"Schadenfrau Cracks Open The Office Door..."

A student found an office and came to office hours to discuss academics? How? Why? In my building, the directory lists my office as still occupied by the garrulous Dr. Verklempt. It’s a grand ploy and one I’ve brought to the attention of no one during my employ here. In class, I tell my students they can locate my office by the fragrant trail of gin, patchouli and the pong of my unshaven feminist armpits. A few actually make it past Cerberus, traverse the river Styx and manage to find the door with Dr. Schadenfrau on the plate.

Generally, my weary neo-Homers slump into the uncomfortable guest chair and moan about the journey to office hours. I remind them Charon’s on furlough and has to cover Acheron every Tuesday for the rest of the semester. Tough times all round…tough times. I offer a drink of crisp bottled river water secretly hoping the nine years curse might apply to mortals. Alas, no…and there’s a confession coming during these office hours; I’m the patchouli anointed, vermouth-abstaining, cat-fur covered high cleric poised for the traveler to tell me his gins…er, sorry, sins. I meant sins.

I’ve never known what to do during these close encounters. This isn’t Dr. Phil and I’ve nary a hackneyed-hick phrase at the ready. I suppose I could tell them how many “Hail Harry’s” they need to say. Harry, by the way, is our institution’s regent and a hearty “Hail You, Harry” is good for the soul especially on mandatory furlough days.

Over time, I’ve learned office hours have two purposes: health crises and meaning of life crises. I get health…always health. Does my pallor and Jabba the Hut physique infer I’m that much closer to the great beyond? I don’t know. Why anyone would discuss their maladies with a middle-aged woman who’s covered in cat hair and spouts post-modern critical theory remains a mystery to me. Yet, they come. They sit. They talk. While their mouths move up and down, I try to, as my therapist suggested, think pleasant thoughts…like being abducted by aliens and anally probed with a Roto-Rooter.

The confessions I hear relate to medical conditions strung together like a double helix. No M.D. ever gets this litany, I’m sure. But, once you’ve got the honorific “Dr.” because you’ve got a Ph.D., you’re ripe for the unvarnished details to spew forth. You’re in for it when the student starts to talk about how they’ve been “feeling” as of late. It goes something like this:

I just wanted to let you know I’m taking a number of drugs to help me with my [add 3 items from List A]. They make it difficult for me to [add 2 to 5 List B items]. I just can’t [add up to 6 items from List C], but I really want to get an A in your course.

• List A: ADHD, OCD, anxieties, incontinence, consumption, narcolepsy, lactose intolerance, bone density, cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, flatulence, insomnia, thyroidism, high blood pressure, tinnitus, lockjaw, constipation, dowager’s hump, blurred vision, boils, delusions of grandeur.
  
  
• List B: focus, stay awake, see, sit still, urinate, breathe, hear, fart, concentrate, read, drool, type, ejaculate, think, eat, walk, digest.
  
  
• List C: stay awake in your class, read the texts, make sense of what you say in lectures, work with others in the class, come to class, write notes, speak, function as if I were alive.

So, you’re suffering from drug side effects related to the treatment of your flatulent cholesterol boils. The drugs make it difficult for you to focus, walk, and ejaculate; therefore, you can’t read the textbook or come to class, but you’d really like an A? Oh…and you have no documentation because you’re from a culture where the healers are still following the oral traditions? And, you’d like me to whip out my stone tablet and chisel, and scribe forth an entirely new set of course regulations for persons with undocumented flatulent cholesterol boils?

Well, I'll get right on that. NOT!!! Thanks for stopping by and don’t let the three-headed dog nip you in the arse on your way out! Ta-tah…..[furtive rummaging in desk drawers…bourbon, where’s that flask of bourbon?]

Another Time When "Good Luck" Just Means "Go Fuck Yourself."

Hello, I'm sorry for missing so much class, but I've started a new job at night and I'm having issues juggling home life,work, and school (You mean you have normal adult responsibilities?).

It also doesn't help when I do not really understand math (or bother attending class).

Frankly I'm having troubles remembering formulas etc... and the processes it takes to get the answer! I'm not good with math, it's one of my worst subjects ever! (this where attending class might be useful).

By the way I never mentioned that I have a "learning disability" and understand information differently then others at times and are slower at understanding then others at times (again, how does this make you special?).

So needless to say I need a lot of help! I've tried to get help online and have not gotten anywhere with that, I've asked for help from my girlfriend who knows how to do it, but for me I just don't get it (well, sucks to be you).

Do you have any suggestions on ways to help me learn and be successful? (yes, attend the friggin class).

Have my absenses dropped me from the class yet? (now there's an idea).

I won't be in class tonight, but could you please gather all homework I've missed and anything else you think might assist me with my studies? ($&%*$ NO WAY. I'll put in as much effort in helping as you have put effort into the class so far...ZERO).

I do not want to fail the class, but I realize I will if I don't get help (.....and maybe attend class every once in a while too).

Please let me know what my status is? (Your "status"? This is a tough one. I guess I'd have to categorize your status as "a waste of space and breathable oxygen." If it is not clear to you now on what you need to do to pass the class, I don't think it ever will be. Fortunately for you, your McDonalds career will provide you with a register that will do all of your math for you. Good luck.)

Hank the Homo Nearly Breaks The Email Meter. Larry from Laconia Is First To Fire Up the RYS Spanking Machine.

I have taken a few candidates out to dinner for an opening in our department. I have never asked about a spouse, partner, significant other, or fuck buddy because I don't care. I don't care what you do on your time. I do care about what you do on my employer's time. All my questions and comments are directed toward what I care about.

The culture of my department appears reminiscent of the New York Yankees of the middle to late 1970s. Twenty-five guys getting into 25 cabs after the game. However, during the game, they are the best you will probably see; each contributing in their own way. At that dinner, I need to know how you perform on the field, not what you do off the field.

At dinner, I want to hear about your stream of research. I want to hear what you have been working on, what you are working on, and what you will be working on should you get a job here. I want to hear about assignments that did and did not work in the classroom. I want to hear your thoughts about why you think those assignments did or did not work.

What I don't want to hear about? Your tomato crop. Your cats. Your trip to a rustic cabin where you churned butter. I don't care.

I don't care if you are fucking the captain of the men's or women's basketball team. Unless, they are enrolled in your class at the time of said fucking. Then, I care. Short of that, I could care less whether you go home to John, who breaks you down like a gun every Saturday night, or to Jane, who is a former haute couture model. D.O.N.T. C.A.R.E.

When we are at dinner and you have figured out that I know you will never get the job done in my department, you need to mention something - anything - that you think makes you interesting. Some faculty throw out how much they travel. Others mention the fabulous section of town and/or utlra cool house they live in. You? Your only thing of quasi-interest is your sexuality.

Yawn.

Make sure you get the tiramisu here, Hank the Homo, because this dinner is the last meal you will eat in this town. And, no, you didn't blow my mind. You did, however, bore the crap out of me.

The Return of Topeka Tina, Our Fave Student Correspondent Ever. On Office Hours.

Do office hours really help raise student grades or are the students who use office hours simply more likely to study harder?

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Actually, thinking about that makes my head hurt. But my purely ancedotal evidence suggests that it probably depends on the individual professor. I know this because I've had a lot of professors in my six years as an undergrad student.

My first ever office hours visit was to inquire about my grade. I didn't burst into tears, but my professor was kind enough to convince me that dropping out of school to become a long-haul truck driver was not in my best interest. (Two years later, it was an organic farming commune.)

I had another professor that I would go visit weekly (or so) in her damp, dimly lit bat cave. I liked her and she seemed to like me. We'd make small talk before going over (insert science-y type stuff here). The best part was that she would direct my attention to what topics would be heavily covered on the next test. I easily aced a class that many of my peers struggled in because I took the time to go visit her.

The last class that I felt compelled to go to office hours was also a science class. And I was struggling. I came prepared with specific questions and reference materials (my notes and the textbook, specifically). The professor, in all his wisdom, simply told me that I needed to "study harder." Then he rattled on about his sleep apnea and his wife's cancer before offering to drive me home. I politely declined, but I'm pretty sure that I could have slept with him for an A in the class.

I'm not certain what this all really means. Life's a crapshoot?

Listen, We're Just Back From Thanksgiving, And This is the First Email We Opened. Hank Teaches Us a Lesson.

Imagine that I, a nice white man, comes to your college for a job interview very soon. Imagine I do exceptionally well in the meetings, and everyone loves me.

Imagine that at dinner, the topic of spouses comes up. Everyone tells a little about their spouses and what they do.

Someone finally asks me about my wife and I say, yes, my wife is wonderful, a gifted and caring person. "She's an Ethiopian refugee," I might say.

Ooooh, the nods of assent and wonder from the typical gathering of academic heads. Yes, this nice young white man has an Ethiopian refugee wife. He's someone we want around us because we, too, are fantastic liberals, willing to see past color and ethnicity, no biases of any kind."

Imagine the crashing standstill that same dinner would come to if I said. "Yes, my wife's name is Kevin, and he's from Cleveland."

Did I just blow your mind? Do you see yourself now for the hypocrites you really are?

Sign me Hank the Homo, and make sure everyone learns the LESSON.

Why do I Bother? AKA It's That Time of Year Again AKA Can I Quit Yet? Vic From Vegas Asks All The Big Questions.

The 'flakes had a holiday last week, and then another, unexpected one earlier this week when I had to cancel class. I figured that in the interim, they might actually get their drafts done and bring them in for my consideration and for their peers to edit.

Silly me. Stupid, silly, naive me.

Out of the 2/3 that bother to come anymore, only a handful had their drafts. The rest sat around for about an hour and socialized until I told them that their assignment was now late, but, since they didn't have their flash drives and were not inclined to print out papers anyway, they might as well leave and bring the blasted things on Monday. One came to me to confirm what I had just said. I pointed out to him that the draft due date should have come as no big surprise, as it has been on the syllabus since the beginning of this semester--August, to be precise. "Oh, I never look at the syllabus," he replied. Well, that explains a great deal, does it not?

Out they went, more than half an hour before class is officially over. I started messing around on the computer. Then a Huxleyan Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron entered the room and asked if this was Professor So-and-So's class. I explained that the other prof's class does not begin until 9:45 or so, and it was only 9:00. "Ohhhhhhhh," said the Moron, pointing at her empty head, "I'm not really here today."

This also explains a great deal.

I want answers to 3 questions: Why do I bother to show up at all? I could use up a lot more of my sick leave hours, which accumulate indefinitely, and still get paid. Why does this happen every semester when there only a few weeks remaining? And can I quit this mess yet and go into another line of work? Surely it's not too late. I am adjunct, after all, and not exactly beholden to this place.

Dante From Durango Gets All Up In the Homework Thing And Puts the Blame Where it Belongs, On Stupid Fucking Parents.

Anyone with good critical reading skills (which, unfortunately, excludes Sherri and Tom Milley) can see what's really going on in this buzz about ending homework. A few choice quotes should suffice to illumine things for the less perceptive:

"Sherri and Tom Milley were exhausted by the weepy weeknight struggles over math problems and writing assignments with their three school-aged children. They were fed up with rushing home from soccer practice or speed skating only to stand over their kids tossing out answers so they could finish and get to bed."

"But after many long stressful nights of getting 18-year-old Jay through his high school homework, they weren't prepared to repeat history with Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. Being lawyers, she and her husband decided to make it official."

"For the Milleys, this means a school year that would make many homework-stricken parents envious: they are free to hang out as family without long division and English comprehension questions hanging over their heads."

"And there were plenty of frustrating nights, she said, when her kids were so tired, “we'd stand over them, saying, ‘write this, write that.' ” If that's what families are doing, she asked, “how do the teachers even know whose work they are marking?”

So who is this really about? That's right, dear readers, it's not about precious little snowflakes Spencer and Brittany, but self-centered Mommy and Daddy! Mommy and Daddy (who, in the course of their training as lawyers, have amassed more expertise in teaching than the trained professionals who instruct their children) think that soccer and speed skating are more important than drilling important facts and practicing freshly-acquired skills.

It would take far, far too long for these self-proclaimed experts to HELP their children with their homework (i.e., review the child's answers, then make them figure out where they went wrong), so why make little Brittany work through each step of her math homework when they could simply "toss out answers" and tell her to "write this, write that." In other words, these parents think their kids have too much homework largely because THEY'RE DOING ALL OF IT FOR THEM. I'd probably be overwhelmed myself if, after a full day of real work (not merely going to school, mind you), I had to sit down and do Algebra and Geography. But then, I'd do right by my children and teach them to solve things on their own; Daddy's not going to wipe their little butts for them their whole lives.

[I particularly savor the mother-lawyer's reasoning: "We help our children cheat by doing their homework for them, therefore the entire system is invalid." I can just imagine her arguments in court: "Your honor, since it is a known fact that guilty people have escaped punishment, the entire system is invalid. I demand that all charges against my client be dropped immediately."]

Naturally, THEY know what's best for their children- it would be foolish, if their children are having trouble finding time for their homework, to cut out their extracurriculars. No, no, it must be HOMEWORK that's to blame. I can only hope their children are struck down with some hideous disease- that'll show 'em:

"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Milley, I'd like to make a diagnosis and prescribe something, but I know that Mrs. Milley has spent 2 years 'collecting studies' from Web MD, so I'm certain that your dilettante-level of information easily trumps my years of medical training and experience. Just do whatever you think is best- maybe you can make a 'Differentiated Infection Plan' with the illness, so the symptoms only manifest when your children are at school- that way you won't have to actually take care of them when they're at home."

And for all the rest of you RYSers - you might think this is just a fluke, but this anti-homework thing is an entire movement, and they're perfectly willing to twist, manipulate and misrepresent the data (it's not surprising that the two parents mentioned in this article are lawyers) to achieve their goal.

"Sometimes a Pipe Is Not A Pipe." Wicked Witchy From Wichita Writes, and We're Just Dank With Dew About It.

As an attractive, athletically built, meticulously dressed twenty-something, I feel both my (apparent) youth and my womanhood exposed whenever I step foot on campus. At this point, I don't even think twice before whipping out my faculty ID at the Registrar's for fear of being mistaken for a bubble-gum undergrad who thinks that she could submit a "Change of Grade" form without her professor's approval. I am no longer surprised when asked by an awkward 18-year-old on the first day of class whether it be my first time teaching since, evidently, six years of slaving away at Grungy College and seven years of grad school have not aged me at all, or given me the gravitas, fear, or just plain tact that my older, out-of-shape, color-blind, and shabbily-garbed male colleagues seem to inspire. Oh, and then there's the occasional flirtation, especially when this jock, the day after I had ripped him apart in an athletic report, finally realizes that his academic standing might affect his baseball scholarship and makes a feeble attempt at a joke, and we both smile and pretend that this might score him some extra credit.

Don't get me wrong; I don't mind the backhanded ego-stroking. I've read _Dorian Grey_ enough times to have a visceral reaction at any mention of old age or ugliness. But it's not really consistent. I would not be so resentful if all three of my hard-earned hot-chili peppers had not been not'ed and replaced with acute observations about how sadistic I was with my sharp red pen. I would much rather see a comment about the length of my skirt or the girth of my biceps or the flatness of my abs, because then I would know that at least someone is paying attention. Or at least include something kinky and, preferably, with a whip. I am thinking of patenting a new Pink line of dress pants with "Sexy Teach" written across the ass or mid-riff blouses with "I give As for chili peppers" across the rack. I also had the cunning plan of showing a tattoo saying "Get it here," but that might be a little unprofessional, and besides, the allusion would be totally lost on them.

I'm obviously not at all bitter about it. But this time it's not really about me--or, at least, I really, really, really hope it's not about me. I cannot help wondering if, despite my out-of-campus dirty mind and despite all that rubbish about flattery and long legs, and because of the age and the schooling and the slaving, I have become really conservative...?

When I read the first batch of papers this semester about the Chinese _Book of Songs_, I was speechless. No; I laughed, cried, and only then did I hit aphasia. I couldn't even write about it to RYS at the time, but made copies of the most piquant of those specimens in case I ever felt the urge. Tonight, another student paper, this time on Catullus--who actually does deserve an erotic beating, I mean, reading--finally broke the silence. This one was in reference to the wonderfully descriptive word "cocksmen" (all 300+ of whom were, post break-up, banging Lesbia back in Rome) in a raunchy Catullan invective against his beloved; this guy wrote, in a strike of pure analytical genius, that it "means something that is in the line of a man who is well endowed and is equally blessed with the sexual skills to accompany his impressive appendage." Who knew that the term needed a definition, let alone a whole paragraph.

Rousseau connected writing with onanism, "the dangerous supplement"; both involve the summoning of an absent image whose contours, now made present through memory, one can etch out. And drool over. And otherwise get wet. No, no; I didn't immediately think of this particular student's summoning my image as he carefully weighed those family jewels (though that would be flattering, and I was, after all, the reason for his reading about cocksmen in the first place), but somehow he nailed it with the "appendage." I mean, hit it right on the head. Ah forget it.

Once the ball got rolling, I couldn't stop imagining my students as creepy onanists thinking with the wrong part of their body because, really, that would be the only way to explain the crazy shit they manage to think up. "Many believe that modern associations with sex stem all the way back to ancient times," one young woman doth protest too much, and, without any manifest evidence of a (however underdeveloped) superego, I have no reason not to assume that her paper is, like myths were for the ancients in Freud's interpretation, key to her apparently unrepressed psyche. "There is proof in Poem 4 that sexuality was very 'out in the open' during Chou Dynasty. The narrator is a woman who speaks of a man lasciviously and explicitly talks about their sexual encounter out in the open. The line 'the dew makes wet as rain' symbolizes not only the place where the act is taking place, but the state of the sexual organs involved. The narrator also says that she met 'by chance' her lover, making it more than clear that she was having casual sex and enjoying it. The tone of the poem is both lustful and joyous, given the narrator seems pleased with her sexual encounter and ends the poem with the words 'mutual felicity'. Not shockingly both stanzas in the poem climax with a synonym for happiness, 'felicity' and 'joy'." Climax, right. Morning dew is obviously always a euphemism for semen; after all, doesn't it symbolize the ejaculation of a male sky-god all over an innocent female earth? Besides, it is, as my burgeoning Sinologist points out, spoken about "explicitly." But wait; there's more: it paints a wonderful picture of ancient Chinese Woodstock: "This gives the idea that women during Chou Dynasty enjoyed a large amount of freedom in terms of sex."

I'm no specialist here, and, as someone who has spent both her entire academic career studying Western classics, I feel immensely underprepared to teach this stuff (though that is a matter for another verbal outpouring altogether), but I am just not so sure that women during the Chou Dynasty were not only fucking strangers in a wet field all night long but also survived to write about it. Explicitly. Please, somebody, enlighten me! This woman claims that she got her shit online. Written by whom? An opium-eating-sex-crazed moron whose presentist cabin fever led him to (re)imagine the exotic Oriental woman as a downright whore?!

Still, maybe I am the close-minded idiot. Maybe I don't know history. Maybe, after years of interpreting texts and reading queer theory, I am still too normative and just too plain dumb to see that a pipe is sometimes not just a pipe. Maybe my other student, a very quiet young man of Chinese origin might know better. (And yes, I know all about "native informants," and I am too smart to assume any prior knowledge among my students, though also too naive not to expect them to care enough about the material to study it carefully on the off-chance that it might make them learn something about their own culture.) "Throughout the entire poem, the poem stays consistent with happiness because of the speaker's spontaneous encounter with a man. It can be assumed that the speaker is female based on the imagery used to depict eroticism. The setting is in the middle of the night." So far so good, I guess. I even forget that both of my classes thought "to court" meant "to have intercourse with." Everything is about sex, right? But why am I so bothered (baffled? hysterical?) when I read that "[t]he [female] speaker uses a metaphor to express the woman's vagina: 'Mid the bind-grass on the plain / that the dew makes wet as rain"; or, that " [e]rotically thinking, it is easy to imagine the plain as a woman's vagina. Bind-grass is a type of flower, and flowers are a sign for women. The speaker became happy when she met a keen men by chance. The 'wild grass dank with dew' can be metaphorically represented as wet pubic hair, hinting that the speaker and the man engaged in intercourse throughout the whole night." Poem 7, of the same pornographic _Book of Songs_, traditionally said to have been edited by horny old dude Confucius, is read in a similar light with yearning represented by the girl's gift--a red flute--which, obviously, represents an "erect penis," because the Chou Dynasty was so incredibly (un)repressed that every single word they uttered must have been a euphemism. Or, perhaps, it was Arthur Waley, translator and renowned Sinologist, who was so incredibly (un)repressed? Fuck. I am now really tempted to read his influential translation of the _Monkey_ (also Journey to the West), since, having reread my students' comments and reevaluated my theoretical blindness, I am sure this book must be a pretty saucy tale of bestiality; in fact, I might have to spank one myself when I finally get my hands on it.

And this is the crazy shit I think up while grading my students' work. Erotically thinking, thank god I don't have to write a paper about it.

Paul from Providence on Student Athletes and Cheating.

Forgive me if I tread a bit lightly on this subject, but I've had a bit of a history with yesterday's question, and that history ended up hurting some good people.

I was a second year English instructor at Football U when three senior football players registered and showed up for the first week of my freshman composition class. They sat in the back, were polite, and then disappeared. At the time the departmental policy was for instructor-initiated drops after students had missed 3 consecutive weeks of any course. When I didn't see the players again, I dropped them all.

Two weeks later a drop/add form (adding all three back into my section) came to me through the Dean's office, signed by someone I would later find out was the athletic department's liaison. I called my chair who turned me over to the liaison herself and I asked what was up. Shortly after our abbreviated phone call, she arrived in my office. She was pretty, well-spoken, but quite adamant that the students be let back in. "I can assure you," she said, "the boys are all doing their work. You know, of course, that they can't attend class like other students, right? They travel, they work out; they have responsibilities our other students couldn't possible handle." When I tried to interrupt, she said, "I can assure you that it's all above board. I supervise the tutors in our athletic department, and perhaps someone's been remiss about keeping you in the loop." She shook my hand pleasantly and by about the time I'd sat down my phone was ringing.

It was the Dean. He said, "I hope Miss BLANK has been to see you...ummmm...goood. Yes, then I'm sure she's explained everything. Mr. Frankie, or should I say Dr. Frankie, there is nothing to worry about. All of our athletes - especially the poor football guys in the fall! - are just run ragged. Miss BLANK and I have talked about things and she tells me that something fell through the cracks. Although the boys haven't been in class, I know that they've got their work and you'll have it soon. I hope you'll understand."

And I didn't. But the work did show up the next morning, 6 essays, two for each student, all at a reasonably competent level.

I was 27 years old, okay? I was a little intimidated in my first job. I was also, I have to admit, quite the football fan. Our team at the time was one of the absolute powerhouses in the country, Sports Illustrated covers, national network coverage of most games. And I liked that. I liked that someone in my class was mopping up quarterbacks on Saturday afternoons. I told everyone I knew about it.

My chair came by one day in October and closed the door. "Have you been getting material from the players in your class?"

"Yes," I said.

"Can I see some of it?"

I pulled a folder out of my cabinet and gave him the stack.

"I need these for the afternoon; would that be a problem?"

I shook my head dumbly and then sat down.

The chair didn't come back that afternoon. I didn't see him until the next day, and he simply came into my office, handed me the papers, and said, "Sorry to have taken these. I don't know what I was doing. Just forget it."

The semester ended, the football players showed up in my classroom on the last day - on their way to a New Year's Day bowl game - and turned in their final papers. They all smiled at me and shook my hands. The students in class were buzzing. And then they were gone.

In mid January, just before the spring semester started, the chair called me up at home, an unusual situation. He said, "I'm saying goodbye," he said. "I've got a nice opportunity to take a fellowship elsewhere." It was a short call, and I didn't understand why it was made until the spring classes started.

My next door neighbor, a senior colleague, someone who'd been at Football U for more than 20 years, came into my office amidst the normal early semester flurry and shut the door. "Hell of a thing," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"About [the chair]."

"What happened?" I asked.

And my colleague told the tale. The chair, who'd become convinced that the athletic department had been sanctioning wide spread cheating in a variety of departments without any interference by administration, had gathered evidence of the cheating, a series of identical papers that had been turned in for multiple years by multiple players within the English department.

When the chair went to the Dean's office, he got shuttled around a bit until he was in the VPAA's office with the vice president, the athletic department liaison, and Football U's coach. It was an unpleasant meeting, according to my colleague - whose allegiance I still couldn't guess. "They gave him the bum's rush," my colleague said. "He realized that they had a lot more ammunition for this kind of battle than just a few photocopies of some English 101 essays."

"They ran him off?"

"He found his own way off campus," my colleague said. "But they were willing to help him."

My colleague got to the door and then turned back. With a big smile he said, "Hey, did you see the boys beat the hell out of BLANK in the BLANK Bowl? Fucking 'eh!"

The next fall I faced the same situation. Four students, all kind to me, all professional. They appeared and then disappeared. When the three weeks had passed I sent in the drop/add slip. A week later the liaison was in my office. "I don't get it," she said. "I thought I'd explained the tremendous pressures our boys face."

When she left I turned another drop slip in and I waited.

Sometime in November I was walking across campus and my next door colleague saw me and waved me over to a bench where he was sitting.

"What's your deal?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I've got your students, you know. They just transferred them to my class. What good do you think you're doing dropping them. I thought you understood it. [The chair] is not the first one they've run off, and he won't be the last. They're going to find a class for them somewhere, you know? If not yours, then mine, or someone else's."

I turned on my heel and went back to my office. I kept my head down for another year and then found a teaching gig at a decidedly un-football school in the northeast.

A year after that the former chair (with the aid of a half dozen faculty in different departments across the campus) took their grievances to local and regional media. Football U responded initially with a "sour grapes" defense, but then when it failed to gain traction, fired the liaison, a junior member of the athletic department, an assistant coach, and threw 9 current players off the football squad.

That was enough for Football U and Football town. The press died out and the story went away.

Every weekend in the fall I still watch football. I had an NFL game on a couple of weeks ago. There on the field was a familiar name and face, one of the first three football players I had in my class that day all those years ago. He's an All Pro. They interviewed him coming out of the tunnel for the second half. He smiled at the camera, said hi to his babies at home, and on the second play of the second half, he careened through the offensive line and dropped the quarterback to the turf like a rag doll.

Note: We want to note that, with Paul's assistance, some pertinent details of his story were anonymized.

Your GradFlakes Hate You. TA Trixie From Tulsa Opens a Can of Whup'Ass.

You may have tenure. You may control whether we can join your wonderful PhD club. But your grad flakes know who you're diddling, which of your collegues hate you, and that you only have two sport coats, both of which smell like cigarettes and fish. Please to enjoy.

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Dr. Smirkington: Every time you speak, whether in class, asking a question at a job talk, or during office hours, you’ve got this weird smirk that implies you’re smarter than who ever you’re talking to. You’re a actually a pretty nice person and the things you say aren’t mean, but one person giving a job talk almost had a breakdown after you asked a question, and all the grad students avoid your seminars because you treat everyone like morons. You don’t have any advisees because all the grad students think you’re a jerk.

Prof. Smackdown: You’re the biggest name in your field, and everyone in the department fears your wrath and lusts after your letters of recommendation. But all you talk about in class is how much better your book is than the one we’re reading, or the time you had lunch with the author, or how hard things were back when you were in grad school and how much better all of us young ingrates have it now. Your advisees look shell-shocked all the time, and often weep quietly in their offices after a meeting with you.

Dr. McSexist: You have packed seminars and a devoted clique of advisees who beat down any criticism of you when the grad students talk about you behind your back. You always get stuck with the required graduate intro seminar because the rest of the faculty hate you and how you treat women faculty--unfortunately, it’s the same as you treat the women grad students. You assigned only one book by a female scholar, and then spent the entire class mocking it and feminism. You also asked the two Japanese-American grad students about Chinese, Korean and Thai history and politics all semester--even though neither of them study China, Korea, Thailand, or even Japan. Your advisees are rabid, devoted, and just as racist and sexist as you.

Prof. Buddy: Also known as “Call-me-Buddy-we’re-really-just-peers.” We’re close to peers because you’re untenured and you’ll probably only be in the department as long as most of the grad students. You only have one advisee because most of us have been smart enough to listen to the rumors saying that you won’t get tenure and will be out of here before most of us defend. Your grades on research papers and seminars mean less because you come into class late and tell us about how hung over you are--and then ask the class out for beer on Tuesday nights. How'd you even get out of grad school, let alone graduate college?

Dr. Secrets: None of the grad students know what to think of you. You don’t return emails, you have office hours in the middle of the night, you make no comments during seminar and you never have a TA. The faculty has never seen you at a conference, no one has ever seen an article or book by you, and yet you have tenure. Sometimes we wonder if you actually work here, or if you’re just some random person the department hasn’t caught on to yet. You have a couple of advisees who don’t know what you think of them, and only hear through rumors from other grad students where you’ll be or if you’ve read their work.