It’s that time of year again. Proposals for next year’s courses are due in the department office tomorrow. Because I take paedagogy very, very seriously (as I’m sure you all know by now), I have put a lot of thought into this. I need to have some very clear goals in mind while designing the courses–to know exactly what it is I hope the students will learn by the end of each term. None of this weak, fluffy, blather about finding yourself and challenging your opinions. Nonsense! I have some practical, specific, worthwhile objectives laid out below:
Fall Term: Punctuation 101, a.k.a. "It’s = It Is"
That’s probably all we’ll have time for. We’ll discuss it for ten weeks, but you’ll still fuck it up in your paper.
Winter Term: Introduction to Modern Fiction.
In this course, you’ll be learning the essential characteristics of the major novelists of the 20th Century, such as the following:
Proust: Writes big, heavy books in French. Is obsessed with whether or not his girlfriend is a lesbian. You won’t like him.
Faulkner: Writes long, convoluted sentences about incestuous rednecks in Mississippi. Also was an alcoholic. This may impress you, you keg-standing , forty-swilling, bourbon-smelling, sweaty lummox.
Woolf: Crazy British broad. Killed herself. This will provoke you to ask whether or not she might have been a "lesbo" and comment on the "fine line between genius and insanity." This will not impress me.
Joyce: See Proust (substitute "mangled English" for "French"). You will write a paper on Ulysses without having read it. I will be fooled.
Kafka: Whacked out German who wrote some crazy shit about a man turning into a dungbeetle. You will like this, but will not be able to explain coherently why. This is because you will be stoned in class, you shameless, fetid hippie.
Spring Term: Pretend We Have Any Remaining Interest in Literature At All
This course will focus on convincing your instructor not to throw herself in front of a bus. In class we will sit quietly with our heads on our desks. Students will try to remain still so as not to disturb the instructor’s headache. Any student in violation of this policy will be asked to leave and sent down to the anarchist district to find me a valium.
Sign me up!
perhaps the partner course to punctuation 101 (grammar -1) could be a semester spent on the difference(s) between to, too, and two, and correct usage.
Surely we can get some kind of multi-departmental united front approach going here.
CM–Good! At least I will have one student who’s not a total maroon. But you’re not allowed to tell the others about this blog, naturally.
CB–right! Maybe that could be the Summer intensive course? With a supplementary section on there/their/they’re, your/you’re, and then/than?
Z–yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re just in it for the valium. But I bet your department would go for it, don’t you think?
Don’t look now, V, but a significant proportion of my department’s lower-division classes are already built along these lines.
Hmmm. Your response seems to indicate that you think this is some kind of irony. A sarcastic joke, as it were. I am not one to joke. Fie upon the jokers and satirists of the world with their conspicuous laughter. Fie!
Well, if you’re going to do “their / they’re” you’d best include “there.” And then there’s affect / effect, principal /principle and definitely schedule at least a week for why it isn’t spelled “definately.”
Umm, yanno, we’re probably talking about an entire 4-year curriculum here. (That would be: roughly third through sixth grades, if I remember correctly.)
Yeah. In out great home state, St.A, that’d be true. I actually did learn grammar from the evil Mrs. Hopkins (even though she did pronounce it “hyperbowl”).
In this godforsaken so-called “progressive” state, though, they’re too busy voting down taxes and budget changes to pay for shit like that. They actually quit teaching music, art, and theater in the public schools here. Nothing funny about that.
So, the kids get to me, and they’re experts in using their cell phones for textmessaging, but can’t be bothered to learn to use words. I received the following email communique from a student just last week:
“hey, did u get a chance 2 look at that paper?”
valium! valium! where’s my valium?
look here techer! its easy four you to criticize, because you werent their when us learned grammar. now its to hard for we to try to learn! and just giving you what ever crap we can slap together in the fifteen minutes before class is easier then “doing it right” or “making an effort.” and frankly, you’re mean characterizations of us are hurting are self esteem. in conclusion, im telling.
sincerly,
you’re students
i usde to tech gramer but i was teh victam of perfesiol jelousy an was froced out. somboddy put a noat in my pokat taht siad ‘you got halucinations real bad chum’. they thot it was funy.
yeh. relf funy. i gues they we’re probaly stil laughin whan teh carbomb went off otside teh facalty longe. but thayre not laughin now.
“somboddy put a noat in my pokat taht siad ‘you got halucinations real bad chum’. they thot it was funy.”
Yep. They tried that with me, too. At least, that’s what they might have been trying with those mints last week. Damn them. That won’t stop me though, I’m scrappy.
And stoodnits–thanks for posting on my blog! Good job, you, taking an interest in writing all of a sudden. That’s special.
V, on the whole, I prefer foetid. Not only does it reek, but it reeks of academia. Or acadoemia, if you prefer. Which you probably don’t. And anyway, it’s recently been dictated that erroneous spelling in the pursuit of supposed teacher bashing is now an offense punishable by Proust.
Just, you know, saying.
Heh heh. Yeah, I should probably start trying to use more latin-like spellings whenever possible. And I am sure my student’s up there weren’t trying to engage in teacher bashing–they’re not clever enough to think of that.
“Offense punishable by Proust.” I like the sound of that!
Well, am off to go make a test. Going to make it wicked hard.