Here are some of my favorite things to do on the first day of class when you have too many students and you need to have some students drop the class.
I have not tried them ALL yet, but I am working on it...
1. After turning on the overhead projector for the first time, clutch your chest and scream "MY PACEMAKER!!" and fall over...wait a minute and then get up and laugh uncontrolably for 3 minutes. Then start your lecture in a very dull and dry fashion.
2. Bring a CPR Dummy to class and introduce it as your Teaching Assistant for the semester. Assign it an office and give it office hours. Say that all requests to meet with you personally must be done through the TA.
3. After confirming everyone's names on the roll, thank the class for attending "Advanced Astrodynamics Simulation and Calculations 690" and mention that yesterday was the last day to drop.
4. Wear a pointed Kaiser helmet, monicle, and slap a riding crop on your leg. If you get a question, say "Vhat exactly do you MEAN by zat?"
5. Gradually speak softer and softer and then suddenly point to a student and scream "WHAT DID I JUST SAY??"
6. Deliver the lecture using a hand puppet. If a student asks a question, say in a high pitched voice "The professor can't hear you, you'll have to ask ME, "Willey Winkey!"
7. If someone asks a question on the first day, walk over to their seat, give them the chalk, and ask "Would YOU like to give the lecture, smartypants?" Sit down in the class and don't speak.
8. Pick a student at random, ask them a question, and time their response with a stop watch, pull out a notebook and write in it, while muttering "tsk, tsk, tsk".
9. Ask the students to call you "Surfin' Bird" or "Wave-dude"
10. Stop in mid lecture, frown, and ask the students if you have a fat but. Do this repeatedly throughout the first lecture, asking each time for the students to "be honest, it won't affect your grades..."
11. Play "Kumbaya" on an out-of-tune banjo.
12. Show a video on midieval torture, and giggle a lot. Stop it and rewind some saying "Oh, this part is REALLY good".
13. Announce "You'll need THIS", and write the campus suicide prevention hotline number on the blackboard.
14. Wear mirrored sunglasses and speak with a Turkish accent while burning incense whenever you answer a question.
15. Start the lecture by lip-synching James Brown's "Sex Machine". Ask a student "Can you play lead?".
16. Ask a question and mutter "as is you gibbering symps would know" and move on before anyone can answer.
17. Ask the class to read Jenkins through Johnson of the local phone book for the next class and hint that there will be a quiz.
18. Have one of your grad students scatter rose petals ahead of you as you enter the room and as you pace back and forth.
19. Address all students as "worm" or "microbe".
20. Announce that the entire grade of the class will be based on a single-question oral final exam, and that this can happen at any moment.
21. Turn off the lights, play a tape of crickets chirping, and begin humming spirituals. After a few minutes, ask the students if they "Get it".
22. Ask for a volunteer for a demonstration. Ask them to read and sign a 6 page waiver as you put on a lead apron and goggles and light a blowtorch.
23. Abruptly point the overhead projector at the class. Demand to know a student's name, rank, and serial number.
24. Wear Russian Cossack dress. Begin class by breaking the neck of a bottle of vodka with a curved sword, and announce that the lecture's over when the bottle's finished.
25. Have a band set up in the corner. When anyone asks a question, have the band play an Elvis song and sing along. Then resume the lecture. (If your department is having financial problems, a cassette recorder can be substituted).
26. Every so often, freeze in the middle of a sentence, stare off into space, burp loudly, and then resume as if nothing had happened. Point to a student and ask "What are YOU looking at?".
27. Wear a virtual reality helmet and gloves. When you get your first question, turn in the student's direction and make violent strangling motions with your hands.
28. Mention in passing that you are wearing rubber underwear.
29. Growl constantly, and address the students as "Matey". Hand out a vague map and say "Find the treasure and you can pass the class, HAR! ".
30. Devote the first lecture to free verse about your favorite number, and ask the students to "sit back and groove...".
31. Announce that last year's students have ALMOST finished their projects, and that incompletes are not really THAT bad on your permanent transcripts.
32. Inform your students that they need to know Fortran and must code all their essays. Start the first lecture on the topic of "OUTPUT FORMAT STATEMENTS and their role in good English composition".
33. Bring a small dog to class and tell the students that his name is "Boogers McGee" and that he is your mascot. When you get a question, turn to the dog and say "What'll it be, McGee?" Pause, and then say to the class "he doesn't know..." Resume the lecture.
34. Wear a Colonial costume and ask the students to call you "General Washington". Tell them that we leave for Valley Forge next week, so dress warmly.
35. Tell your math students that they must do all their work in a base 11 number system that you have patented. Use a complicated symbol that you've named after yourself for the number 11 (or combine this with #33 above and call it "Boogers McGee"), and threaten to fail anyone who doesn't use it correctly. Complain about the conspiracy to keep your system from being adopted by "those twits who review articles in the journals".
36. Claim to be a reincarneated chicken, cluck and squat occasionally. Announce that only vegetarians usually pass the course.
37. Wear a hood with one eyehole and make strange gurgling noises. Drag one leg behind you as you walk.
38. Have a grad. student with a goatee and black beret play jazz bass while you lecture. Snap your fingers.
39. Sprint from the room every time you hear a siren outside, yelling in a foreign accent "Damn! How did they find me?!?".
40. Give an opening monologue after playing the theme from the David Letterman Show. Take a commercial break after 10 minutes.
41. Announce that you have so much material to cover that you need to give two lectures per session, and play a tape recording of you giving a lecture in "fast forward". Stop occasionally and say "Did you get THAT, it will be on the exam...".
42. Pass out dental floss to the students and say that oral hygene is REALLY much more important that this topic...then show a graphic video of dental disease.
43. Announce that the entire 32 volume Encyclopedia Britannica will be the required reading for the class. Assign a report on volume 1: "Aardvark through Armenia", for the next class.
44. Ask students to list their favorite broadway show tune on the first attendance sheet. Collect them and start to alternately "tsk, tsk" or laugh while you write in your grade book.
45. Refer vaguely to the student who died last year in your class. Say that you have a clean conscience about that whole thing....and that your attorney won't let you discuss the case publicly.
46. Warn students to bring a sack lunch and plenty of coffee to exams. Announce that no one can leave to go to the bathroom during the exams.
47. Show up wearing a clean suit and mask. Advise students to keep their distance for their own saftey, but not to worry, the Center for Disease Control is working on it, and they think they have isolated "that pesky bug I got in the field this summer". Stand near the first row and cough a lot.
48. Jog into class wearing leotards, rip the textbook in half, and scream. "ARE YOU PUMPED?!? ARE YOU PUMPED?!? I CAN'T HEEEEAAARRR YOU!!!
50. Tell students that you really don't care if they do the readings, but that you will fail anyone instantly who "fakes the funk".