* We didn't have a very good class the other day, trying to talk about Thoreau and a modern response to Thoreau. Today I'm tempted to hand out the in-class assignment and say something like "so this is a reading comprehension quiz on Bentham, Foucault, and the panopticon. Everyone's done the reading, right?" Because, after all, I'm trying to get them to think for themselves and as such they should say "what the hell?" But I'm thinking I'm too tired and they're probably too tired to think it's funny. So instead they'll be doing a worksheet on deductive reasoning.

* It's also observation day, so mentor prof will be sitting in the back taking notes about my every move. The good news is that I figured out the whole where to stand/what to do with myself issue I had when I started doing this.

* On Saturday, my study group officially lost our collective minds. We started coming up with questions for the exam. For instance: "Discuss the case of the missing phallus in four novels from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. At least one must be American and one must be British." We had noticed a prevalence of "war wounds" as we were discussing things. Or, "Several poets have written poems called 'The Pike'/'Pike' or 'The Fish.' From memory, explicate four such poems. Two poets must be American and at least one poet must be a woman." You get the idea. The scary thing is that these goofy examples aren't far from the actual questions!

* By far, the funniest moment was when we were discussing poems and talking about how our, um, less-intelligent fellow students might discuss them. [Have I told you all the "7th quarto" story? Additionally, surely I've mentioned Wordsworth's "wife," Dorothy, yeah?] For instance, we were reading Philip Larkin's poem "MCMXIV" and we thought surely someone would ask something along the lines of "Who is this McMixiv person?"

I think you had to be there. We were laughing so hard that the people in the study group room next to us banged on the wall to tell us to shut up.