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Good morning. Please take your seats. Welcome to English 100. That means if you are not registered in 100, you should leave now. If you are not registered in this section, my section, 000731, you should also leave.
If you have any unpaid fees, outstanding library loans, incompletes from last semester, grade reviews or community service to take care of, please leave and clear that up.
First, the rules. I like to run an informal class, so I have only one rule: respect. Respect for each other, respect for me, respect for you. Basically this means none of your fucking cell phones. If it rings or vibrates, I don’t want to see it or hear it. Wait until class is over to hit that text-message crack pipe. We are talking zero tolerance here, people. Oh and by the way, I can hear the mosquito tone. If that’s a problem for you, there are plenty of other sections of this course taught by half-deaf old farts who got tenure for showing up for an interview.
If I’m talking in this voice, it means I’m trying to tell you something you need to know for a test, and I don’t want you complaining later that I didn’t tell you. When you hear this voice, don’t ask questions. But if I’m talking like this, it means I’ve covered today’s points and I’m killing the clock, so you should definitely jump in. It doesn’t matter what you say: I’ll be grateful that I don’t have to run my mouth anymore. If you jump in enough, I’ll give you participation points—if I can match your name to your face when I assign final grades. I find this easier with good-looking girls and minorities.
What’s that? No, I don’t know when the bookstore closes. I don’t work in the bookstore. I like to mind my own business.
Now, attendance. I can’t be bothered. I teach three courses, so one student’s absence from one class is such a small fraction that we can all agree to round down to zero. And zero times any other number always equals whatever. True, if you miss my busywork group activities or make-believe seminars, you could lose some points. The key is, as in all your courses, you should pay close attention to whether or not the teacher likes you. If I like you, I’m going to go easy on you for cutting class; just don’t ask me to reteach anything when you orbit on back. If I don’t like you very much, you’ll find me appreciative that you didn’t come and irritate me, so you could well get those points back at the end—provided I can match your face to your name when this is all over and done with. If you are a white male or less than a seven, this may not work for you.
I’m required to say a few words about plagiarism and academic integrity. My official policy is: If you rip shit off of the net at the last minute and hand it in, I will catch you. This I will take as an affront to my smartest-guy-in-the-room mindset and slap you with a zero to remind you who’s smarter. If I suspect that you’ve plagiarized, but it’s taking more than three minutes to prove it with Google, I will ask frostily if you could meet with me in my office. At the meeting, I will try to intimidate you into confessing. If you’re stupid enough to confess, you’ll be punished. But if your confession gives me a little Catholic frisson, I may feel sorry for you and, after your penance, give you another chance. If you don’t confess, you go on my enemies list and I lowball your grades for the rest of the term.
So far so good. Now a word about contacting me: don’t. No office hours at the start of the semester because you wouldn’t come anyway. I know it says “by appointment,” but you can read that as “be important,” as in it had better be. I’m not one of those drippy, empty-nester profs who’s going to hand out his home phone number—I don’t understand that at all. So awkward. We’re left with e-mail. If you have a real question, write me coherently without any textspeak and I’ll get back “2 u.” Haha. I owe you that much. If you try to friend me, I’ll ignore it. I mean I’ll click the “ignore” button. If you have any doubt, you can check your pending friend requests and I won’t be there anymore.
As far as the reading material goes, I wasn’t able to assign the books I wanted. You wouldn’t understand them. Therefore, we will be reading conventional, realist texts that you can handle. None of the themes will force you to think beyond knee-jerk liberalism. It will be easy to think of President Obama reading and liking these books. All of the endings will be either indeterminate or epiphanies. An epiphany is a sudden realization of truth. For example, an epiphany someone might have is: “Jesus lord, I’m 35 and divorced and I don’t think anyone serious is going to stage my plays so I guess I’m stuck here.” I’m saying just for instance. I do hope that all of you will have lots of these epiphanies in your own lives and fully recognize them and think of me when they come up. Maybe it’ll happen when you’re 35. You could even write me an e-mail then and tell me all about it. I’d enjoy that.
Any questions? No? You didn’t notice my voice change? Alright. Now that we’ve cleared the air, let me tell you a little about myself and why I love being an English teacher.
