What's the scariest thing you have ever done?

I take attendance --- even in my own absence --- by having the students answer a question.

What's the scariest thing you have ever done?

Swarthmore students apparently often encounter danger outdoors:

• almost fell off the side of mountain while hiking
• climb a mountain at night
• walked home from my town in the dark
• run for my life from a crazy dog through a snowy forest in Maine
• run through a forest during severe thunderstorm
• bridge jumping in Ecuador
• skydive?
• saw a shark
• almost fell off a waterfall
• almost got lost in a forest
• cage dive with great white sharks

Some people accurately experience fear at physical illness:

• been so dehydrated I had intense stomach pains and thought I was dying
• get sick before seminar

Some people accurately experience abstract fear at political situations:

• voted in the 2016 election
• live in the US during the Trump presidency

Unsurprisingly for an upper-level, abstract course in mathematics and computer science, there were several who expressed introvert fears:

• socializing
• life
• socializing
• talked

Other "scariest" experiences were mixed or inexplicable:

• been in a plane that had to emergency land and so dumped all its gas out the window
• play League of Legends
• I slept
• crossing an intersection while it's covered in ice in front of a truck
• ate wings with ghost pepper sauce
• played against Martin
• taken this class

This question didn't lend itself to joking answers, but one nevertheless made me laugh out loud: an answer that referred to a message from the homework-insta-marking algorithm: "1 attempt remaining."

This post's theme word is exungulate, "to pare nails, claws, etc." Beware the Jabberwock, my son, for he is freshly back from the manicurist and, though exungulated, as slashing and catching as ever!

What inanimate object would you wish to eliminate from existence?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

What inanimate object would you wish to eliminate from existence?

Some students used their wish for the betterment of all:

• fossil fuels
• plastic in the ocean
• greenhouse gases

Others clearly hold personal grudges, whose explanations and origin stories I can only hypothesize:

• mushrooms
• sporks
• red onion
• fire moose
• sandals
• toe shoes
• socks
• aglet
• ties
• styrofoam
• rocks
• my hallmates' alarm clocks
• stickshift cars
• SSBM

"SSBM", based on a 10-second internet search, is either surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, or Super Smash Brothers Melee. Either way, it's destructive.

Some had very specific college-student-related ideas, ranging from "that makes sense" to "that seems actively hurtful towards me, your professor, I'm standing in this room right now trying to teach you":

• problem sets
• math
• final exams
• pens
• this pen
• sign-in sheets
• this question
• Swarthmore College

My favorite was the dull, "nothing", because it supports the hypothesis that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

This post's theme word is aglet --- a new word for me! --- which is the term to refer to the metal or plastic tube at the end of the shoelace that stops it from fraying. In a world without aglets, we bungee-cord our shoes on each morning and saunter about, oblivious to the alternate realities we have narrowly avoided.