Recently a reader of the page sent a note asking for definitions of some oft-used shorthand from the page. This is not the first time this has happened.Oftentimes people want to know exactly what a snowflake is, who are these damn silverbacks, and why does everyone want to be at an SLAC rather than a mean old R1.
So, with your support, we'd like to make a CM Glossary, one that could grow and live and thrive over there in the sidebar, written entirely by CM correspondents and our readers.
You decide what terms, phrases, (characters?) deserve to be in the main document, and send your definitions to the regular email address. In a few days we'll post the first iteration, and we'll go from there.
- CM Moderator
Awesome! I've googled SLAC before, and a million non-educational groups come up. It's a mystery to me.
ReplyDeleteSmall, liberal arts college. Selective, liberal arts college.
ReplyDeleteI think this would be useful. A lot of people who write in seem to think a snowflake is any bad student, so it would save a lot of the "I do [x]. Does that make me a snowflake?" questions (where the answer is usually "No").
ReplyDeleteI suspect that some definitions, such as that of snowflake, are going to be the subject of continuing discussion and, occasionally, disagreement. But SLAC, CC, R1, etc. do have fairly clear definitions, which are probably worth recording.
ReplyDeleteThis probably doesn't quite make the cut, but, for what it's worth, I just found, in Tana French's _In the Woods_ (very good; by the way), published in 2007, an Irish character portrayed as using the word "fucktard" in a diary c. 1990. Don't know whether that's historically correct, but I did notice it, mostly because, if I'm remembering correctly, we had a comment thread debating the derivation, history, and/or definition of "fucktard" at some point a few months back.
I thought a SLAC was a Snooty Liberal Arts College.
ReplyDeleteBut what do I know? I went to an R1 and work at a CC.
Lead-weighted pool cue = the evil way to control a class.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to figure out that anything described as a "thirsty" was a question/discussion post, and I'm still wondering why.
ReplyDelete@Deb
ReplyDeleteBack on Rate Your Students, we had a new question each Thursday. The Big Thursday Question. There are any number of people who will claim to have given us the idea to call it the Big Thirsty, thereby conflating the day of the week with the notion of being dry and bereft of the necessary info.
But Big Thirsty was not enough, and we eventually had questions more often. There were four official types of Thirstys, Early (M, T, or W,) Big (Thursday ONLY), Friday (well, on Friday), and very occasionally the Summer Thirsty, which was created by the much maligned weed-crazy Compound Cash.
That the folks who run CM chose to keep the tradition alive (and its readers, I'm supposing), warms my black heart.
Cal
BTW, how is Compund Cash? I liked the little mofo; he was like the crazy third cousin who blows into town, does some crazy crap, and leaves - that I never had.
ReplyDeleteDammit, that should be "Compound."
ReplyDelete