ready for school

I think I needed that three-week break. I was really broken down after last semester, and it wasn't even a very BAD semester (other than the worries about funding on campus, and various administrative follies like the fitness challenge thing)

But I can tell my sense of humor and some of my ability to think a bit laterally have returned. In fact, I was thinking about a famous bit from a movie with Liam Neeson, and how I could repurpose it for the first day of class:

"I don't know who you are (yet) . I don't know what kind of grade you want. If you are looking for a high grade for no work, I can tell you I don't have those grades. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a moderately long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for plagiarists. If you cite correctly in your papers, you'll earn the grade it's worth, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, if you plagiarize, I will look it up, I will find the plagiarism, and I will kill your grade."

Not that I'd ever be brave enough to put that on my syllabus (higher administrators see them, and they don't always have the bestest senses of whimsy about these things) nor am I brave enough to announce it in class. But I admit I'm THINKING it.

(If I could do a very slight Northern Irish accent well, I might consider it, but I can't.)