I mention this time-honoured tradition in the first week of class, particularly for the benefit of students who are working, to let them know that they won’t need to ask for different or special time off for the final (presuming their work schedules are arranged to let them come to class in the first place). This semester, I mentioned the time and date of the final at least 6 times, specifically telling students to take note of the room change to NEXT DOOR. In a charming ye olde touch, the schedule was printed on a piece of paper and posted on a noticeboard outside the department office, and handily labelled “EXAM SCHEDULE”.

In the middle of the semester, in response to a question about what would be on the final, I provided this information, which nowadays, thanks to the Shrinker, includes a digression on why it is not okay to pre-write your essay for the final, shrink it down to 6pt, cut it into strips and paste it to the reading handout for the exam. This conversation also included a reminder of the date and time of the final, and the key information that its location had moved to a mysterious distant room, known as “NEXT DOOR”. This information was repeated in the ultrapenultimate week of semester, the penultimate week of semester, and on the final day of class. Which class consisted of me collecting final assignments and asking if students had all the information they needed for the final. One slightly confused student was, at this crucial juncture, set straight on the fact that the final was on Wednesday, not Tuesday, so clearly it was a valuable conversation, even if it was brief.

Unfortunately for Arrogant Asshole, he missed most of the penultimate week of class, and, by his own admission, did not lollygag over to class on the last day until 27 minutes after the regularly scheduled starting time, by which point, all other students, their thirst for knowledge sated, had departed. AA also declined to read the note I had left on the board indicating that although class was over, I was in my office and would remain there for the next couple of hours. Had he bothered to come to see me, he would have walked past the noticeboard on which Ye Olde Paper Notice about Exams had been posted, but this he failed to do.

Having failed then, to see me, he instead wrote a very snippy email about how it was “obviously too much to expect that class would meet for more than 27 minutes on the last day” (YES, DUH), and that he had submitted his final project electronically.

(I must digress momentarily to have a little MOMENT about this piece of shit he produced. As previously chronicled, AA had declined to present a proposal, and hadn’t done the work for the draft presentation part of the task. He also declined to participate in the peer marking activity, to show me how much he disdained the work of his classmates. When I read his project, however, it became clear that he didn’t ACTUALLY disdain his classmates’ ideas, since he had cobbled together the concepts of two of the best projects into a “blog” which he had written in, best guess, a couple hours. If I had had any doubts about him being a douchebag, they were put to rest.)

This snippy email was followed by another snippy email asking for confirmation of the details of the final. To which email I replied saying, “I don’t know the exact room number, but it’s NEXT DOOR; check the posted information.” I fully admit, here, dear reader, that it did not in the slightest occur to me that the request to confirm the “details” of the final was actually a request for the date and time of the final, since that information had been given half a dozen times in class. My assumption was that it was a request purely about the one piece of information that might have possibly been in dispute, viz, the room change to NEXT DOOR.

Well, apparently this was woefully naive of me. AA then phoned various authorities at the university (including unrelated services, but not, mysteriously the Department Office, outside which the schedule was posted) asking for the date and time of his exam. He was informed that there was no online schedule posted for Spring, because of the “EXAM IS AT REGULAR CLASS TIME” rule. None of this was enough information for AA to be able to deduce the time of his exam. So he waited until 4:22pm the next day (well after the exam was over, what a coinkydink) to make further enquiries.

These enquiries consisted of:
1. Yet another snippy email to me including my name with no salutation, and several one word sentences like “Okay.”
2. Finally a phone call to the Department Office, at which point he was informed he had missed the exam.
3. A snippy email to the Assistant Head of Dept, who awesomely replied it was a shame he hadn’t thought to contact the Department earlier.

I replied to the snippy email saying I would be in my office at a specific time the following day, and that he could take the final at that specific time. RADIO SILENCE.

Seriously. 24 fucking hours of not one single peep from him. He didn’t show up at the scheduled time, although since he is in my gmail contacts (yes, another plug for the Google Empire), I could see that he was online. I took a screenshot and forwarded to the Assistant Head, saying “if he says he didn’t see my offer, that would be an untruth”. Oh, little green available button, what secrets you can reveal.

My Department Secretary, who had been lucky enough to experience some AA douchebaggery first hand when dealing with him on the phone, was highly cynical about his actions, describing them as “playing silly buggers”. She suggested that I enter his grade as an F, since I had finished grading the rest of the class’s papers, and was now, officially, on VACAY. “That will get his attention,” she predicted.

Sure enough, an hour after the posted grades went live, AA proceded to have an email exchange with the Assistant Head about what his options were. I shall paraphrase it for you:

AA: While I admit that Prof Whatladder did, indeed mention the exam during the course of the semester, I still say it is her fault, and not my fault I missed the final.
AH: Yes, it’s a shame you didn’t have the sense to contact the Department earlier. You need to get the “I missed my final” form.
AA: So, is there some kind of timeline on when I should do this?
AH: Minus 24 hours, and counting. Everyone is on vacay, and even the keeners who are still hanging around for a few days will be gone after tomorrow.
AA: Okay, well, I am forwarding the info about my situation to the Dean.
AH: What on earth for? 3 people have now told you to get the form and then come and sit the final. What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?
AA: I meant the Head of Department.
AH: He’s on VACAY, that’s why you are dealing with ME. Time is ticking.
AA: Did I mention that the last few classes were “practically cancelled”?
ME to AH: This means he skipped them. The rest of us went to class.
AH: I fail to see how this is relevant. You have until tomorrow afternoon to sit.

I called in late this afternoon to see if he had turned up, which he had, BUT without having paid the “I’m a fucktard” fee which the institution wisely attaches to all finals deferred for craptastic excuses. The Department Secretary said “you can mark his final, but we are not changing his grade until we get the cash.”

Did I fist pump? Fuck, yeah.

I could tell he was an arrogant asshole from Day 1, when he came late, lounged back in his chair and didn’t bother to participate in activities designed to engage the class in learning. He usually comes late to class, and of course he feels entitled to skip at least one class a week.

In the Spring, I have my students do 2 take-home assignments (Task 1 and Task 2) , the details of which they get on Day 1, included in the course syllabus, which has other gems of information like details about what to read, and what the in-class assignments are, and my policy on nose-picking in class (it’s a “no”). The syllabus includes a chart of activities for each class, including deadlines for each part of each assignment, neatly arranged in an easily-readable table. I tell you this because it has become a bone of contention.

On the day the first part of Task 1 was due (viz, a 2 sentence proposal describing students’ chosen topic), AA declined to provide such a thing. “I’ll get it to you tomorrow,” he lied, and then failed to do so.

On the day the first part of Task 2 was due (viz, a 2 sentence proposal describing students’ chosen topic), AA declined to provide such a thing, this time without even bothering to lie about doing it later.

So, the scenario rested in this wise: AA had failed to provide proposals for either of the 2 take-home assignments.

A couple of classes later, we had a class in the library with Lovely Librarian, designed to help students with research for Task 2 (cunning readers will divine that this was the reason I had required students to nominate a topic in advance, so that they wouldn’t spend library time merely scratching their asses). All students but AA arrived in that class with at least a topic idea, and some of them modified their topics in response to help from me and Lovely Librarian, in accordance with my masterful pedagogical plan.

Not AA, though. He had no fucking idea. At the start of class he fed me some bullshit about wanting to write about social media and political change, and then an hour later, his topic was changed to chickens. WTFever, was my response. Having explained in class that the purpose of having a topic approved was to help students not make asses of themselves, I had done my bit. If you want to do your essay at the last minute, I can’t stop you.

So, to be clear, at this point, AA kind of had managed to do ONE of 2 required proposal tasks; the one for Task 2.

A few days later, students were due to give their oral presentations on Task 1, the task Arrogant Asshole had still not started. I sent them a reminder email, entitled “Oral Presentation Reminder Email,” in which I reminded them of the points they should be sure to cover and so on.

On presentation day, students got up and gave their presentations, and a couple were fabulous, and some were okay. In the middle of one, AA, sitting behind me, said “I think I have made a mistake”. How so, I enquired. “My presentation is on my Task 2,” he said. There was only one response to this, so I made it. “How is this my problem?”

AA made a variety of meeping noises, then, said, “I think I can still present.” I suggested he go for it, at which point he got up and started to present on his chicken paper. Students in the front row immediately questioned his method. “How is this about Task 1?” they asked. AA conceded that it wasn’t in any way about that. “So, just tell us about your project,” one helpful woman suggested. This suggestion was particularly kind, because the presentations were being peer marked. Basically, it was an offer to give him a 3 or 4 out of 5 for the task, rather than the zero that appeared to be looming.

AA was forced to concede at that point that he couldn’t even kind of do that because he HAD DONE NO WORK ON TASK 1 AT ALL. This is, FYI, week 4.5 out of 6.

I suggested firmly that he sit his ass down. Fine, but he did it huffily, flicking his hair and thumping into his seat. To further teach me a lesson, he did not fill in the peer evaluation sheet on all his peers, but left it obviously blank, while he sighed audibly during all the following presentations.

At the end of class, he came up to talk to me, asking, in the most fucking obnoxious way possible, what he could do to “redeem himself”. Resisting the urge to suggest prayer, I asked him to explain how he had managed to get himself into such a muddle. His answer was that when he sent me his proposal (for Task 2), I should have recognised that he thought it was also a proposal for Task 1. “Did it anywhere indicate that you thought it was for both tasks?” I asked. “No,” he conceded.

So, basically, having forgotten all about Task 1, he got the two tasks conflated. AA was unwilling to concede this point. So, I turned to consult the Sacred Text (aka the syllabus) and as I turned, he made a noise like a wounded hippopotamus. Seriously, this really loud “AAAARG” of frustration.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked. He said he didn’t want to have a discussion about what he had done wrong, I just had to say if I was going to let him go home that night, cobble a presentation together on a topic yet to be determined, and present on the morrow. “Given that the whole point of breaking Task 1 down into stages was to prevent that kind of last minute behaviour, no,” I said. “You didn’t do the work, so I think a zero on the 5% this was worth is warranted.”

As I was saying this, he pulled out his phone and started texting. “I assume we’re done here, then,” I said, and turned to deal with the other student waiting to talk to me, whose jaw was on the floor at this point. AA is so arrogant, you see, that he is teflon to the embarrassment another student might feel at arguing with a prof in front of other people.

I went home and shared this tale with Feckless Husband, who, in flagrant violation of Freedom of Information laws asked me the guy’s name. “Oh him,” he said when I revealed it. “When he was in my class, instead of doing his interview assignment, he made stuff up, so badly that it was obvious.” Trufax.

Arrogant Asshole declined to come to class the next day, but appeared the following day, and at the end of class, harangued me for another 10 minutes, because, he decided, his failure to present was my fault because my syllabus was ambiguous and UNCLEAR. My response to this was twofold. One: everyone else managed. Two: had you ever done the proposal for Task 1, you would have not been in this mess.

“So, you’re not convinced by my argument?” he asked. This was hilarious, because Freshman Comp is a class that teaches argumentation. “I don’t think you’ve really supported it with compelling evidence, no,” I replied. “Well, I thought it was pretty good,” he retorted, which, I have to point out, is TOTALLY his problem here. Perhaps that swishy piece of hair is a barrier through which information cannot pass.

He flounced out again, much to the amusement of the girls at the back of the room, who said “we were so hoping you wouldn’t give in”.

I made an assignment which was a list of questions for my students to answer, and I shared it with them as a google doc, giving them write access so they could copy the questions into their own document. Which was maybe a mistake, but I have done it before.

They are working away on it in the lab, when I notice that Question 8 has MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED.

Revision history to the rescue! I can not only restore it, I can name and shame the deleter. All the students got really mad when I told them I had restored it, too. They were like “Can’t we just do the 9 remaining questions?” To which I replied, “Sure, if you don’t mind getting a score no better than 9 out of 10″.

You know how sometimes, you just get the feeling you are being lied to, and while you know it in your soul, you just can’t prove it? This isn’t one of those.

So, I am teaching my regular spring class which is essentially condensed Freshman Comp, and I scared the bejeebus out of half a dozen potential students on the first day, and that one student who told me staying in my class was “a matter of life or death” presumably died, and now I have a nice manageable group of 20 who appear to be able to find their asses with their elbows. Oh, and one flake.

Naturally, it is the flake who generates the content for a blog post, so I suppose I should be grateful.

Spring classes meet every day, and then at the end of the week I have students write a piece in class in which they show they can now do the stuff they learned this week. This structure cuts down on homework, but makes regular attendance absolutely critical. Of course my flake, (hereinafter referred to as the Fibber) hasn’t been to class all week, but she manages to turn up for the crucial in-class essay day.

The first thing she does is start a conversation with the nice helpful student sitting next to her, who has been to class all week, and done the reading, and who then apparently feels obliged to explain 6 hours of class time to the Fibber in 5 minutes. Once I can see this is happening, I wander over and suggest that although it is kind of Helping Student to be helpful, she has her own essay to write, and the Fibber should come to me if she has any questions.

Oddly enough, the Fibber’s questions then dry up entirely. Since the essay is based on class reading for the week, which the Fibber hasn’t at all done, she is kind of stumped. I wander past all the computers a couple of times in the course of the class, and I notice that she has managed to write about a paragraph by the time the class ends.

Now, because I am hip with the technology, and also because I listened to my whiny-ass students from last semester who hated the courseware but loved google docs, this term I am letting my students do all their handing in of work via the google docs. So, at the end of class, half of them have handed in, and I give the rest a few more hours, since all they have to do is share the work electronically, rather than putting it in to my hot little hand.

By the deadline, I have all of the essays, except the one by the Fibber. I spend my weekend procrastinating, but by Monday, I have marked them all, except the Fibber’s, which still isn’t appearing. When she emails me about something else on Monday, I include in my reply the comment “what is up with your essay? I don’t have it.” To which she replies that that is very strange, since she definitely handed it in, ya ya ya.

(Also, delightfully, she tells me she “feels guilty” for “not coming to class”: foreshadowing.)

Now this, I very much doubt given the non-attendance shenanigans, but we go back and forth a couple times, her insisting that she has totally shared the essay with me, and me looking in my documents and saying “well, I don’t have it, make sure you give me access”.

I do suspect at this point that the essay fails to exist, and I wonder whether her insistence that it does is intended to make me shut up, or perhaps make the essay appear out of thin air. Neither of these things happens.

After class today, I showed her my document list, so that she could see that whatever she thought she was doing, she wasn’t getting her work to me, which, I said firmly “I see as your problem, not mine”. Outrageous, right? Perhaps it was her computer at home, failing to share correctly, she suggested. Again, I said “This is your issue. Figure it out and hand it in.” Note the hardness of my ass.

So, finally, this afternoon, she miraculously manages to correctly press the “share” button on the google document (I know, not rocket science), and I take a look at her essay. And by take a look, I mean, go in to the document and press the “revision history” button. And here, let me sing the praises of the “revision history” button, because it reveals, in glorious detail, that the Fibber wrote a paragraph of her essay on the day it was due, and another paragraph a day later, but the majority of it at 2am this morning – yes, that’s right, days after she first assured me she had handed it in.

I contemplate writing “LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE” in the comment box, but instead settle for “the revision history makes it clear this is late work” which, thank god, excuses me from commenting in detail on her essay, which is a shonky piece of dreck.

I am filing this one under “BUSTED”.

I am holding the line on this one, but man, it is a constant onslaught. I have to keep repeating “failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part,” and similar. Honestly, I think a lot of it is that no one ever made these students deal with the consequences of their actions.

#1 How dare you apply the late penalty?

In my syllabus, I have a clearly explained late penalty; essentially, students get a couple of penalty-free days, then after that it’s 3% per day. The student with the invisible essay from the last post eventually handed her essay in, but by the time she did, it had racked up a record number of late marks. Like, in the region of, after she got her grade, the essay narrowly missed having a negative score. Boy is she mad. Her other essay was a couple days late, so it lost 6% for lateness, too. She stopped me after class to give me a telling off; “What does this -6% and -69% mean?”  I explained it was the late penalty applied as per the policy in the syllabus, which she has had in her possession since DAY ONE OF SEMESTER.

The idea that I would actually TAKE these marks off made her so mad she couldn’t even make the words come out. I mean, she was MAD at me, and she was staring and me and her mouth was moving, but no sounds came out. You handed your essay in 3 weeks late. How is this my fault?

#2 What do you mean, deadline means deadline?

Students in one class have to sign up for presentations, which are on books of the students’ choosing. I am very strict about not allowing duplicate presentations, on account of the extreme physical pain the boredom they induce causes in me and the other students. I deal with this by having a “first come first served” policy. This has the added bonus of allowing the keeners and the nervous get stuff out of the way early in the semester before they have time to get too wound up.

This week was the last week for presentations, so last week, I warned the stragglers that they needed to nail down the book choices for today’s presentations. One student, let’s call her Unlucky Una, said “can I do book A?” to which I replied, “no, that’s taken.” So then she says she will email me, and doesn’t until Monday, when she asks “can I do book B?” Nope, taken. (She’s choosing, let me be clear, from a potential field of thousands of choices, and her problem is that she is going for the utterly obvious every time, as have a number of her fellow procrastinators.)

Then she emails me late yesterday evening with a bid on topic C, which is, guess what, also taken. Said email I do not manage to see before class this morning. In class, all the other students present, but at the start of one presentation, Una sighs audibly and, I kid you not, stamps her foot. We get through all the other students, and I call on Una, and she says “I can’t present because SHE took my book.” I dismiss the class, and say I will talk to Una separately.

At this point, I am subject to a tirade. It is not fair of me to have let other students pick their books before Una. “But, I said it was first come first served, and they told me their choices weeks ago.” Well, I should have answered her emails more promptly. When did she send that last email? Yesterday evening. “I’m sorry, I teach until 9 on Tuesday nights, and I didn’t look at my email after 5.” Well, I should have let her know this morning, then. At which I boggle, because really, she is going to slap together her presentation in 2 hours or less? What a valuable insight into the working processes of a procrastinator. I point out that she has seriously had ALL SEMESTER to work this out, and she left it to the last couple of days, but it’s still my fault.

I want to give her a zero, seriously I do, but instead I offer to give her all the marks for the task for the essay portion (remember, the famous essay portion). I am not really holding my breath for a quality product, here.

#3 But I didn’t look at the due date

In my other class, students have an assignment due this week. A couple of them (and they are a couple, about which I need to rant on another occasion) decided that this task was due next week. From whence did they get this impression? I have no idea. “The date in the syllabus is this week.” It’s been in there all semester, but apparently the fact that they didn’t check is also my fault. I am sure that one is going to bite me in the ass on the evaluation.

Neddy update

I’ve had a few requests, but the sad fact is that Neddy, after making me spend 45 minutes explaining to him why he got a D on his second paper (it was the 21 spelling and apostrophes that did it, and YES, I COUNTED), and another 20 minutes trying to help him get the idea that “I am just going to talk from my own experience” is not a good approach for a research paper, and then a talk about his attitude and how, if I have spent over an hour with him in meetings ALREADY, I AM FUCKING NOT GOING TO TALK TO HIM IN THE 5 MINUTES I HAVE BETWEEN CLASSES, has vanished almost without trace. He sent a couple emails explaining he had missed classes because he had, and I quote, “appointments,” but since then, radio silence.

My students had to do oral presentations, which were then followed up by essays on the topic. So they presented their ideas, had some class discussion, and then had a week to write it up. The marks for the task were evenly divided between the presentation part and the essay part.

Yesterday, a couple weeks after the latter part of the task was due, and I had marked and returned the essays, I had the following conversation with a student – hereinafter referred to as Clueless Carla – at the end of class.

Clueless Carla: So, I missed both classes last week, can I get my grade for my presentation?
Me, gathering up and enormous stack of books I had to bring to class for an activity: Uh, yeah, I don’t have those essays with me, but you can come upstairs to my office and get it back.
CC: I don’t need to get anything back, I just want my grade for the presentation.
Me: Yes, I put participation feedback on the essays; if you get yours back, you will get the feedback.
CC speaking emphatically, because clearly I am an idiot: I am not talking about our midterm essays, I am talking about the MARK for the PRESENTATION.
Me: Yes, those marks were written on the essays.
CC: What essay are you talking about?
Me: The one that was required as the second half of the presentation task.
CC getting a little tone: Oh? When did you tell us about this?
Me: It’s in your syllabus along with the instructions for the presentation, so, like, on the first day of class.
CC: Huh. Well, I didn’t know anything about it. Are you sure you made it clear?
Me: What can I say?  It was in the instructions, and I handed back a bunch of essays last week.

At this point, Carla goes to check with her friend, Sensible Sue.

CC: Did we have to hand in an essay about our presentations?
SS: Yes.

Carla then lowers her voice considerably and has a long conversation involving Sue and a couple of other students. I head out and go upstairs to my office. A few minutes later, Carla and Sue show up – Sue is playing the role of prop in this scene.

CC: So I am thinking that I did write that essay. I might have just forgot that I handed it in.
Me going through a charade of looking: Okay, here’s my pile of unreturned work. Let me have a look… Nope. No essay here. Let me check this other pile from my other class… Nope. Sorry, I don’t have your essay.
CC: Do you think maybe you lost it?
Me: Do I think I maybe lost an essay that 10 minutes ago you were saying I had not told you to write? No.
CC: Well, can I get my grade for the presentation?
Me: Your grade for the TASK is an F, because you didn’t do 50% of it.

Exeunt Carla and Sue .

And then she said “only one student came looking for you,” to which I replied, “well I told them all in class I would be out of town and to email, but I guess maybe someone didn’t get the message.”

And then I said, “there was one who emailed about not understanding the notices posted on the door.”

And she goes, “Yes, that was him. He stood around and worried about it for so long that I actually walked him across the hall to your office and explained the timetable to him.”

NOT. JUST. ME.

I haven’t been attending class lately [read, have not attended since that one time on day 1] and I was wondering if there is anything I can do to get caught up in class.  I had registered for this class with a friend of mine who ended up switching out, but when I looked on Blackboard today I was still registered in this course.  I don’t want to withdraw and I was wondering what I could do to get all the assignments and work I have missed.

I had to read it a couple of times to get the gist, but it seems to be that he thought that his buddy dropping the class would somehow magically communicate to the Registrar that he wanted to drop as well. This is a new one on me me.

In other news, Neddy is cross with me. Let me contextualize.

I, in company with the majority of known Earth Professors, have a little diagram, grid or table on the door of my office. This grid, has, listed across the top of the columns, the names of the days of the week, and down the left hand side, numerical representations of a range of hours of the day, such that the grid forms little boxes, each representing a block of time, that is to say, an hour of a day.

(Artist’s conception)

You get the gist, I am sure, dear Readers, because you are not morons.

So, Neddy, having BEEN to see me in my office hour at least 3 times, emails me to complain about the “diagram on your office door” because, apparently, it is “not clear”. HOW it is not clear, is, of course, not clear.

It’s a good thing I am all calm because we had a week off, and I spent it here:

In class yesterday we were talking about body image and messages for girls in children’s books and tv, and we talked a lot about Dora. (I must admit to being surprised to learn that there are people who complained that Dora was a lesbian, possibly because of her hair? or is it her sensible shoes?) Our discussion was focussed on how it was a shame that Dora, who was a positive role model for girls, seems to be being made more stereotypically feminine.

First, she had to have Diego help her, because obviously, girls can’t really solve problems by themselves without a boy to help them. There was also the old, tired mansplanation that boys wouldn’t watch a show about a female character (despite the fact that they manifestly did watch the show.

Then there was that brief abomination of tween Dora, with her better-coordinated outfit, more feminine silhouette and less sensible shoes. Tween Dora got a lot of pushback at the time she was announced, and she seems to have quietly disappeared. However, the efforts to feminize Dora are continuing. Lately, she’s all about ballet and being a princess instead of being an explorer. Ballet Dora has much nicer hair, and properly girly clothes.

So we talked quite a lot about images of girls (cartoon and real), and what kind of pressures they might put on real girls.

That was all by way of giving you context for the Neddyism. I asked if there were other shows that did present good examples of strong girls (in the context of us having talked for about half an hour about unrealistic body image), and Neddy’s hand shot up. “Sailor Moon,” he said.

Sailor Moon.

Are you shitting me? At least 10 heads snapped towards him with expressions of incredulity and outrage on them. “How is that a positive example of body image?” one of them asked, quite mildly. Neddy’s response, which was about how Sailor Moon has girl heroes in it, made it clear he had really no idea about what body image was, or that it had never occurred to him to think about the pressures women might experience with regard to their appearance.

Now, granted, he’s a young man in the 18-22 age range, and some of them can be pretty damn sexist, as any of you who spend time on the internet may have discovered. In my experience, though, guys of that age KNOW about issues like body image. The ones who choose to argue against media pressure on women tend to counter with “it’s just as bad for men,” or “you can choose to ignore media stereotypes”. Neddy’s response was an example of complete obliviousness.

Naturally, he wanted to talk to me about it in that brief 2-minute window between classes. “I got the impression I said something wrong,” he said, apparently because he noticed a bunch of people “looking at him weird”. Oh, good god. Yes, Neddy, you are about to have an existential crisis, but I really, honestly only have 2 minutes.

Cowardly, me?