Pride in teaching

SCENE 1: to the victor the spoils, to the curious the puzzles

Interior hallway, mid-day. LILA is walking purposefully to a meeting.

STUDENT 1: Will you be around later? I think I solved that puzzle you told me but I want to check and see if you can break it with more counterexamples.

STUDENT 2: How are you giving out secret puzzles? This seems unfair.

LILA: Anyone can come ask me for puzzles, I have a lot of problems I want to solve. Come to my office hours!

SCENE 2: wherein educational goals are satisfied

The scene is set: office hours, Friday afternoon. The campus is quiet as students flee for the weekend. Only the truly education-seeking students remain, winnowed down to their scholarly core.

ENTER a student.

STUDENT: I am confused about topic X which we learned two weeks ago. I remember it was confusing then and I'm not sure what to ask you, but I'm confused.

LILA: [quick explanation of topic X, reframed in terms of what we've done in the past two weeks]

STUDENT: Oh, it seems so simple now! I have no idea how I was ever confused, this is totally straightforward and easy.

LILA explodes in delight and absolute teaching fulfillment. Bystanders are scalded by beams of pure joy, campus security must be called, paramedics are deployed, the area is cordoned off and several students are rushed to emergency medical services.

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.