On academe

Having just this afternoon had the last meeting of the first course I've taught in the college after leaving it (as a full professor!) 15 years ago, I'm entranced by that first one. :)

Make that "since leaving it 15 years ago". Though the circumstances of my leave taking were not as ... erm ... spectacular as those in the strip apparently were.

Sausage casings? Hm... I hadn't thought of that. And just in time, too: the pits in the sub-basement and behind the generator shed are getting full.

I once took a seminar course where the students graded each other on participation. The grades ranged from zero (no participation) to 10 (full and active participation in every discussion).

Man, that was cruel. The Professor had to raise some of the grades 'cause several students got zero for never taking their thumbs out of their mouths.

My colleagues and I are in the throes of final exams and our students have finally discovered the location of our offices (although showing up during scheduled office hours is still foreign to most of them). Their visits are occasioned by their desire to know how to get the grades that they want. (A little late for that, no?) The "extra credit" question keeps coming up (sorry, kids, this is a college) and they also want to know "How well do I need to do on the final?" This question is always being asked by students who don't know enough math to compute it themselves, so it bodes ill for their actual final exam performances in math.

This morning a couple of my fellow math teachers were playing word games with collective nouns (such as "a pride of lions" or "a gaggle of geese"). They were making some up for their students and colleagues: "a deviation of statisticians," "a borg of math geeks", "a limit of calculus students". My offering: "a futility of algebra students."

Some friends have a standard response to "Is this going to be on the final?" - "It is now". They stop asking after a couple of these cases.

There are standard collective nouns in philosophy - a dispute of philosophers, or a gossip of philosophers. Students, I don't know. Perhaps an asinine of philosophy students? A Matrix of philosophy students is too relative to recent history.