Humanity i love you because

I take attendance by having students answer a question. This week (and most of last) the questions have been expressions of dark emotions; this week in particular has been expressed as poetry references. The final highfalutin' poetry reference was today:

Humanity i love you because

... which on the surface seems sort of positive and upbeat (unlike the earlier ones).

Many students took it in a positive direction:

• there is so much potential
• sometimes good things happen?
• you're so funny and adorable
• Pokemon comes out today 😍
• I was loved first
• just cuz
• they gave me phones
• we are all part of it
• everyone who I like is one of you
• we are kind
• most people are nice-ish

... while others were, seemingly unintentionally, much truer to e. e. cummings' original tone:

• of the Anthropic Principle
• wait, no, i take that back
• all of Earth is Stockholm, and I have a syndrome.
• i have no choice.

Today's prizes go to the students who pushed back on the poetry theme, including "nope don't know this one", "don't get it", "what???", "poetry is not my forte", and the pretty amusing answers:

• Let me count the ways no that's not it

... which is pretty funny, and equalled for entertainment value by:

• tl;dr this week: 2 pretentious 5 me

... which is not a typo, that is actually written on the attendance sheet. Note that the author was not brave enough to attach a name, so it was just written down the margin. Still pretty funny, esp. the usage of '5'.

Gold stars to the Shakespeare reference, though. Gold stars!

This post's theme word is macher (n), "a person of influence, one who gets things done" or "a self-important overbearing person." Our professor began the semester as a good macher, and gradually transformed into an unbearable macher by the end.

And what rough beast

I take attendance by having students answer a question. This week's pop-quiz on dark poetry continues, as for afternoon labs I asked:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

... which I figured left itself open to some interesting answers, even if students didn't recognize the reference or felt overwhelmed by the current political situation falling apart.

Silly answers:

• the second one
• man bear pig
• Jabberwocky
• any beast
• the flamin' hot cheeto

CS-themed answers:

• computer scientists
• the ghost of the traveling salesman
• Lila

Yep:

• I still don't know
• literature is for NERDS
• ..??
• what book is this!
• idk lol

Today's clear winner goes to the most extremely specific and literal response to, namely: "pregnant Jewish woman who's jetlagged from the flight back." Take that, Yeats --- this student answered your rhetorical question!

This post's theme word is orgulous, "haughty". The usually-silly questions have been recast as a confused flurry of orgulous literary references.