Today, I graded 20 student papers. They were almost identical, all boring.
Except one, which claimed that the Ancient Egyptians were only able to build the pyramids because of extra-terrestrial beings who designed, built, and defended the structures before leaving Earth forever.
Suddenly, History seems a lot more exciting than I previously gave it credit for. Historians: why have you been keeping this from me?
Was this paper written by a second, third, or fourth-year student, and/or was the student a transfer? Because I bet I can guess who taught the student that stuff...he's a silverback in my department at Humpshack. Tenure. It's great. Right?
ReplyDeletevon Daniken Lives!
ReplyDeleteMy favorites are the time travellers: "The French Revolution influenced other revolutions such as the US...."
Transfer student, Zeta Reticuli Tech
ReplyDeleteWait, didn't that Cleopatra chick help Lewis and Clark get across the Pacific Ocean?
ReplyDeleteOne of my fellow adjuncts thinks that Venus ricocheting around the solar system after being ejected from Saturn is what caused large animals such as the mammoth to go extinct.
ReplyDeleteThere are crazier "ancient astronaut" theories than aliens building pyramids; george Sassoon and Rodney Dale wrote a late-70s book called "The Manna Machine" wherein they posited that the Ark of the Covenant was actually a nuclear-powered algae grower given to the wandering Israelites by spacemen who trained the Levites in how to use it. This machine operated for a number of years, then became a ornamental worship device which was deadly to all those not trained in its use. Sasoon (son of the poet Siegfried) took his sources from the Zohar and other ancient Hebrew texts.
ReplyDeleteThe Venus theory sounds like something out of an Immanuel Velikovsky book.
The people on the mothership won't let me talk about this stuff.
ReplyDeleteYou people are blowing my fracken mind. So I should count myself lucky that these aliens merely built and defended the pyramids before leaving us forever?
ReplyDeleteEvolution is only a theory, but you big meanie professors keep hammering it down our throats.
ReplyDelete(j/k lolol)
Well... at least you can be grateful for the one paper that provides a relief from the tedium of grading. I know I always enjoy a hearty laugh or two at the expense of my students.
ReplyDeleteLet's see here... Stargate came out in 1994, and if he's a transfer he's about 20, so he was 3 when the movie came out.
ReplyDeleteHe probably "knows he heard it somewhere"
I had a student write about how the Mexicans won the Revolutionary War at the Alamo. Priceless.
ReplyDeleteIf the aliens left the earth forever, who is making the crop circles?
ReplyDeleteAlien high school students after they snort dilithium crystals....they're fuckin' with our MINDS, mannnn!
ReplyDeleteDid you know that we landed on Mars? It was one of the most inspiring events in human history.
ReplyDeletePretty sure it was Val Kilmer who took the first step.
I think SOMEBODY from this site is responsible for crop circles....
I think my problem is that I take my job and my education mission too seriously, and I forget that there are some looney ideas out there that, given the right student vehicle, will make it into my class.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that a black woman living in the early 70s in America is an immigrant from Africa and was a slave just before the Civil Rights movement? Yup. This is after an entire lesson on that very history. Also, American women who committed adultery in 1900 were stoned to death.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, divorce (or any other thing students don't like, like low grades or bad jobs) leads to suicide so it's bad. Pure logic.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's better logic than if they had it the other way around.....
ReplyDeleteI sooo wish I taught history, just for the entertainment value. All I get are papers that say, "James Joyce uses a large amount of symbolism to get his point across."
ReplyDelete