Third Student

Very few people are happy presenting themselves in front of a large crowd, and lecturers are no exception. The 'style' a lecturer adopts is a strategy that allows him to cope with the stress of exposing himself to hordes of strangers. Very often this 'style' will take the form of a sort of detached cynicism; a seemingly collous disregard for the cells in the faceless hive humming about him. If he's not interested in their performance, maybe they won't be too interested in his.

Psychology lecturers have a further problem in this regard. Many people taking Stage 1 Psychology are after an easy 12 credits, and are not prepared to invest anything more in the subject than is required to pass. Furthermore they are often academic voyeurs, eagerly awaiting some titillating fact about human behaviour, some stimulating tit-bit about themselves that they can amuse thir friends with and they are usually disappointed.

This disappointment turns to resentment which any lecturer of any sensitivity (and there are a few) can tell. Thus a vicious negative feedback loop is created in which generations of apathetic and often hostile Stage 1 students force the lecturer to adopt a defensive posture, and to retreat behind a mask of amused indifference. As with any actor who plays a part for too long, a lecturers personality will merge with the image he projects. Innocent Stage 1 students, eagerly awaiting their 1st dose of The Secrets of Human Nature, and shocked by the full frontal assault on their preconceptions by the lecturer, and this, not unnaturally, colours their subsequent behaviour. And so the cycle goes on.