When I catch myself writing an e-mail message beginning "Dear Essay, I have attached your April," it's time to take a break from responding to student papers, so I walk up the hall to the department office to get an aspirin, and along the way I overhear a colleague loudly telling her class that "young boys are nuclear bombs!"
And I wonder: has the entire world gone mad or just my little corner of the world?
My students have given me some marvelous gifts this week, including a couple of great names for Shakespeare-inflected garage bands: "The Switching Antipholuses" and "Syracusan Doppelgangers." They've presented material in class with panache and professionalism, and some of them wrote some really stellar papers.
But (you knew there was a but, right?) this week I have been called upon to explain an analytical term that we have been using in class since the first week of the semester, a term that students have been quizzed and tested on repeatedly, and I've been compelled to read short response papers from students who think the best way to analyze the work of a visiting author is to complain that he uses too many big words. (Apparently "casserole" counts as a big word.)
Right now my brain is swimming with ripe little words, many of which I do not care to utter aloud. I'd like to go out for a walk to clear my head, but first I need my colleague to explain that whole young boys = nuclear bombs thing. If I'm in danger of running into a ticking time bomb, I'd like to be sure I have the proper equipment to defuse the danger.
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