You take yourself seriously,deny the other person the satisfaction of having scored a point, and just get on with your main purpose of getting a thumping good grade and degree.

When you are older, working, and having had some rudeness directed at you, you will have a quiet inner smile and get on with your life.

You will also build an inner strength.

My suggestion: keep quiet.

Of course, if there is any sign of a targetted bad behaviour, one must act.

First, as rude as some of our faculty can be on occasion (and some really can be…), their behavior is typically still far more professional than that of many of our students. Since we (professors) have no real ability to do anything about inappropriate and unprofessional student behavior, I see this as something the individuals need to work out amongst themselves in 99% of cases. I will, however, let my faculty members know when I think they’ve crossed the line informally, and suggest that they be more selective in the future.

Secondly, students at universities are there to learn, and part of the learning experience extends beyond the classroom (the core idea of a liberal arts college/university). In life outside of college, you will have to learn to deal with rude people and even rude supervisors. Your professors are effectively your supervisor while you’re in their class. You won’t be able to go over your supervisor’s head in a job to report rudeness (without getting fired…), so you shouldn’t expect to be able to do so in college. You might as well learn this while in school since on the job, you’d likely get fired or be made so miserable that you’d resign. Note that illegal behaviors such as harassment are a completely different issue both at work and at school.

Finally, any student that comes to me with a complaint about a professor (I get these close to every other week) is greeted with the same question from me… “Have you talked this over with your professor, and what did he/she say?” Until they’ve *tried* to talk it over with the professor, I don’t really want to hear it (unless it’s illegal behavior of course). The professor should hear about this complaint from the student, not from me. If the student doesn’t have the courage to talk with the professor (who will likely be understanding and apologetic…), then the perception of having been wronged isn’t strong enough to warrant my attention.

So if I have any “suggestion” for you, it’s to go see your professor. If you don’t feel strongly enough about it to go see him or her, then you don’t feel strongly enough about it to report it to anyone else either.

Finally, ask yourself if you’ve ever been rude to anyone before, and how would you have wanted them to respond to your rudeness?

Write out your concerns, make a copy for yourself, and, after talking with the supervisor, leave him/her your written complaint. Be factual and specific, not emotional.