PSA I guess

Alright, I know it hasn’t been that long since I attempted to start using this blog again, but I think I’ll just stick to using my main blog @placeofwonder for everything, so if you want, you can follow that one.

rainy-days-of-studying reblogged

placeofwonder

More things my lecturer said

Part one!

“If you claim to understand Ulysses, you’re lying, and if your Irish lit teacher tells you that she does, so is she.”
“This class is about world fiction, so I finally won’t have to talk about Brexit…” *Brexit inevitably comes up within five minutes* “Uuuhh… The B-word.”
“If you tell Americans that you’re Irish, they’ll immediately tell you that their great-auntie’s best friend’s cousin’s dog’s cat is Irish and so they are too.”
(When only about half the class showed up for the first seminar) “I don’t want to be That Guy, but where is everyone?”
A couple of years ago, Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin got into a disagreement over the definition of speculative fiction and he still finds it difficult to talk about because he loves both authors a lot and can’t decide who was right.
Nobody volunteered to answer the first question during my presentation and he looked up from his notes and said, “see, students are bastards.”
Once, when he signed into the computer, the previous week’s Powerpoint opened unprompted and he was ready to evacuate the room because “the machines have taken over, are you seriously telling me you’re not bothered by this?”
I walked in halfway through a lecture once and he was googling rude questions because his least favourite colleague was still logged in. (”All those pictures of Putin shirtless on a horse… I never want to know if there are similar pictures of Trump.” *opens Google* “But maybe this guy does!”)
“He was born… a while ago. Time means nothing to me right now.”
“I used to be able to have actual discussions about whether or not the US was prejudiced against their southern neighbours. These days I can just say, ‘look at your president and go fuck yourselves.’“
“Plato, the original Spice Girl” (I’m sure it made sense in context)
Student: “But biologically, aren’t we just alive to procreate?” - Teacher: “Hang on, what? I didn’t get that email!”
“As for the part of Freud’s writing that deals with the Oedipal complex, I’m not touching that with a three-foot stick. Which is also what his mum said.”
“Canadian bacon is a war crime. So is American bacon.” *stares down US exchange student* “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Dr D. fucking told you what? That’s not what John Donne meant at all!”
“Pamela is an awful book, I’ve been fighting about this with Professor J. ever since I was a student.”
“I think it’s important to talk about how authors handle representation, but Dr H. disagrees cause he only cares about fucking aesthetics.” (Dr H., incidentally, really only cares about fucking aesthetics, but he’s also quite funny and I may have to make a post about him at some point.)
“That’s right, the C-word. Communism!”
That One Guy that any uni class needs interrupted him with a point he was just about to make and the teacher just went, “oh, give me a break!” It was honestly cathartic.
“Ah yes, the Washington Monument, that big phallic symbol.”
“And maybe I’m reading too much into this, but… that’s my job.”
Also, he and the colleague that he’s teaching 20th century American literature with got so angry about Trump that they overhauled their entire syllabus to be as reflective of minority voices as possible, and I think that’s beautiful.