I should add that it is particularly foolish for a professor to question the utility of holding a stick in your hand to express an idea or clarify your thoughts or impressions. Just about every professor I know does this by instinct. Watch a professor give a lecture with a wooden pointer or a laser pointer. Many of them feel lost without a pointer to wave around and emphasize things, both with gesture and by actually pointing.
It is the most natural thing in the world to amplify a movement or focus concentration on the task at hand by using some sort of physical tool, usually something as simple as a stick, or in modern times, a pointer, a pen, or a cigarette. Note I said "the task at hand." It may not be actually at hand, nowadays. It might be a committee meeting. but after millions of years of depending on our hands, we reach, we manipulate, we touch, we gesture even when the job does not call for any physical work. Our language and thought patterns reflect this behavior in countless ways. When I say professors reach for a stick "by instinct" I mean that literally. It is a primate instinct. All primates pick up sticks and use them as simple tools and to express emotions, for example by throwing them in anger. - Jed
