Friday, February 17, 2017

What is the title of your autobiography?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is the title of your autobiography?

I've expurgated names below to protect the innocent. As a side effect, this protects the rest, too.

Some people went with an extremely literal title:
  • A Book about ME
  • "Don't Read This Book"
  • I
  • [student's own name]'s Autobiography by [student's own name]
  • "Book"
  • A Book about [student's own initials]
  • The Life + Times
  • [student's own name]: A Life
  • "I Should Write an Autobiography -- Selected musings of [student's own name]"
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of [student's own name]
I'm a bit worried about that last one --- does that student for some reason expect to live a particularly "brief" life? Yikes.

Others made obscure references (?) that I hope would be thematically highlighted and tied together in the text of the autobiography:
  • "Thoughts About Everything"
  • "The Little Engine that Could"
  • My Life by Bill Clinton (<-- amp="" art="" cover="" have="" li="" might="" misleading="" publisher="" the="" trouble="" with="">
  • "Sir"
  • "Eh,"
  • Content Free
  • "No"
  • Untitled
  • I don't know
  • 1337
  • "ε"
Others chose something self-deprecating:

  • "Fashionably Late and/or Asleep"
  • A look at where it went wrong
  • The Science of Laughing at Yourself

My favorite was easily "A look at where it went wrong", not only because it's a good hook --- I'm interested! I want to read that book! --- but also because either this student already thinks it's gone wrong, or this student anticipates that it will all go wrong sometime, for sure, and so that's a reliable autobiography title. Plus it's already funny. The title, at least, is going right!



This post's theme word is proem, "an introduction, preface, or preamble." My autobiography consists of a series of proems --- I just haven't gotten to the significant stuff yet!

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