Dear readers,
I learned a new and very important fact this past year.
Students are not professors.
Shockingly,
this even applies when you invert the statement! But the line above is the one
I am thinking of right now. Students, dear readers, are not professors.
Not even a little bit. Not even when the student puts on a professor-like hat
or wears professor-like shoes, or comes to school dressed entirely in a mauve
pantsuit! They are still not professors!
I will
illustrate this new fact in a bold and striking story:
Once upon a
time, I was in an English class I will refer to as the Class that Defied All
Other Classes Before It. Or maybe I will call it: The Class that Shocked Beyond
All Shocking. Or perhaps I will simply call it The Almost-Class.
Because it was
The Almost-Class, dear reader. It was The Almost-Class that was almost a class.
I had thought it might have turned into a True Class, but it will languish
forever in the dust bin of Almost-Classness, there to remain until a new Almost-Class
spreads its wings and claims the title for its own.
The
Almost-Class was taught, fittingly enough, by a professor I will now refer to
as the Almost-Professor. I will not, however, reveal this professor’s identity.
I will simply call them “A-P.”
A-P was not a
bad person, per se. They (I will not refer to them as he or she, either, for fear or revealing their true identity)
were only a little unsuited to their role as professor.
You may ask
how I know this.
Well, dear
reader, it was shown to me.
On the first
day of class, we received syllabi. The syllabus was nothing important or different;
it was the schedule inside that shocked and astounded my studently virtues.
For it
appeared that we, the students, would be doing the professorly work. We, dear
reader, would be teaching the class.
The schedule
looked like this:
Monday: Syllabus
Wednesday: Student-Led Discussion
Monday: Student-Led Discussion
Wednesday: Student-Led Discussion
Monday: Student-Led Discussion…
And so on,
and so on.
We were, dear
reader, in short, taking the professor’s role upon ourselves. We were the
professor. We were no longer students.
Unfortunately,
as always, this disruption led to a whole string of incidents.
1. The Incident of the Pie (Wednesday, 10/3)
The day on which the Incident of the Pie began was much like
any other day. We filed into our classroom in Humanities, blinked as the
fluorescent lighting sent brilliant streaks of white-hot light into our brains,
sat down in our desks, pulled out notebooks, papers, pens, etc., and waited. We
were waiting for the hapless student who would be teaching the class today to
show up, and he did not disappoint us.
From this point on in the story, I will refer to this person
as the Boy with the Hat. For he was wearing a large, silver baseball cap with
the word LIOM inscribed across the brim. (My fingers tremble as I remember it…
I can hardly bring myself to write the word… LIOM… for it is not even a word!
It does not even form an intelligible acronym! I must tell you, dear reader,
that I spent much too long trying to decipher its meaning, but I admit I
failed. LIOM will forever remain a cypher of uncrackibility.)
But back to the Boy in the Hat – he was the victim chosen to
teach the class that day, and though I don’t remember what we were supposed to
be learning, let me tell you that we were not supposed to be learning about
pie.
However, that was what the Boy in the Hat had chosen to teach
about.
But at this time, no one knew this. The A-P came in, settled
themselves into a desk at the back, and pulled out their binder and pen, for
they always took notes on the student who taught the class each day.
The Boy in the Hat took his time: he pulled down the screen
in the front of the class, turned the projector on, pushed a small table into
the front of the room, and sat down behind it.
“Lights off, please,” he said.
The student nearest the light switch flipped them off.
The projector whirred into life, and we beheld a brilliantly
shining, beautifully colored, astoundingly awesome picture of…
PIE.
I gaped at the screen for a moment, half-hoping words would
appear and explain away the problem. We weren’t supposed to be learning about
pie. We weren’t even learning about food.
Maybe he was giving a presentation on food in the books we
had read?
But I couldn’t remember anything about pie. I glanced
stealthily at the student next to me, but she appeared as bewildered as I was.
The Boy in the Hat was unperturbed. He sat back in his chair,
crossing one leg over the other, and tapped his fingers against his chin.
“As you can see,” he said, “the picture on the screen is of a
banana cream pie.”
We did see. The only problem was that we didn’t know why it was
up there.
“Today,” the Boy in the Hat continued, “we will all be
learning how to make banana cream pie. Please take out a sheet of paper and a
pen. I will go through each step slowly, so as to give you the most time
possible to incorporate these new ideas into your brain.”
He flipped to the next slide, and we all scrambled to begin
writing things down. The A-P hadn’t stopped him – perhaps this was some sort of
joke?
A boy in the corner began laughing hysterically.
The Boy in the Hat cleared his throat loudly, ignoring the
sounds of madness echoing around the room. “The first step for preparing a
superb banana cream pie is collecting the ingredients. Please write these down:
one cup of whole milk, four egg yolks, one cup of granulated sugar, five
tablespoons of all-purpose flour…”
His voice faded to a drone as I looked incredulously around
me for the A-P. Perhaps they would step up now and demand that the class return
to normality?
But the A-P was staring dreamily off into space, their chin
propped on their hand. Their eyes were half-closed.
I gave up.
Clearly we weren’t going to learn anything about English
today.
2. The Incident of the Test-Drive Dummy (Monday, 10/8)
Seeing as the Boy with the Hat had succeeded so well in his
presentation of banana cream pie, a second student decided to shirk the assignment
as well.
We entered class that day to find a test-drive dummy propped
up against the whiteboard, a smile drawn clumsily over its plastic face and a
red wig thrown over its bald head. Hanging around its neck was a sign that
proclaimed: I am your Teacher for the Day. Ask me any Question and I will
Answer You. Next to him stood a smiling student, his/her face very happy.
I sat down in my desk, let my backpack slide to the floor,
and dropped my head into my hands.
“Today,” said the smiling student, “we will be learning about
ventriloquism. We will learn via live
presentation. I have brought in this dummy in order to demonstrate what not
to do when attempting ventriloquism.”
A student in the back of the classroom raised her hand.
“Yes?” said the Ventriloquist.
“How does this have anything to do with our book?” asked the
Brave Soul.
“Well,” the Ventriloquist said, glancing at the A-P. The A-P
blinked dreamily at the opposite wall.
The Ventriloquist shrugged. “I have no idea. But I’m teaching
it, and we’re going to learn it.”
He/she turned to the dummy, draped an arm around its plastic
shoulders, and said, “Well, Charlie, how are you feeling today?”
The dummy said nothing.
The Ventriloquist said, his/her voice pitched much lower, “I’m
doing just fine, buddy. What about you?”
The dummy stared blankly at the class.
I closed my eyes and thought about dropping the class. If
only it was the beginning of the semester again… if only… if only…
Schedule, cont.
Wednesday (10/10): The Incident of the Beehive
Monday (10/15):
The Incident of the Bad Haircut
Wednesday (10/17): The Incident of the Horror Stories
Monday (10/22): The Incident of the Classical Music Aficionado
Wednesday (10/24): The Incident of the Werewolf
Monday (10/29): The Incident of the Fried Zucchini
Wednesday (10/31): The Incident of No Class
Wednesday (11/5): The Incident of the Lost Snake
Monday (11/7): The Incident of Dropping the Class Forever
Dear readers, there are some things I cannot take in this
world. One of them is a dead cat. Another is a can of root beer.
But the one thing, dear readers, that truly bothers me
are Those Who Shirk Their Responsibilities.
I hope everyone has learned a valuable moral lesson today.
Here it is in a concise fashion:
Do not take dead cats from strangers. Or cans of root beer.
Have a pleasant Monday, readers.
Tips of the Day:
Tip #103: Take classes you are interested in. If you are not
interested in them, drop them. Let me add, dear readers, that the classes required for your
major should not be dropped. You’ll have to take those, sadly, if you wish to
graduate.
Tip #104: Floss regularly. Please.
Tip #105: Select your bow ties wisely. Purple-striped is always recommended.
Tip #106: Eat zucchini. I suggest fried.
