Wednesday, November 29, 2006

famous last words

Tomorrow should be the easiest, funniest, most enjoyable teaching day of the semester. I have depth and breadth in everything I must discuss and lecture upon, and plenty of canned jokes besides.

This probably means total classroom failure, but I am an optimist.

By the by, I've had the chance to use one of my favorite lines on several occasions recently. I try hard to present historical figures in a neutral light. "Well, lemming was a sneak, a liar and a murderer" sounds dreadful, but if you add a few details, plus throw in the observation that I'm fond of my mother or encouraged the Visigoths to invent central plumbing or told Warren Harding that his Cabinet was corrupt, well, it sounds better.

One of my classes is on to me. I'll try to prevaricate, combining the positive with the negative and they'll pause. "So, lemming was a dreadful person who deserved a painful death," one of them will observe. "Well," I casually say, "I'd have phrased it more gracefully myself..." I stole this line. I claim no credit - but I do deliver it well.

(ego ego ego ego)

Still no word if my contract has been renewed for spring semester.

1 comment:

Jim Wetzel said...

I don't, of course, know how your department in the institution in which you labor does things. I do recall when I came on board as "associate faculty" at IPFW: it got down to about four weeks before the semester began, and no contract. So I emailed the department chair, and discovered that he just basically doesn't care much about contracts. I was teaching, and that was that. The contract showed up in the mail a couple of days later.

I'm sure you're teaching this spring.