THE LAST WORDS

As many of you who read this blog know, I love my students.  What's more, I love the outrageous things they communicate through speech or writing.  Now that classes are over, here are the last gems from my time teaching.  Here's hoping they keep in touch via email and send me fresh material- I'll really miss these great perspectives. 

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Grading first year papers, I've noticed a disturbing trend wherein they all write about themselves in third person. But not in an acceptable way like, "Elizabeth writes a Facebook post." Instead they use the pronoun "it." As in, "It puts the lotion in the basket."
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Second years have to write a presentation detailing 3 things you can do with a certain object. The paper team wrote: "Secondly, you can clean a dirty butt. This paper is very important to me in my life."
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First years had to write draft presentations, which I am now correcting. The recurring themes are hobbies, pets, and club activities. These stood out:

1. One kid wrote an entire presentation on Germany and the Berlin Wall, and killed it.
2. Another wrote about a trip to Hawaii she and her mother took last summer, just to see EXILE (a famous pop band). Very nonchalantly she wrote, "After the picture, we ate dinner with them."
3. "My dog is woman. She is not marrying."
4. "Hello, everyone. I'd like to talk about my abacus because I like it."

Then this happened: "I like western movies. I think that the best movie is The Karate Kid."
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A couple of my kids came up and squeezed my arms. One of them said, "Mm! Marshmallow."

Guess it's time to hit the gym and officially reclaim my Michelle Obama guns.
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Some miscellaneous observations:

Next, Sandeul [a Korean pop star] has a beautiful voice.  He resembles a duck.

I want to tell you about Takatori Junior High School.  There are many insects.

The music makes a woman having a long hair a concept.  I intended to grow hair to listen to the music.

Q: If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be? What would you talk about?

A:

"It is a poisoned dinner."

"I chose living.  I think that it is a fish."