So in a strangely trusting and possibly incompetent decision, someone somewhere in the 
University of Baltimore thought it would be a good idea to let me teach a class. And not like UMBC did when I taught badminton and duck pin bowling. This was a freshman seminar class called “Applied Learning and Study Skills.” Before you put a stop payment on your tuition check, I was team teaching this class with Katie. She was going to be responsible for all the course content and I was to make sure we had enough dry erase markers in the classroom. This was going to be even easier than coming up with a syllabus for badminton.
Long story short, Katie quit the week before class started, leaving all the course content to me. Thankfully, I had already taken care of the dry erase marker situation, so there was one less thing to worry about. I made a promise to them earlier in the year that I was going to make them cookies. It was my way of saying “Thank you for pretending I was a real teacher for the entire semester.” But the next thing I realized, it was final time. So I had to make them cookies on the same day that I had to give them the class evaluations. Coincidence? I’ll tell you one thing I learned from being a waiter. Make sure you do your best ass-kissing right as you give them the check. I call it the “Waking Ned Devine” principle. Good Joe and I saw this movie about ten years ago and the movie sucked, but had a great last five minutes. We left the theater and Joe actually said “Wow, that movie was awesome!” I informed him that the movie was indeed not awesome, but just had a good last five minutes. To this, he lost the excitement in his voice, dropped his shoulders, started to frown, and replied "Hey... you're right." I’m hoping that I performed a good enough misdirection with the cookies and the collaborative final. “What? You didn’t learn anything and feel completely unprepared for college? No, look over here! Those are M&Ms in the cookies. Yummmmm!”
So one of my students was working on the in-class final that I gave. She was having trouble with the assignment and said something eerily similar to an old classic quote…
“Jeez. I have to study to study.”
- Ave
Now where have I heard that before?
The professor of fun,
Duck Pin Dustin.
Still Standing Right Here…
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