historical achievement #1

it's official; i finally witnessed something i have never witnessed before.

someone actually broke down and cried in lecture today. we were going over the voltage, concentration, and electrical current-dependent relationships of ion channels and busting down into all the physics and mathy math graphs, which i thought was all pretty neat and rather straightforward. someone asked a question, and the prof, being of that kind of brilliance where you don't understand the silly questions of mere mortals, went off into some kind of tangent whose information was interesting and useful, but patently unrelated to the question. i think some questions are too stupid to understand for those brilliant prof types.

the chick goes, ok great but that doesn't address my question, and the prof looks at her with a defeated smile that says, my dear i am sorry that i, physics, and logarithmic algebra have failed you, and that if you don't understand this now you will probably make a living as a 3rd grade earth sciences teacher, but it's 10.47 and we must press on.

and she just put her head down on the desk and cried, i mean shoulders-shaking cried in front of over 60 people (and on video, actually) and accepted no comfort from her surrounding friends. i half got out of my chair to go over, because i understood what she was asking and had a really simple answer. but i didn't know her, and something made me hesitate, also because i am not characteristically a volunteer-er of information.
good thing i didn't try to help; she later lashed out at some foreign students she thought were talking about her, and then she stormed out of class.

drama!!

i have the feeling this is not the first type of "are you fucking serious?" moment i'm going to have in grad school, so i have decided to catalog them, with this as #1.