The only electronic equipment you are allowed to use in here is a hearing aid. No cell phones. No laptops. No personal electronic organizers. And no, you can’t record this class.
Don’t leave your seat, please. No, I don’t care who’s calling you, or how badly you need a smoke. Keep your ass in your fucking seat. And take your leak before you sit down. If you get up and leave the classroom, you’ll be marked absent.
Now, if you’re pregnant or you have one of those bladder conditions like those poor women have on television, show me your doctor’s note and sit by the door. Otherwise, hold it.
Are you sleepy? Go ahead. Put your head on your desk. Or fall asleep entirely. Another absence for you. Having a nice time chatting with your little friend? Shut the fuck up. And here’s another absence.
If all you learn from this class is that you can sit still for 75 minutes without napping, facebooking, internet messaging, talking to your bff, or having to go potty, I will have done my job.
Now, who wants to talk about Beowulf? No one?
Too fucking bad.
Stella: you are my hero(ine). Will you marry me?
ReplyDeleteswoooooon.
ReplyDeleteI may post this in my syllabus, word for word...
ReplyDeleteActually, weren't students (and profs) allowed to smoke IN CLASS in 1952? I know some profs who said they did in 1972...
ReplyDeletePardon my pedantry. ;)
"If all you learn from this class is that you can sit still for 75 minutes without napping, facebooking, internet messaging, talking to your bff, or having to go potty, I will have done my job."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but isn't it sad. I had a student apparently taking notes on a laptop in one of my classes once, which is common enough, but I was curious, because it was an introductory Greek class and they mostly can't type in Greek (particularly not with the diacriticals, which really slow you down) - so I don't recommend that any of them waste time learning to do so in first year. I happened to walk behind her after closing the door to class one day, and was curious to know what font software she was using, so looked down - and of course she was texting a friend.
Honey, you're going to be here for 50 minutes. FIFTY MINUTES, that's all. You frankly aren't doing so hot in this class, you know? In fact, you're doing lousy in this class if you think about it for a second, not that you have apparently ever done that. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, paying ATTENTION in class for, you know, fifty minutes, cut off very temporarily from the umbilical of shallow social interaction, might help your understanding? Particularly since you can't possibly take notes on your laptop in this class, because you CAN'T TYPE GREEK.
She was deeply embarrassed to be caught IMing a friend and closed the laptop, I have to say; and didn't bring it after that. Would that they all had that reaction.
In grad school in the early 1980s about half of my class smoked. We smoked in the Sunflower Grocery. We smoked in the BIG section of any restaurant.
ReplyDeleteI do allow my students to take notes on a laptop, but they have to show me the notes after class, and I occasionally stop and check their notes in class...
ReplyDeleteI know I know I know. I am embarrassed to say that I was all, "Technology, wooooo!" when I started teaching 10 years ago. Now I am all, "This classroom is probably the one technology-free zone in your whole life. Dig my overheads and take some damned notes."
ReplyDeleteBack from out of town and facing down the start of the quarter (shudder).
My Shakespeare prof smoked like the proverbial chimney throughout every lecture - this was circa mid-1980s.
ReplyDeleteI love this post, by the way.
A couple of years ago or so (awhile back, anyhoo), it made the national news that a law professor in some mid-American university had banned laptops in her class. NATIONAL news, fer crying out loud. I'd banned laptops in one of my class for the preceding two years and nary a peep from the fourth estate. Those law school snowflakes musta had some well-connected parents to whine to - also shows that Olympic-quality whining isn't restricted to wet-behind-the-ears undergrads.
ReplyDelete"My Shakespeare prof smoked like the proverbial chimney throughout every lecture - this was circa mid-1980s."
ReplyDelete- Enoch Soames
....And they're dead now, right? That's the only flaw in smoking.
If it's 1952 can we make arguments based on retrologic? Like whether or not we should continue the Korean War, is aboveground nuclear testing the way to go, will they ever make electronic computers* out of transistors, is race mixing a peril thanks to "I Love Lucy"?
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* At the time you could still get mechanical analog computers and the all-tube UNIVAC I was brand new, so this isn't as dorky a 1952 question as you would think (unlike the race mixing.)
Smoking is one of only three things in the world that I enjoy. Pie and sex are the others, in case anyone was wondering. And yes, I'll die. Maybe I'll die early; maybe I'll die like my smoking/drinking grandparents, 88, 94, 93, & 94. Of course they ate more red meat than I do, so that may be the flaw in my system.
ReplyDeleteI never got into smoking because my grandfather smoked himself into a stroke (which he died of.) He picked up the habit as a Naval seaman before or during WWII, when they gave out free cigarettes to servicemen.
ReplyDelete