Aarghs for the day

• In one class, we've been reading a novel in which a game -- let's say parcheesi -- is mentioned with some frequency. Characters play parcheesi, they talk about parcheesi, they fall in love over parcheesi, they work out animosities over parcheesi, they get themselves in various sorts of trouble betting over parcheesi games, etc., etc., etc.  I just discovered that one of the students in the class has no idea what parcheesi is, and has not bothered to google it.  

• In another class, a student who had, as far as I could tell, been happily (if somewhat slowly) pursuing a nice focused investigation of a particular hamster-nest weaving technique has now announced that she finds her present subject "distressing," and wants to investigate hamster locomotion devices.  All of them, apparently. Attempts to encourage her to narrow her focus to wheels or balls, let alone gearing mechanisms for wheels, have so far been unsuccessful.  And yes, I'll be running whatever she eventually hands me through a plagiarism checker (assuming she hands me anything that resembles a response to the assignment; it's actually pretty well-tailored to avoid students' using pre-existing papers -- their own or others' -- and I'd be surprised if she can find anything even half-responsive to the assignment on her new, very broad topic (though I wouldn't be at all surprised if she can find a pre-existing "research paper" on the topic, which is, of course, why I'm suspicious)).

• I still need to finish my taxes. Every year, I tell myself I'll do them in January, but by the time all the necessary documents are available, I'm knee-deep in schoolwork, and then it's April (and I'm chin-deep in schoolwork).