Riddle Me This

Teaching, I think, could truly be an Olympic event as an exercise in sheer patience. 

My class needed to do ONE thing this week — come up with a Persuasive topic to write a paper on.  That’s it.  Tell me what you’re going to research and persuade a reader about.  About half of them did this, in a couple of sentences or less.  Fine.  Good.  Not complicated.  The other half?  They turned in one-word responses like, “Drugs,” “Marriage,” “Education,” and, sort of creepily, “Guns.” 

I feel like I need to send out a memo reminding the class that we’re not, in fact, playing Balderdash or Apples-to-Apples and are, in fact, engaging in college-level coursework. 

Also, in other strange news: My college’s student body felt the need to TP the Quad in “honor” of Bin Laden’s death.  Now, they usually roll the quad for athletic victories (luckily for our beleagured janitorial staff, we have had a piss poor season).  I can understand how a brutal finals week would be enlivened by celebration, but it struck me as just creepy and odd.  Am I wrong?  Perhaps I should have embraced my inner sociopath and brought some TP myself?