Dr. Hogue is out sick today. I'm her hopelessly incompetent substitute.
That's what I wanted to tell my students yesterday, but too many of them know me from previous classes--although they might not recognize me behind the glowing red nose. I certainly don't sound like me. By midafternoon I got tired of hearing people say "You sound horrible! Go home and go to bed!" So I went home and went to bed.
Which gave me plenty of time to mull over the oddities of my classes this semester. In the same room where last semester I taught a class made up of 16 men and 1 woman, this semester I'm teaching a class made up of 13 women and 1 man. Strange. Only one class has a fairly normal gender balance; the rest are mostly female. Overall, this semester I'm teaching 43 women and 19 men.
Where are all the men? Don't tell me they're all studying petroleum engineering in that big lecture hall across from my office, because even petroleum engineers have to take writing and literature classes. However, they're clearly not taking them from me.
This week, in fact, no one is taking classes from me. Instead, they're getting my hopelessly incompetent substitute. By the end of the week they'll be so disgusted that they'll welcome the return of the real me with joy, singing, and the throwing of confetti. At least that's my goal.
1 comment:
There are no men. They all got old, went white, died.
Post a Comment