although I would agree that he is a constituent of society’s intelligentsia and a philomath, several elements of his self-image are indisputably fictitious. He claims himself to be a polymath and an autodidact, but his knowledge’s limited scope and his self-taught air renders me skeptical. His manner of speaking is often tautological and pleonastic, as it were. Although his classes could, at times, be somewhat edifying, I believe these pretensions he donned to be detrimental to the classroom’s efficacy.

My issues regarding Professor Prestridge should not be perceived as an immature child’s whine. My arguments are poignant and valid. I plea that everyone combat pretension wherever it exists. It is my hope that we can live in a future where pretension is expunged from people’s college educations.