Thursday, October 23, 2003
 

It's Dwight's birthday.

::moment of silence::

Now I'd like to complain.

Right now, I'm avoiding grading student papers. I had conferences, in which many deep ideas were expressed, for much of today, and those are pure torture. Perhaps this is an indication that teaching is not my ideal career path (as if we didn't know that already). At any rate, I read the first paragraph of this next essay and put it down. This was yesterday. Repeat this process today. I can't even bear to start reading it. This student has what we might call Major Problems. This student is an athlete. Siiiiigh.

And I have to deal with the misogynist alpha male author of the paper I like to call "Women Are Frigid Sluts" (it was the basic message) tomorrow at 8 AM, which is inhuman. His next effort, which we'll be discussing, could best be titled "You Can't Trust Women Who Pretend to Know Something about Science." I can already tell what a joy this will be. He's pretty much going to have to scrap the whole paper (complete lack of textual evidence for his argument), and I think he's going to be displeased about that, to say the least. BUT, he chose to write on the free topic and neglected to get it approved by me (as per my stated policy), so this is his own fault. And if he gets nasty, I can self-righteously point out that I could have refused the paper completely and counted it as late until he produced something that met the topic requirements. So there.

Can you tell that I'm rehearsing my arguments here?

And last night. Ah, last night. We had a rescheduled seminar; one of my American lits that normally meets today was moved to last night at 6 PM. So I camped out in the office-- which is not an especially luxe place to kick back and relax-- and proceeded to read (cram) over 300 pages of The Octopus. Then mucho criticism.

So we arrive in the seminar room. The prof announces that he doesn't feel up to teaching today. So, long story short, it's decided that we won't have class. Elation! But then . . . no. This guy proceeds to talk (ramble? Pontificate? I don't even know what verb to use here; it defies description) for two solid hours. He touched on subjects ranging from the hilarity of drunk driving (?) to how he doesn't get why anorexics feel the need to cover up their skinny bodies (?). He's never gotten so inappropriate before in class, but he crossed the line a number of times. At any rate, the end result of all of this (and there is no way I could ever reconstruct the path that got us here) is that vegetarians are ethically compelled to have sex with animals. Yup. TWO HOURS of my life, to arrive at this conclusion. TWO HOURS I could have slept last night, instead of grading papers until the wee wee hours. I could have watched TV, read a magazine, studied my toes.

It was an experience, that's for sure. And now I'm apparently ethically compelled to find a barnyard date this weekend. Fortunately, my Yahoo! inbox is your #1 stop for barnyard porn spam, so at least I know where to start.

Academia. This is your life. Ivory tower indeed.

Excuse me whilst I bawl.

Elvisette philosophized at 10:59 PM