Must everything be explained to you?
First, profs get no support from anyone sitting five inches beyond the dept. chair. Why? Symposium-hopping, administrative paperweights are willfully ignorant. Too many can spout more pointless powerpoint-assited theory than a grad student attempting to link Teletubbies, patriarchy, and Virginia Woolf’s inflamed bunion, but they refuse to set gouty toe #1 in my classroom. Why? There’s no free buffet.
Number two. The parents cutting checks have no idea what goes on. Here at In-State Tuition U, I’m seen as something between a nose-wiping nanny, performing seal, and a deluded blissed-out Yeats-spouting reject from Dead Poets Society. Where the hell did that concept come from? Hey Mom and Pops, Johnny can’t read because you’ve been busy suckling on the TV remote, confusing Tucker Carlson with Thomas Locke and Oprah with Simone DeBeauvoir for the last 18 years. You get what you deserve. Now tell your kid to get my pizza because “I’m paying for this.”
Number three. Congrats for not drooling in my class. Have a gold star. Please understand that the majority of mouthbreathers surrounding you have no business in a college classroom. Most have no business serving you curly fries in the cafeteria. They confuse Wikipedia with wisdom, textbooks with short-term investments, and pop quizzes with war crimes. RYS exists because no one listens. Our spouses have been harassed enough, our pets are bearing fangs, and our kids wonder if everyone’s dad buries the TV in backyard and dances around the mound naked.
You want advice? Wave bye-bye to your friends and hole up in the library for the next four years. If I mention a book in class, don’t think “Quiz?” Instead, think, “I’m READING that book. Quiz or not.” Pipe up in class! There’s a direct correlation between yappers trying to compensate for an inevitable “D,” and the smart silent ones who dazzle on essays but see no obligation to their classmates. I have an office. Feel free to find me and challenge me in the best possible way. Don’t drift in and out of my classroom and wonder why I don’t know your name.
Finally, turn off the damn computer, there’s nothing here.
