If on a day like that, you walked up to the professor and
said, "Hey, prof? Are you having a rough day today? Well, thank for
being my teacher and things will get better"

That made me giggle :) I wish things were black and white like
that. If I ( 22 year old, pretty, nice slim body, hottie) would
come up to my mid 40 something year old prof and say, "hey
prof..are you having a rough day today" he'd so take it the wrong
way! LOL..thanks for making me laugh though :P what a picture.

> It sounds to me more like the professor is reaching out for
> sympathy or empathy. It wasn't very smart of him to say it
> because it one of you tattles on him, he could get in trouble.
> But if you change your thinking from being insulted to
> recognizing his statement as sort of a cry for help, then maybe
> you can turn this into a positive. Believe it or not, professors
> are people, too, with pain and joy in their lives. If on a day
> like that, you walked up to the professor and said, "Hey, prof?
> Are you having a rough day today? Well, thanks for being my
> teacher and things will get better," you will probably be one of
> that teacher's favorite students.
>
> I totally understand that the personal issues of professionals
> should not be your problem. It really isn't your problem if the
> person who works at the service counter at the car repair place
> is having a bad day or hates their job--same goes for the
> janitor who cleans your office or the cashier at the grocery
> store. Sure, they should be professional and hide their personal
> feelings. But on the other hand, if you learn to accept that
> some people will share their feelings when they shouldn't and
> then you use that as an opportunity to show some sympathy or
> kindness to those people, well, you will be surprised how many
> friends or allies you will have.
>
> I will give you an example. My first year teaching, the janitors
> at the school seemed very gruff and unhappy. So I asked them
> about their job and such. Turned out that they were
> short-staffed and all doing double duty and they were kind of mad
> that they had so much work to do. I could have taken the
> attitude that it was their problem if they didn't like their job
> not mine. Instead, I asked every one of them who I ever saw come
> to my room to clean what I could do to make their job easier for
> them in my room. They told me that they were very annoyed by
> having to clean up little scraps of paper off the floor such as
> the little circles from hole-punched paper or the tatters from
> notebook paper that is torn out of the notebook. So I made a big
> deal out of never letting my kids leave the classroom without
> picking up every little scrap of paper under their desks. I
> became the absolute favorite teacher of the janitor who always
> cleaned my room because I showed him caring and sympathy. He
> always brought me extra cookies from the lunchroom and he would
> do all sorts of little extra favors for me. It turned out that
> the janitor was a pretty important part of my life because he
> had keys to every room in the school. Let me just say that the
> janitor always had my back and I'll leave it at that.
>
> So instead of turning your professor in and getting him in
> trouble, why don't you turn the situation around into a
positive
> experience for the teacher and you

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