You are teaching the introductory "How to use the microscope" lab. Your students have done a cheek swab, made a slide, and are looking at it under the scope. A young woman in the class flags you down, and asks you to help her identify something on the slide. The object in question is smaller than the other cells on the slide, but is well preserved and clearly visible. It has a round head and long tail.
What do you do?
Do you:
A) In shock and unable to help yourself, say "That's sperm!" at a volume clearly heard throuhout the classroom
B) Whisper or write the word "sperm" so that only the woman in question can hear you
C) Pretend to be completely clueless
or
D) Go looking for a hole to hide in until the period is over.
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E) Try to make a date?
Presumably most college kids are mature enough to learn about such things as the persistence of sperm but probably conventional enough to not want that kind of information broadcast ... at least not by old geezer professors. So I'd vote for some version of B.
How did you handle it? ;-)
Heh. That made me laugh.
I'll take door B please.
Round head and long tail? You sure it wasn't a monkey?
According to the joke, the young woman usually asks the question very loudly and publically in the first place, and so is the professor's answer, usually ending with the woman turning red and running from the room.
But if it happened to real life, and if I were the professor in the situation, I would choose B, with the addition of the advice that she not be embarassed, but to advise her that every lab activity for the rest of the semester is with a partner, and she should take care to brush her teeth and scrape her tongue, basically do the whole mouth the next time there's the most remote possibility of a cheek swab.
I (and pretty much everyone else who has ever taught biology at any level) did hear the joke. Unfortunately, (a) sperm does persist, (b) the mouth is not an uncommon location for sperm to wind up, and (c) most people taking introductory biology for the first time have not, in fact, heard the joke. As a result, it really does happen from time to time - particularly in morning lab sections.
Personally, I think that you outlined the most proper and mature way of handling the situation. But (C) and/or (D) are the ones I'd probably go with. If it was me, and not a friend, of course.
I choose answer (E): Major in physics so that I will eventually teach physics and astronomy, in which not only will that question never come up, but I will also never have to discect a fetal pig....
-Rob
I'd answer her question correctly with the same volume and face expression as if she asked what time it is. I believe there are adults in this lab, so why pretend that sex is not part of an adult life?
...unless you major in physics or engineering where it isn't ;) Nice choice, Rob.
Rob, we already concluded the option E) entailed a date.
I assume you were talking about my proper and mature description, Mike? Now that I think about it, since I first heard the joke when I was 13, if I become a professor and teach biology in the future, I'd make sure to tell the joke and explain how since most people have not heard the joke, explain the facts about how and why sperm persists, and probably make sure every last student has their own 'scope for a cheek swab.
The joke I heard was a little different - in lecture, not lab. Professor is talking about prostate, seminal vesicles, bulbourethral glands and how those all together contribute to the final composition of the sperm, etc., including quite a lot of sugars...to which a female students raises her hand and asks: "Then why is it so salty?"
Yes, both jokes are intended to poke fun at the naiivite of the students, not the indiscretion of the professors.
Here's an apparently real situation regarding the naivete of the students. In the pre-HIV era, my anthropology professor used to do blood typing as part of the human genetics part of the course. She said that about once every two years, somebody would come up and say "I think the test is wrong. It says that I'm type A, but both my parents are type O." (or some similar situation that requires a different sperm than the blood type of their father).
If you like that one, here's one that happened in a vertebrate zoology lab during my undergrad days.
We were taking vaginal swabs from female rats to determine what stage of estrus they were in. A young woman in the lab, obviously stumped by the existence of a second orifice, went up to the TA and loudly asked, "Which hole do we put the probe in?". The whole lab heard her, and most looked up from their microscopes.
The TA cooly replied, "The anus and vagina are oriented identically in all mammals. Which one is ventral in you?" The student paused for a moment, put one hand on her own belly and the other on her back, mouthed the words "dorsal" and "ventral" to herself as she slid her hands lower. And then the light came on.
I think he handled it well, didn't point out that she was a moron, and found in the circumstance a teachable moment.
@Brian:
Heredity explains why you look like your father, and, if you don't, why you should.
The "sperm" in a cheek swab I've only heard in the form of a joke; I wonder whether snopes can debunk this as an urban legend.
Round head and long tail and lurking in the background, seemingly oblivious and not affecting other organisms and it's decades old?
Obviously you have discovered Newt Gingrich. If it were a sperm, it would have had an opportunity to evolve into a thinking creature at some point.
A colleague, a straight arrow, mildy stuffy type, told me the sperm story as happening in one of his labs. He told the studient it was bit of contamination on the slide and helped her find a cheek cell. Knowing him, I am 90% sure it was a true account.