> Difficult/opaque lecture style, very high difficulty tests, openly mocking students in a 500+ person lecture if he deemed a question not intelligent enough I

> Difficult/opaque lecture style, very high difficulty tests, openly mocking students in a 500+ person lecture if he deemed a question not intelligent enough I don’t want to condone or encourage this behavior. However, I often think back to a similar professor I had in college who I loathed at the time. I gritted through the course and complained the whole way. Then I graduated into the working world and encountered a similarly difficult person in my management chain. Weirdly, I felt prepared to handle the situation and kept relatively calm while navigating the not-nice boss. I didn’t stay for long, but I was able to thrive and get some early career wins even under a not-nice boss. So I don’t think mean teachers or bosses are a good thing, but at the same time I feel like I grew more during those periods than I did at other times in my education/career. I still don’t know exactly what to think about all of this.