Sentence from an email I sent a student:
You don’t need to apologize for emailing me two hours after class about an assignment not due until [much later]. It shows that you’re on top of things, and professors love stupids who are on top of things.
I know they’re not homonyms, but, you know—if anyone’s looking to unload property under a rock, drop me a line.
The Edge of the American West 
20 comments
January 8, 2009 at 2:01 pm
kid bitzer
that’s very funny. indeed, awesome.
maybe you should write back to the kid and tell him you’ve been reading matt yglesias too much? some of his substitutions go far beyond homonymic confusion, into free-association-land.
January 8, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Ahistoricality
Blame it on the spell-checker, Scott.
Or you could say something about education being the exploration of your own ignorance….
Just for reference, by the way: caves, like the underside of rocks, are hard, cold, often moist, and rarely have enough bookshelf space, even for office use.
January 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Todd
Say “It’s not my fault, muscle memory took over after I typed S-T-U.”
January 8, 2009 at 4:11 pm
dana
Oh man, Scott. That’s great.
January 8, 2009 at 4:43 pm
teofilo
Just for reference, by the way: caves, like the underside of rocks, are hard, cold, often moist, and rarely have enough bookshelf space, even for office use.
Not necessarily.
January 8, 2009 at 5:29 pm
sdh
You have to stick to the Shaggy defense (‘It wasn’t me’). Blame it on word-completion software on your cell phone.
Best of luck. lol
January 8, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Ahistoricality
teofilo: OK, yeah. But that’s like the R-1 of rock undersides: it’s unfair to the rest of us to assume that we all have access to the same resources!
January 8, 2009 at 5:38 pm
andrew
Some people have to split time under multiple rocks and still are unable to obtain full coverage.
January 8, 2009 at 5:45 pm
teofilo
Whiners. Those people need to have started looking for places under rocks 800 years ago. And have supportive spouses.
January 8, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Bitchphd
So much for your stupid evaluations.
January 8, 2009 at 8:31 pm
JPool
Explain that it’s an affectionate nickname.
“Who’s a clever stupid? Who’s a diligent stupid? Yes, you are! Yes, you are.”
January 8, 2009 at 8:41 pm
SEK
So much for your stupid evaluations.
I’d agree with you here were it not for the fact that last quarter—in which I blew as a teacher, because I was rusty as fuck—my evaluations were all like “I feel like Scott was really approachable and always had a sense of passion when teaching.” I was going to write a post about how I somehow managed to not scare any students away this quarter, despite telling them they’d be required to write five posts of 500 words every week. I was all set to call it “This Charming Man?” before The Wife put her foot down and said, “The Husband? No.”
(Also, one of the wait-listed students I had to turn away was from the same very, very small town in New Jersey that I’m from. Given that 99.99 percent of UCI students are from the OC, having someone who also attended Fernbrook Elementary was all kinds of awesome . . . and yet, I couldn’t add her, because no one dropped. Granted, my 8 a.m. class consists entirely of dance majors who just finished practice and baseball players who must jet to practice at 9:20 on the dot means that I’ve got a strangely committed bunch.) (Did I also mention I’ve been up since 5:30 a.m.? Because I have, and I just might be a wee bit delirious.)
January 8, 2009 at 8:51 pm
SEK
You have to stick to the Shaggy defense (’It wasn’t me’). Blame it on word-completion software on your cell phone.
Sadly, because I have to tell my students I’m deaf the first day of class — or else — they know I don’t do cells.
January 8, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Michael Turner
We all make student mistakes sometimes. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t write something really fucking student.
January 8, 2009 at 10:04 pm
ari
Michael! Welcome back.
January 8, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Michael Turner
So much for trying to sneak back out from under my last rock (space available now SEK!) while nobody was noticing.
January 9, 2009 at 9:07 am
ajay
In a hole in the ground there lived an assistant professor. Not a adjunct’s hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell,
nor yet a dry, bare graduate student’s hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was an assistant professor’s hole, and that means comfort.
January 9, 2009 at 9:52 am
Carl
Reminds me of Argentinian Roberto DeVincenzo’s great remark upon missing out on a chance to win the 1968 Masters in a playoff when he signed an incorrect scorecard: “What a stupid I am!”
It’s only rarely that I get a student whose question as you describe it means they’re ‘on top of things’, although I give all of them the benefit of the doubt for a while. More likely, the things they’re on top of are their own fretful anxiety, my butt for some kissin’, my toes as I attempt to sequence instruction, and eventually my nerves. Take a deep breath there kiddies, and trust the process.
January 9, 2009 at 2:20 pm
KRK
I had to read it several times to pick out the mistake.
January 17, 2009 at 9:43 am
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