“I need to go talk to the principal,” I demanded and stormed out of the classroom.

It was eighth grade. I was a 13-year-old popular brat — fearless, confident and utterly rude. I didn’t take any crap from my teachers, and this was one of the many times I threw a tantrum at one of them.

High school was strewn with occasions when I disrespected my teachers, mocked them and made it incredibly hard for them.

But I wasn’t the only one. In ninth grade, one of our chemistry teachers fainted in the class next to ours. She was crying too, after regaining consciousness. That’s how hard it was in Beaconhouse Defence Campus.

Stepping into college, however, I put a lot of things behind me. Disrespect for academics was one of them. I was still fearless and confident, but I developed more respect for people as I grew. The process started somewhere in the middle of high school, when I was able to really look beyond my own conceited self.

Some students, however, seem to never grow into college and remain stuck in the misguided ideas they had in high school. College is a space for pursuing exciting endeavors, experimenting with the unknown and pushing one’s perceived limits. But most importantly, it’s a space for growth and maturity. Things we did as high schoolers should be left in high school.

The lack of respect for professors I witness at Northwestern University in Qatar sometimes disgusts me. Some students roll their eyes at almost everything and anything. They make faces, too, like kids in kindergarten.

It’s something I started noticing in the beginning of freshman spring last year. A professor in our journalism class talked about a personal experience to elaborate on a point and two girls (let’s call them Nadiya and Carrie) started making faces at each other while throwing in not-so-nice comments.

“I hate how some of my classmates make so much fun of professors,” I wrote that day. “Are students really that arrogant? Do they really know better? How do you relentlessly make fun of someone who’s probably experienced more in life and achieved way more? The classes might be boring; professors might not be good examiners, but that does not justify constant (complaining) and derision.”

“That’s high school s—,” said Youmna Al-Gailey, a junior at NU-Q, then a sophomore. “Some people should stay in high school.”

Last semester, as I ate lunch with several people in the university’s cafeteria, Nadiya engaged in her usual contempt. She asked one of our professors a question in class to which she thought he didn’t have an appropriate answer. Somehow she also felt it appropriate to add that it’s “so obvious” how insecure he is.

“You’re being mean,” I told her.

“He’s just a professor,” she said, in her defense.

I didn’t want to get into an argument then. “He’s just a professor? And that gives you the right to disrespect him?” I thought to myself later. “Let’s rewind and look at what you are. Just a student, right? You should definitely be treated like crap then, shouldn’t you? For you could certainly be assumed to be dumber than someone with a Ph.D.”

Another one of my professors would sometimes say some “stupid” things in class, and the moment she’d say them, I’d think to myself, “Oh, professor. I wish you didn’t say that. Now you’re going to be endlessly mocked for this.”

A stupid thing every once in a while is bound to be said. When was the last time you said something stupid and realized the extent of its stupidity after having said it? Before they are professors, professors are human beings who can falter sometimes.

The perception of stupidity is also very subjective. I can very well be delusional and think everyone and everything around me is stupid.

Something else that shocks me or rather really disappoints me is how comfortable students are with discussing professors’ personal lives. How can they even articulate something seriously disturbing about a professor and just discuss it? I would not even share that information with a counselor.

If you know something about professors or have heard a rumor, keep it to yourself, please. Why step on their privacy? Their personal lives are not for you to discuss.

Professors deserve respect for how much they care about you and for how badly they want you to succeed. They might actually care about you more than you can imagine.

“I care about you more than you may care about yourself. And I care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about you as a person,” said Chase Mielke, a high school teacher, to his students in a blog post.

It doesn’t matter how badly some professors might teach or how incessantly they might talk about themselves or anything that doesn’t interest you. They deserve respect without question. The fact that they are standing in front you to impart some of the knowledge they’ve gained over years is reason enough. Learn from them, rather than wasting your energy mocking them.

Rhytha Zahid Hejaze is a sophomore studying journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].