Sounds like Professor John McCarthy could use a nice quiet vacation.

Hat tip to Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters.

Brandon Howell of MLive reported.

Student: Michigan State professor ranted, stripped naked in apparent mental breakdown

EAST LANSING, MI — Professor John McCarthy has always seemed a bit odd to Kyle Hillman, but nothing could have prepared the Michigan State University freshman for what happened Monday afternoon.

McCarthy was walking his Calculus I class through a practice problem about 1 p.m., finding a particular derivative, when he asked his students whether a potential solution he found was correct.

“Someone said it looked right, so (McCarthy) said, ‘Thanks, I need some reassurance sometimes,'” Hillman recounted. “‘Math is all about questions and answers. And Steve Jobs invented the computer, but what do computers do? They ask questions and we answer them.'”

McCarthy pronounced Jobs’ surname as if it rhymed with robes, Hillman said. That kind of deviation from the subject matter was not out of the ordinary.

“He always goes on tangents like this that don’t really make sense to the math that we’re learning,” Hillman said. “He said this four times in a row. That’s what he does.”

But what happened next was out of the ordinary.

“He started talking about his colleagues and how they’re all actors,” Hillman said. “He said, ‘It’s all an act and none of it’s real.’ Then he ran out of the classroom.”

Hillman, 17, said McCarthy pressed his face against the window to the classroom from the hallway, saying, “I’m not yelling. See, I’m not yelling.” Then he ran back into the classroom, put his head in his hands and began crying.

“He said, ‘It’s all just an act, we’re all acting,'” Hillman recollected.

McCarthy then began shouting and swearing about God and religion, Hillman said. The professor pulled out his wallet and removed a $1 bill, waving it around. After that, he ran out of the classroom again.

Hillman said he and about half of his 30 classmates left after that.


 
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