Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Some People Really Get It: Where a Longtime Correspondent Takes a Whack At Closing Out The Semester

Hey kids! What time is it?

Time to admit to the bitter end of another semester of dashed expectations? Time to bust out some of Kentucky's finest, kick back, and slowly erase the name of every pajama-clad tuition payer from the collective memory banks, one jelly jar at a time? Time to spill gasoline and flip a match over every last robotic rehash spewed from the Wikipedia-fueled-cut-n-paste-cuisinart that is a freshman's laptop? Time to wash your hands of the collective assault on the Western Canon by the future cubicle-jockeys of America and re-read Robert Frost in the original English; not paraphrased into, like, dudespeak?

Not yet. It's time again for everyone's favorite end-of-semester ritual: Whack-a-Mole.

Fire up the e-mail and get ready for the fun to start.

"Yo, Tie-wearing bro. My page-and-a-half final research paper comparing William Shakespeare to that other great bard, Trent Reznor? I dropped it off two days late. Is that, like, a problem? Rock on."

"Can I have an incomplete for the seven assignments I couldn't identify on a dare?

"You may not remember me, but ..."

"Hey Prof, why did my grade nosedive from a B to a D-?"

Whack!-Whack!-Whack!-Whack!

In order: "Not for me." "Sure, but only if you submit them in Farsi." "You're right, I don't." "Of your final two papers, the first was proofread by rabid wolverines, while for the second, you out-lazied even yourself and Googled your way to an D-. Relying on sources such as Shakespearience.com and Bard-o-rama.com when I repeatedly implored the class to utilize sources from the university databases, plus your boneheaded willingness to bodydump Sparknotes into the mix THEN submit that mess to Turnitin.com? You, sir, are a moron. Sparknotes? You would have less chance standing out if you rolled into Sturgis, South Dakota on a razor scooter. You blow off office hours all semester, ignore my willingness to review papers via e-mail before the due date, and now, suddenly, you're concerned about your grade?"

Whack!

"Take that!"