A Professor's 'Secret Plan'

This isn't strictly classics-related, but I had an email exchange yesterday that reminded me of this classic West Wing clip, where Josh makes a sarcastic comment in a press briefing that gets taken seriously:

In my upper-level classics in translation course one of their assignments is to compare any modern work (film or literature) to any ancient work we've read. I've put in place (I hope) safeguards to prevent frivolous or shallow papers, but the choice of topic is supposed to be wide open.

Nevertheless, I get emails like the one yesterday, asking if 17th century literature is okay, if 20th century literature is okay, if movies are acceptable, and on and on. Students are looking for secret limits or criteria that are. not. there.

These emails reflect the frequent, and unfortunate, assumption that professors have a secret plan to mess with their students. To throw in test questions unrelated to the material and then rub our hands together with glee. To assign paper with wide-open topics so we can trap people into choosing the one secretly forbidden topic.

It doesn't really bother me, and by no means is it a constant problem. Just another fascinating and odd little bit of student psychology. Pin It