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"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
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"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
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)

Monday, February 20, 2006

From
The UDean Book of the Dead


[Based upon extensive
RMP sourcework]




Professor X enters the classroom ten minutes late, hair askew. Sweating. Laptops, lasers, and highlighters spill out of X’s arms as X proceeds from the classroom door to the podium.

X does not acknowledge the students. In a classroom that seats fifty, there are ten. This is the third class of the semester, and despite daily roll taking and frequent pop quizzes forty enrollees have dropped or decided not to attend.

Three students are asleep; five are internet gambling. Two stare at Professor X from the very back row. They appear to be in a rage.

Another ten minutes elapses as Professor X silently fumbles with Power Point and other forms of technology.

Professor X interrupts the fumbling and leaves the room. After another ten minutes, X returns, carrying a cup of coffee, a cell phone, and a bottle of pills.

More technology fumbling. Occasional muttering of “shit,” and nervous playing with pill bottle.

Power Point mission accomplished. Professor X now takes roll.

X finishes roll. Forty minutes have elapsed.

Professor X speaks.

“I see your classmates have already begun, uh, uh, what’s the word… skipping. I don’t know what’s happened to this, uh, uh, university. It used to have admissions standards. The new president‘s just interested in warm bodies that, uh, uh, pay tuition.”

Professor X does not look at the class. Gazes bitterly out of the classroom windows. “What is it, a million degrees below zero out there? Why are you here? Why am I here?”

Professor X continues gazing, silently, for five minutes. Cell phone rings. “Mm? Yeah?… Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…Yeah?…”

Fifty minutes have elapsed as Professor X snaps the phone shut.

Head down, Professor X now reads what is written on the first Power Point image. X reads the second, third, fourth, and fifth Power Point images. Constantly checks wrist watch.

Ten minutes before the end of class time, Professor X dismisses the class.