What is your quest?

I take attendance by asking students a question.

I previously asked them their names (so that I can identify them correctly). Today:

What is your quest? (previously: 2017 2016)

Many people gave pragmatic answers:

• to get a job (4 votes)
• to change stuff at world
• to find the holy grail best Sharples meal
• to prosper
• to retire
• to sleep
• to become an invaluable engineer
• I have too many to complete
• to graduate
• to be the very best
• happy ending
• to get 8 hrs of sleep
• to get through it all
• to live my life
• to try
• to enjoy my life
• to travel

I have follow-up questions for "to find something big" --- anything big? Like, a dinosaur skeleton? An aircraft hangar? A deep-sea gyre? A star system?

The trifecta of "Lila does not think these are compatible":

• financial stability
• happiness
• CS grad school

The closest we came to "to seek the holy grail" was a tie between:

• to catch 'em all
• to destroy the one ring

... so I award these the Cultural Reference Award for the day. Since zero people are grail-seekers, I'll skip the question about airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow and ask them something else next.


This post's theme word is dree (v tr), "to endure or suffer" or (adj), "tedious or dreary." Some quests are rather dree, but grand overall.

If you were transformed into an animal, you'd be a:

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

If you were transformed into an animal, you'd be a:

Many people picked mammals:

• polar bear
• flying squirrel
• dolphin (x2)
• wolf
• panda
• otter
• capybara
• sloth
• dog (x3)
• human (x3)
• bushbaby
• [own first name] (x3)

The surprising-to-me frontrunning category was birds. Birds!

• penguin (x3)
• bald eagle
• duck
• eagle
• owl
• bird (x2)
• Big Bird

Kudos for picking "birds", but the specificity of mammals was lacking here.

Then, as always, the outliers:

• shark (x2)
• stable matching
• meal
• dragon

I'm not sure that "stable matching" is an animal, so there's a type error there. Who wants to be a meal? At least one student in my class!

This post's theme word is infundibuliform (adj), "funnel-shaped." I'd be an infundibuliform sponge; it seems meditative.