Truly, academics lead enviable lives.

Proffer theories as to the avocation I undertook presently. You guessed it! I spent the day marking papers, which, means I had, many reminders of why teaching Writingstudents, even at the Universitylevel, can make even the most mild-mannered academic want to JAB IN EYES JAB IN EYES.

Actual posts to recommence when the noises in my head resemble English more than English as she is spoke.

ALSO: Because it’s always best to make this plain from the beginning, on the issue of whether my students know what I’m writing:

With the exception of the text adventure, [what I post is] written to be used in class, then repurposed for the blog. I show them videos of Shatner and ask them if that’s what they want to sound like; I have them write blog posts (for their course blogs) in which they’re required to substitute every noun and verb with suggestions from Microsoft Word’s thesaurus, etc. Whenever I write about conversations in the classroom (for example), I ask the students if they’re alright with that … and as I’m typically the butt of those posts, they always are. In fact, by the end of the quarter, they’re actually demanding I write up what happened in a given class (for example). Even the most notorious bit of student writing I’ve parodied was done with the student’s consent. (It was years ago, and he wrote me out of the blue to apologize for writing it.)