I don't know when I'll learn not to go to my dad for comfort over college drama's. He's answer is a timeless classic when I go down the self-pity road and cry: "why me?"
Dad will reply: "TRADITION!"
(Now play this movie clip:
)
I used to think that dad was just on a cynical, unforgiving tangent rooted from a long history of college abuse, until a professor admitted to it. My professor lightly touched on the idea of, "the tradition of the mysterious professor...the man that you can never figure out and his standards are unexplained." But the way that Professor D. referred to it made it sound like there's some higher, secret order of professors out there, kind of like the Masons, meeting together for the purpose of destroying their students peace.
Dad and Professor D. have got to be right! I'm totally convinced!!!!! I can picture it now.
The perfect cover--"transparent", out in the open, unsuspected, lethal. Students fund with hard work and loans the rich, luxurious office they meet in. It drips with rich mahogany, maroon, wing-backed chairs, smells of wax and fresh ink staining the pages of an essay on the desk. They nonchalantly saunter in, and settle them selves in chairs arranged in a circle. The last one to enter comes fashionably late. With a heavy limp he enters, trailing behind a blood trail of red ink with an essay clenched in his hand. It's wrinkled, torn, stained with more red than black ink. He looks like a mix of a vampire and Quasimodo and Mr. Addams. He is the self-sacrificing, dedicated professor that stays up late every night feeding off of innocent essays.
The provost of the college probably stands and leads them all in reciting their pledge (Standing at attention they recite these verses, and then they finish by taking their red-inked pens and drawing an F in the air before being seated):
"I support the order of the mysterious professor. The one that cannot be charted, defined, predicted. The powerful one that has only one true constant: the forever changing mind. The one who captivates his students peace by keeping them subjective to his ever-changing whims. This professor is one that does not bow to the technological era of transparency, outlining the grade scale, or addressing the material that will be on the exam. This professor is the true consummate of our trade. But if any of you still lack the clarity of this vision I have rewritten William Ernest Henley's Invictus for you:
Out of the night that covers them,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable approval.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
The students will winced and cry aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of premeditated enigma
Their heads will be bloody, and bowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the exam,
And yet the peril of the grade
Finds, and shall find, them panic-stricken.
It matters not how difficult the syllabus,
How charged with absences the scroll.
I am the master of their fate:
I am the captain of their soul."
Silence, they all stand and give him the honorary air F. They feel too much respect to clap or say another word. But after being taught by the master, they silently depart and head to the psychology department to receive advise on how to be more enigmatic.
And that is how the tradition continues.
Dad will reply: "TRADITION!"
(Now play this movie clip:
I used to think that dad was just on a cynical, unforgiving tangent rooted from a long history of college abuse, until a professor admitted to it. My professor lightly touched on the idea of, "the tradition of the mysterious professor...the man that you can never figure out and his standards are unexplained." But the way that Professor D. referred to it made it sound like there's some higher, secret order of professors out there, kind of like the Masons, meeting together for the purpose of destroying their students peace.
Dad and Professor D. have got to be right! I'm totally convinced!!!!! I can picture it now.
"Faculty Meetings"
The provost of the college probably stands and leads them all in reciting their pledge (Standing at attention they recite these verses, and then they finish by taking their red-inked pens and drawing an F in the air before being seated):
Professors unite!
Now is the time to ruin the peace
of the future--one student at at time
no student left behind!
They then open the floor for discussion. The topic? New and creative ways to support the holy tradition of ruining the peace of the student
Ideas rush forth like girls at an One Direction concert.
- Suprise essay assigned before spring break
- Dispensing with fall break
- Alluding to cancelling class the day of an exam and then don't
- Rearrange the seating chart
- Pop quiz
"I support the order of the mysterious professor. The one that cannot be charted, defined, predicted. The powerful one that has only one true constant: the forever changing mind. The one who captivates his students peace by keeping them subjective to his ever-changing whims. This professor is one that does not bow to the technological era of transparency, outlining the grade scale, or addressing the material that will be on the exam. This professor is the true consummate of our trade. But if any of you still lack the clarity of this vision I have rewritten William Ernest Henley's Invictus for you:
Out of the night that covers them,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable approval.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
The students will winced and cry aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of premeditated enigma
Their heads will be bloody, and bowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the exam,
And yet the peril of the grade
Finds, and shall find, them panic-stricken.
It matters not how difficult the syllabus,
How charged with absences the scroll.
I am the master of their fate:
I am the captain of their soul."
Silence, they all stand and give him the honorary air F. They feel too much respect to clap or say another word. But after being taught by the master, they silently depart and head to the psychology department to receive advise on how to be more enigmatic.
*End of meeting*
Only one remains in the room, an English professor that is deeply disturbed that the rewritten poem didn't rhyme as the original did. Then a maniacal smile spreads across his face--it must be a devise used to prove how unpredictable he must learn to be. Happy at this new interpretation he returns to write up a secret syllabus full of his expectations for the class, then the syllabi antagonist. "This antagonist is what I will give my students." He mediates evilly.
And that is how the tradition continues.
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