An Open Letter to Dean Sprocket

Dear Dean Sprocket,

According to a certain theorem, as the numbers of monkeys, typewriters, and/or hours approach infinity, the probability approaches 1 that such a system will recreate the works of William Shakespeare. Given the available monkeys at the average zoo, some crayons, and a few hours, we'd have recorded for posterity the intellectual equivalent of your blog post of the other day.

Quite certain that you and my dean are one in the same, I detoured through your building to tell you off in person, only to find you already gone for the day. By your own "office occupancy analysis" we could therefore confirm that at any given time, you are at most 0% useful to our school. Now you see why we faculty are perfectly justified in thinking that you should pull in at least 100% of your salary from handouts dropped into a styrofoam cup next to your body splayed inertly in front of the methadone clinic, and that you should receive all other provisions from the dumpster behind the Popeyes at Pulaski and Highland.

Pissy Primrose Gets What She Wants.

What special preparation do 19 year old students get that allows them to think some aggressive and antagonistic emails to their professor would be a good plan - the weekend before the final.

I ask my students to turn in their last presentation in a certain format. I have 200 sophomores, roughly, and when their work comes in in a certain way my job is easier. I've been doing this particular assignment with these criteria for about 10 years.

Because I don't have the pricier PDF software at home that would allow me to get into a student's PDF and fix it for a couple of TAs who do some of the grading, I asked Pissy Primrose to please resubmit some portion of the assignment. It wasn't time sensitive. In fact I said, "No rush; just before the exam if possible."

While I was with friends this afternoon THREE emails have come in from here, each one a bit more pissy, each one a bit more infuriating.

"I did the format they way you told me."

"If you wanted it formatted differently you should have told me. Now I have to take time out of my exam preparations."

"I don't have time to do this. I have several exams in my major and they are obviously my priority. I believe I formatted your assignment the correct way and you should grade it as is."

I wrote back, "Sounds good to me."

- Eating Low Salt