# Have you ever had a shy or nervous professor?



## SweetJane (Jul 11, 2012)

?


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## chickenfett (Jun 2, 2011)

I have a family member who is a professor at Harvard Medical School (who also performed Nobel Prize winning research) and is loved and respected by all of his students. He is incredibly shy. My Mom used to describe him as hard to talk to.


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## SweetJane (Jul 11, 2012)

chickenfett said:


> I have a family member who is a professor at Harvard Medical School (who also performed Nobel Prize winning research) and is loved and respected by all of his students. He is incredibly shy. My Mom used to describe him as hard to talk to.


Wow, that's amazing. It must be terribly difficult to have a job as a professor if you have social anxiety. It almost seems like hell!


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## Raeden (Feb 8, 2013)

One of my favorite professors actually seemed rather shy, I think. He was a really good professor, and he seemed to actually care whether his students learned. He took a personal interest in his students.


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## chickenfett (Jun 2, 2011)

SweetJane said:


> Wow, that's amazing. It must be terribly difficult to have a job as a professor if you have social anxiety. It almost seems like hell!


I don't know if he has anxiety. My mom suspected he had Asperger's Syndrome.

Also, most science professors spend their days in the lab.


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## Joe (May 18, 2010)

One of my old teachers stuttered like crazy during parents evening a few years back, he done it to every parent from the sounds of it although he never seemed nervous in lessons.


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## Remnant of Dawn (Feb 22, 2012)

BBQ_Chicken said:


> One of my old teachers stuttered like crazy during parents evening a few years back, he done it to every parent from the sounds of it *although he never seemed nervous in lessons*.


This is just a theory, but I think that may have to do with feeling less nervous when you're talking about or explaining something that really interests you. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but I remember it from high school.

I would spend hours preparing for any sort of presentation, whether it be in history, English, science, whatever. But every year in my CS class my final project was to make a video game, and at the end we would have to present it before the class, explaining things (how we did it, what features we added, which parts were hardest, etc). Now if this were another class, I would have prepared for hours and been terrified, but for CS it never really bothered me. I sort of just got up there and talked about what I made.

I feel like if you get really excited by the topic you'd be lecturing about, the anxiety might just sort of fade away behind the excitement and you could be an awesome professor. Good luck!


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## meepie (Jun 20, 2010)

Remnant of Dawn said:


> This is just a theory,* but I think that may have to do with feeling less nervous when you're talking about or explaining something that really interests you. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this*, but I remember it from high school.
> 
> I feel like if you get really excited by the topic you'd be lecturing about, the anxiety might just sort of fade away behind the excitement and you could be an awesome professor. Good luck!


I have experienced this when I tutor/teach math. It's fun and the anxiety does go away .


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## AlchemyFire (Mar 4, 2013)

Once, as a sub in high school. He seemed really nervous and spoke quietly. When he was taking attendance people would call out "here," but I was too shy to do that so I raised my hand. He didn't look up either and I got marked as absent :b


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## vitaminu100 (Jul 18, 2011)

Yes, but not really really shy.  I've had lecturers (professors) whose voices shook badly when giving lectures too. I've also had a professor who was confident in class, but when I talked to her one to one she seemed self-conscious. I've seen her walking around with a slightly lost look on her face. She's a nice person.


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## DeeperUnderstanding (May 19, 2007)

It seems like most English professors are shy. That has been my experience.


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## SweetJane (Jul 11, 2012)

lestrange said:


> It's one of the only lectures I can bring myself to attend because I find myself relating to her awkwardness. She seems like a lovely person, so polite and always with a smile on her face. Sometimes she stutters or struggles to find her words, and something about that makes me feel comfortable to sit in her lecture. That, and I enjoy the topic.


It's just so hard to picture a really awkward/shy professor, who always has a smile on her face!


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## Cam1 (Dec 4, 2011)

Yes, my statistics professor from my first semester of college was very clearly nervous. He would stutter and slur his words a lot, felt bad for the guy. He was also socially awkward in speaking with students and other professors. He fought through it though. It was interesting to watch how he progressed over the semester, by the end he was more confident and better at communicating. Fairly young, assuming it might have been his first year.


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## Greenleaf62 (Aug 1, 2013)

This isn't the same thing but I've had a quiet teacher before. She was a great teacher, really nice and caring, but she was pretty withdrawn and quiet. She was always my favorite because it's how I pictured myself as a teacher and I figured that if she could be like that and be a good teacher then so could I.


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## SweetJane (Jul 11, 2012)

lestrange said:


> Wait... my old maths teacher was awkward but he was always smiling, too. It's possible :O


Think it could be a cover up? Just smile when you feel pain!


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## pastelsound (Dec 27, 2012)

my communications professor, ironically. she avoided eye contact like crazy and you could hear her voice rising/face blushing.


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## InfiniteBlaze (Jan 27, 2011)

This professor I had for mythology definitely had SA. He would sweat for no reason, spoke in a soft voice, his hands trembled like crazy, and his personality was kind of pushover-like in general.


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## tbyrfan (Feb 24, 2011)

One of my anthropology professors I had for 3 classes was really quiet and reserved. She could talk in front of the class without problems, but would occasionally giggle uncomfortably and try using humor to ease her anxiety. She's completely fine talking in small groups or one-on-one, though. She once told my class that she was so quiet in graduate school that her faculty mentor told her she would be kicked out of her PhD program unless she spoke up in class and meetings, so she was basically forced to improve her shyness.


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