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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
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except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Do All Professors
Wonder About This?


UD does. What if I keeled over while teaching? Not necessarily keeled over dead, but, you know, keeled over? Lost consciousness?

One of my students this semester was for a time a paramedic, and I'll admit I've enjoyed the thought that at least in that class, someone would act quickly, know what to do, etc.


But what about my other class?


And what of the trauma to my students? If I were a nineteen-year-old, sitting there dreamily, and my professor fell to the floor, I'd be way upset... Which is why I wonder how the freshmen at Rider must have felt a few days ago, when their political science professor keeled over dead:


'David P. Rebovich, the tell-it-as-it-is scholar of New Jersey politics, died Friday while teaching class at Rider University in Lawrenceville. He was 58.

Rebovich was instructing a freshman political science course when he apparently suffered a heart attack, said Mordechai Rozanski, president of the school. He was pronounced dead at Helene Fuld Hospital in Trenton.'



What did they say? What did they do? The main image I have is everyone shakily taking out their cell phones and doing a 911... A few of them rushing into the hallway and yelling at people to help them... A few level-headed types approaching him, checking his pulse, calling his name...
Posted at: 10/16/2007 05:44:00 PM