Undergraduate History Illustrated

Badly Photoshopped illustrations of actual quotations from undergraduate essays in Western Civ survey courses.

[undergradhist]

Sometimes you do this instead of grading Frankenstein essays. If only I could actually use it as I return to the required activity.

[dactylsandhexameters]

A Brief Summary of Robert Walton's Extraordinarily Long Fourth Letter to Mrs. Saville, England

Frankenstein, Frankenstein,

Student of unhallow’d

Arts, builds a creature

From charnel bits gleaned.  

Vic runs away from his

Hideous progeny,

Good until misery

Makes him a fiend.

[undergradhist]

Professorial procrastination technique, late-August edition: Revive your old double-dactyl blog and write doggerel about Frankenstein rather than planning a syllabus around it.

[undergradhist]

Professorial procrastination techniques: choosing phrases from Moo Deng videos that would work well as late 90s Projekt Records compilation titles.

[undergradhist]

A student gem from 2010. I'd totally go see Baz Luhrmann's "Odyssey."

[undergradhist]

This thing I did in grad school turned 21 this week. Yes, I have been procrastinating my academic work for a long time.

[undergradhist]

Grading Scale Redux

I saw the older version of this in my FB Memories and had to redo it with better thematic unity. And both Hero Forge and I have come a long way since 2021. Also, I don't have pandemic hair anymore.

Old version: https://undergradhist.tumblr.com/post/651723841535688704

[undergradhist]

In my FB Memories today from 2017

Grading one batch of Dante papers while expecting another tomorrow, and so I was moved to send the annual reminder to students that the title of his famous work is not "The Portable Dante" (which is the name of the Penguin paperback we have, containing Mark Musa's translation of the complete "Divine Comedy" and a few other works. [I still fully expect at least one paper to refer to the author as Musa--not in a citation, I mean, but in, like, a "Musa's novel has a mindset on the religious aspect in which is very relatable to the people in today's society" sort of way. May I be proved wrong]).

Anyway, so a student writes back: "So should I quote it as Inferno, Purgatorio, or Paradiso?"

"...It depends on which of those three parts of the work a specific quote comes from," I manage to reply without the ellipsis.

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The cover of this secondary-ed history book looks like a 1st-edition Vampire: the Masquerade RPG supplement (and one that would probably exist, perhaps with milkshake-drinking rules for your Ventrue).

[undergradhist]

A friend pointed out that the cast of "Thor: Ragnarok" provided a lot of fodder for discerning Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Science Fantasy, and, because I have grading to do, I then narrowed the focus to just Goldblum.

It's perhaps controversial to treat supernatural thrillers as fantasy. I hope you can cope.

[undergradhist]

Deep thoughts on the passage of time

As an academic, I take the arrival of August each year as a personal failing.

[undergradhist]

That whole time?

[undergradhist]

Professorial Coping Strategies: Extra Challenging Extra-Credit Assignments

According to FB Memories, ten years ago I promised students reading Machiavelli for our Western Civ survey that I'd give them extra credit if they managed to take over Rhode Island. But I don't think anyone tried, even though practically speaking they'd have needed to hold onto power only for two months until final grades were in.

[undergradhist]

Professorial Coping Strategy # I’ve Lost Count: Making fun of internet memes.

[undergradhist]

This is still kicking around. Over 22K notes! Even more than Latin “Baby Got Back,” this will be my legacy. Some people have saved lives or moved nations. Me, I’ve got this. If I had to do it all over again, I’d have put the president name somewhere in the middle so they wouldn’t be so samey, although it’s been interesting to watch the patterns change since the end of the year when I posted it. No doubt some budding fantasy conlang fan could explain these as place-name elements in the local language. Anyway, I hope that at least one person has used this for their RPG character’s name.