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!