End of Week 2: still not busted!

1pm, the translation class which I set preparation for on Tuesday. We came to a section which included the phrase - no way of being delicate - for "fondling the balls". Finessing a possible awkward moment, I said, "You're too shy to say it. But inside we all know what's been going on."

2pm, a tutorial on mythology. Story of Atalanta comes up, a woman who challenged all her prospective husbands to a foot race, and then had her father put them to death when she outran them. What else to say but "She ran around and hurt them"?

I know the rules; but do they?

1pm, love poetry. Still on the love affair of Catullus and Lesbia, which began well but ended badly. I explained that in the earliest stages of the affair, Catullus would not know that Lesbia was going to "run around and hurt him".

3pm, same class on group work skills as Tuesday, this time taught to a different group of students. For variety, I passed over Tuesday's "play the game" gambit, this time starting the quiz by saying "You know the rules, and so do I." Surely SOMEONE is starting to catch on by now?

Week 2, and still no one is suspicious

12 noon, ancient mythological epic. Discussing the love stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses, I told them, "Ovid is no stranger to love."

1pm, comic theatre. There is a translation class coming up, and I was asked by a student how much translation she had to prepare for the next session. I said "A full commitment's what I'm thinking of, so how about down to line 180?"

4pm, skills class in effective groupwork. I began by dividing the class into teams and holding a short trivia quiz, in order to demonstrate a couple of basic points; I started the quiz by saying "We know the game and we're going to play it."

Day 2

(in case you're wondering about the hiatus, I only teach classes on three days of the week, and not all classes run every week)

1pm - Tutorial on love poetry. On introducting the poet we will be studying, told the class: "Catullus is no stranger to love"

3pm - A plenary seminar in research skills. I set the midterm assignment, and pointed out the penalties for late submission, before dismissing them summarily: "But you know the rules, and so do I!"

And So It Begins

12 noon - Lecture on ancient mythological epic. Told the class they were lucky to have all the handouts I had prepared for them - "you wouldn't get this from any other guy!"

1pm - Class on comic theatre. Explaining the mechanics of humour, I referenced a Simpsons episode which relies on the audience's being aware that the convention of comedy is to restore the status quo by the end of the episode. I explained that the authors were exploiting our knowledge of comic plot structure: "They know the rules, and so do we!"

The Rickroll 101 project

The project is simple: I'm a lecturer in liberal arts teaching adults literature on a college programme, and my object is to Rickroll every lecture and tutorial class I teach over the course of this semester. Your standard Rickroll would, of course, be to offer some poor dupe a misleading link which, when clicked, will redirect him to a video of Rick Astley's classic 80s hit Never Gonna Give You Up. For a man of letters, however, that kind of trickery isn't subtle enough. Plus, I don't want to be unethical and waste actual teaching time playing pranks on the students - this is only a game, and their education of course comes first. So what I intend to do is to slip a phrase, or lyric, from the song into every one of my classes, and use this blog to record the convoluted ploys I use to work Rick's magic into my students' lives.

How long will it take them to rumble me? Let's find out!