Mysteries of you-don't-go

There comes a time in every semester when I'm tempted to throw my hands in the air and go home, and this is that time. I'm tired of time-wasting senseless meetings, freshmen who won't follow directions, advisees who can't keep appointments, and students who try to convince me that their plagiarism was entirely accidental. (What are the odds that nearly identical paragraphs would turn up in two separate papers by accident? If you gave a thousand monkeys a thousand typewriters, would their research papers be any better than the ones I've been reading?)

But no matter how often I've been tempted to slam my office door and stomp off into the sunset, I'm still here, still teaching, still smiling (most of the time). Maybe in a few weeks I'll remember why, but right now it's a total mystery.