By Melanie Spina
Staff Writer
Sweaty palms, nervous laughter, cheeks as red as a tomato — this is basically what happens when a student or even a professor gets embarrassed in the classroom. Students and professors spend so much time in these classrooms that, sooner or later, embarrassing moments are bound to occur. Here are some funny and entertaining stories of some of the most embarrassing moments of LIU Post students and professors.
Picture this: You are standing in front of everyone in class to give a presentation and five minutes in you realize that what you were presenting was in fact for another class. Quite embarrassing, right?
Well, this is something that did happen to Diana Zysk, a junior Business major. “I went up there ready to give my presentation and then I realized I had mixed up the presentation with one for another class,” Zysk said. “I almost died, I could not believe I actually embarrassed myself like that.”
But for Zysk, embarrassing herself in the classroom seems to be a regular thing. Although it has happened in college, she believes that she has been embarrassed in high school more often than now. Zysk said that it always happened during tests or serious moments in class. One day she had an important chemistry test, which she claims was really hard, therefore she wrote down the equations on a piece of paper. “So I had the paper in my hand and then the professor started to walk around the classroom and suddenly she walked by me and looked at me,” Zysk said. “I got really nervous so I ate the paper.”
Apparently, getting embarrassed for being caught cheating in high school is a common thing among students. Maria Walker, a sophomore Childhood Education major, had a very similar story to Zisk, but instead of eating the paper she was asked to sit on her one hand for the rest of the test. “I was presenting an Italian test and there was this one word that I could never remember, so I wrote it down on the palm of my hand,” said Walker. “During the middle of the test I went to look at it and my teacher walked up to me and asked to see my hand. When she saw the word written down she told me I had to spend the rest of the entire exam sitting on that hand. Everyone was just staring. It was terrible.”
Sometimes an embarrassing moment in the classroom can leave such an impact on a person that it might even lead them to change their major. Natasha Vaughn, a senior Spanish Education major, remembers a moment of her freshman year. Vaughn wasn’t always a Spanish Education major; when she first started her career, she began as a Chemistry Education major. “One day in Chem. 4, I raised my hand and asked a question pertaining to the likelihood of letters repeating
in an equation,” said Vaughn. “The professor responded with, ‘that is a question for the inquisitive mind, and the inquisitive mind has no business in the sciences.’” Vaughn recalls being terribly embarrassed after that incident, “Not only was I mortified but I also changed my major soon after.”
Who would have thought that a cold could make you feel embarrassed in the middle of class? Khadijah Swann, a junior Photography major, is living proof that it in fact can make your cheeks turn red and want to dig a whole to crawl into. During her English class, as the teacher was reading a piece of literature, Swann was caught in the middle of a coughing attack. She said she tried her best to keep the cough in, but that only made it worse, making her cough even more. “It was terrible, I felt like I was suffocating and then I just full on started to cough in the middle of her reading,” Swann said. “I had to leave the room quickly to get a drink of water and then I had to walk back in with everyone looking at me. I now make sure to bring a cough drop or take cough medicine before class.”
However, students aren’t the only ones to get embarrassed in the classroom. Teachers experience this same problem sometimes. Sandra Mardenfeld, the Director of the Journalism program, claims she has had moments that you could call embarrassing in the classroom. One time while she was pregnant, she was in the middle of a lecture when she suddenly started to get morning sickness and threw up in the middle of her lecture. “It happened so quickly that my students were just in shock,” Mardenfeld said.
Although many students and even professors have experienced some sort of embarrassment in the classroom, looking back, they are able to laugh at the memories.
Do you have any embarrassing moments you’d like to share with us? Who knows? They may even appear on our next issue of the Pioneer! Email us at liupostpioneer@gmail.com
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