Disclaimer: The Ivory Belltower is purely satirical. Don’t take it too seriously.

1. Invoke Foucault and misquote him. “The body is the prison of the soul.”
2. Claim that they understand Heidegger, or the ending of “HIMYM.” Both are absurdly confusing.
3. Blame it all on the corporations. “Those greedy bastards are just in it for the money.”
4. Reference the stuff talked about in another class. “In my class on sub-Saharan politics…”
5. Try to play all subtle on their phones. Everyone knows you’re doing it. Pay attention for more than 20 minutes.
6. Claim that globalization is the cause of all of it. “I would know; I watched Zeitgeist the movie.”
7. Use lazy arguments that have become platitudes. “Marx had some good ideas on paper, but they would never work out in real life.”
8. Confuse a conspiracy theory with an actual theory. “JFK was killed by the Illuminati and the federal reserve because he signed executive order 11110.”
9. Deny climate change. It’s happening people; it’s inconvenient, but you need to come to terms with the fact.
10. Use tautologies. “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
11. Interrupt another person during their speech. “I’ma let you finish, but Faulkner is really boring.”
12. Start a semantic argument. “You said farther, but you meant to say further.”
13. Make a feeble attempt at a joke. “I Kant say that I agree with you on your stance on Utilitarianism.”
14. Talk awkwardly loud. Seriously it sounds like “ME NO HAVE SMART IDEAS. BUT TALK LOUD MEAN I RIGHT.”
15. Not do the reading. The rest of us and the professor can smell your BS from a mile away.
16. Spout pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” (Thank you Donald Trump for the inspiration)
17. Drift off topic. “I know we were just talking about the first Industrial Revolution, but Henry Ford did…”
18. Use the word “Kafkaesque.” We get it; you’ve watched Breaking Bad and/or heard of “The Metamorphosis” (his easiest book by far).
19. Use the prefix neo- or post- inappropriately. “We can chalk up Japan’s negative population growth rate if we look at neo-industrialism.”
20. Give their inputs on everything the teacher says. It’s way too obvious that you’re trying to milk a letter of recommendation out of them.
21. Think that they’re above the class material. I’m looking at you engineering students.
22. Borrowing my pilot G2 for the whole semester. I’m looking at you there, Jake.