The summer is over
The autumn is near
The first day of classes
Is finally here
I’ve looked at the rosters
I’ve crunched up some stats
I’ve gotten up early
Surprising the cats
Inhaling my coffee
I’m ready once more
A brand new semester….
I’d love to ignore?
New students to bore?
A job I adore?
You fill in the blank. I have to go walk the dog and bike to class.
A new ox to gore.
It’s still just a chore.
I’m ready to roar.
Dog knows what’s in store.
There are are lot of words that rhyme with “more”, aren’t there? And these aren’t even the fun ones.
Break a leg today, amigo. With luck, you’ll have one of those remarkable students who make it all worth it.
Will this be on the final?
Hope you have a grand semester. We begin the Wednesday after Labor Day.
Happy new year! May you have an outstanding crop of students and a few happy surprises this semester!
So, a couple of questions.
While you are lecturing, do rhymes come to mind? When a student asks a particularly good, or truly awful, question, does a rhyme pop into your head? Do you censure itor let it free? When you are grading papers (you don’t leave that to some poor grad student I trust?), do you put a couple lines of verse next to the grade?
Excellent questions.
For the most part, no. My meatspace me does not rhyme, and has no real problems with that. I occasionally quote a poem in class (so far, never my own–many better, one far far far far far far far far far far far far worse), but only when appropriate.
I have occasionally, but rarely, been inspired to write something because of a student comment, question, or whatever… thus far, I have invariably been able to postpone it long enough (even if my response was immediate) that it would be difficult if not impossible for a student to say “oh, that’s my comment the cephalopod is talking about!”.
I have sometimes *wanted* to respond to a student’s comment by linking to a verse of mine, but I have never actually done so. I did have a student cite a blog comment of mine… but not from this blog, and not from my old Cuttlefish blog, but from another blog I wrote for a while that more closely addressed my science. It was nice to see, but would have been better to see had she cited it properly. Ah, well.
I have not yet (so far) commented in verse on any papers. I could have. Easily. Sooooooo easily. I have, honestly, scores of verses that could serve as comments to this answer or that, but I have never even been tempted. Cuttlefish lives here, and whatsitsname lives in meatspace, and we are two separate creatures.
Thank you, though, for your questions, lcaution! I could easily see very different answers, so it’s not as if you were asking something that everyone already knew.
Cuttlefish,
Ah, gee, I’m kinda disappointed. Wonderful images of you biting your tongue to keep from breaking out in verse, or poetry slams as you do whatever it is you do with cephalopods in class floated through my head.
And now it turns out that in class you are a standard-issue professor? Your students don’t even know a poet stands before them? :( :( :(