Every student at the University of Ottawa's Administration faculty had to take a core course known as ADM 1300 - General Principles of Management. This course was made famous by the professor who taught it - a Mr. Peter Koppel, brother to ABC News anchor, Ted Koppel.

Professor Koppel was a good teacher who had a great rapport with all of the students. This popularity with the students led to his eventual appointment as Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Administration. However, he still taught the ADM 1300 class regularly as this allowed him the opportunity to meet and greet all of the new students at the faculty.

The course itself was pretty easy...it taught us the underlying issues with management of anything, whether it be a company, a team, a project, time, money, hoes, whatever (okay, i made up the ho part). However, on a rare occasion, some slackers would fail the course and because it was a core course and prerequisite for many other courses, they would have to retake the course again.

It became apparent to these particular students that Professor Koppel had a knack for telling the same stories in class over and over again. One day, Koppel was telling us that he was aware of a student in the class who was dying. This was meant to shake us up into realizing that the university life wasn't all fun and games...that people were there to make something out of their lives, as short as it may be. For the next 10 minutes, he proceeded to lecture us on that aspect of life and that it was something that we had to take into account in our future endeavours.

At the conclusion of that speech, one joker stands up and asks, "Professor Koppel...you told me the same story last term. I've asked my friends and they've told me that you told them the same thing when they took the class in previous years. Is there some disease in the air of this lecture hall that we're not aware of? Are we going to start dropping like flies soon? Should we all demand some form of innoculation?"

To this date, I have never seen a face turn a deep angry red as the professor at this remark. Needless to say, the student didn't survive the term and I think I saw him rotating tires at a local garage.

The moral of the story? Don't fail this course, you idiot.
