Well, Hofstra is upon us once again, and as everyone starts settling back into classes, dorms, and binge drinking (or starts for the first time, for all you wild and crazy freshmen), I thought it prudent to take pause and reflect upon the hard work of our dedicated professors who each and every day educate the next generation. And by this I mean make fun of them. For grade related reasons, I won’t target any one person or persons, but rather focus on general trends.
Have you ever had an English professor? Good, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. To them, over analyzing a book comes as naturally as it doesn’t to anyone else. What, may I ask is the point of a story that requires a PhD to fully understand? A statistically elitist point, that’s what.
Recently I was asked to read The Sound And The Fury, by William Faulkner. There seems to be a law of physics stating that all college English professors love assigning incredibly dense and confusing books in which all the characters think extremely deep thoughts such as “my life sucks”, “everybody’s life sucks” and “you suck”. The Sound and the Fury was particularly confusing: half narrative, half stream of conscious, and no way to tell the difference between the two. Luckily chapters had handy dates, which firmly grounded the reader in a specific time. However inside the chapters there would be random time jumps in the middle of sentences. Thankfully these were indicated by italics…but not always. Sometimes, you just had to guess.
Yet all the mind-bending motifs, metaphors, stylistic choices, etc. paid off in the end, as Faulkner had succeeded in conveying the deep message underpinning the entire book, a message that resonates deep in the core of all who read it. If you lean your ear close to the page, you can almost hear Faulkner saying, “I’m better than you.” So to entertain myself while reading, I routinely wouldn’t.
Another quirk of some English professors is that they assign students their own book (You all know who you are, and with any luck, you don’t know who I am…or perhaps you think my name is Silence Doless). More than being simply unethical, it’s downright awkward. Picture this: you’re sitting in class and out of nowhere your professor starts illustrating a point with something he or she wrote. What if you don’t think the professor’s stuff is any good? You obviously can’t just say that (unless you happen to be writing this column…professor blank, I don’t like your work). Now you’re screwed into two options the rest of the semester. You could,
- Not talk and lower your participation grade, or
- Lie and say the professor’s book is so good that one day it will replace the Bible in popularity.
There is also a third option involving air freshener, thumbtacks, and a live cougar, but few among us posses the iron will necessary to carry it through. And so I say we fight back. Long enough have students suffered under the pretentious weight of college English professors. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time we took a stand! As for me, I’ll be finishing The Sound And The Fury.