To kill a mocking nerd

In school, every class has a CC (Class Clown).

Similarly, in university, every course has a CP (Cruel Professor).

A CP has a general dislike towards your happiness, and delights in making you squirm.

I've had the good (or bad, if you may) fortune of being the CC for most of my school years, but never ever had I seen a CP as cruel as the one I encountered last week.

We're sittin' in the lecture theatre, all 50 of us, some listening to the lecture, some sleeping, some sms-ing, some eating, some lookin' around for interesting faces, when CP decided to drop the bomb.

"We'll take a break now, and after we come back, I will flash some emails that I received from you about the assignment. Students will point out what is wrong with them."

"What? Emails? You mean the emails that we sent him about our research assignment?" The whole class was buzzing with anxiety.

You see, the emails in question were really dumb. We had been asked to send in research proposals to him over email, and that's when we'd not yet learnt anything. So everything about those proposals were raw and juveline and sometimes plain illogical and dumb. And there really was no point of this exercise. Everyone knew what was wrong with theirs, and we never wanted to be reminded of the fact that we'd sent them.

Not to even mention how atrocious I thought flashing someone's email in class was.

And so the trauma started after the break. One by one, my classmates were asked to go and stand next to their emails near the screen (at 300% zoom, no less). And some cruel classmates found reason to wake up and tear each proposal apart based on what we had learnt after we sent those emails! It was freakin' embarrassing to stand there for a full 15 minutes and be made to feel really really small.

It made me very angry.

Finally, it was my turn. I took a deep breath, got up from my seat, went and stood next to my grossly magnified email on the screen. Before anyone could say anything, I picked up the microphone and said, "Hi everyone, I'm Sayesha and that's my email you're looking at. The professor mentioned that students will point out what is wrong with the proposals. Being a student of this class, I am also entitled to point out what is wrong with this one. Now before you guys can tear my proposal apart, I am gonna tear it apart myself and save you the trouble."

I then proceeded to tear my own topic apart. Pointed out all the flaws, all the weaknesses, the vagueness of the variables, the uncertainty of the attributes, the impractical research methodology. Every fault I could find, I handed it to the class.

By the time, I was done, the professor and the class were gaping, and I was feeling victorious. (Though later I did ask myself a million times over if I really did what I did!)

Chin up, I walked back to my seat as the class cheered.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

You wanna mock me publicly? Not if I get there first and do it myself, buddy!