Just Read the Fucking Book, Jared: from Your Chill Professor

Hey, Jared! I’m so glad you took the time to come to my office hours today. I love getting to talk to students one-on-one, especially when they’re enrolled in a class as big as ENGL1. The opportunity to get to know you guys is really just one of the most rewarding parts of my job! After seeing the discussion questions you’ve submitted on Canvas for the past few weeks, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you officially!

I will admit, when I read your week 1 submission of “Why are they trying to kill a mockingbird anyway?” I was a bit concerned. I wondered if you were struggling with drawing parallels between the character of Boo Radley and the mockingbird in the quotation “It is a sin to kill a mockingbird,” from which Harper Lee got the book’s title. Your week 3 discussion question — “What makes Gatsby so great anyway?”– also had me wondering if I should reach out to you and set up a meeting to discuss the finer points of active reading and textual analysis.

But the question you submitted yesterday erased all doubt from my mind that your submissions were rooted in an unfamiliarity or inexperience with the techniques needed to succeed in a foundational literature class. After a lot of debate, I decided that, should you ever come to my office hours, even though you haven’t been in class for the past two weeks, I should tell you this:

Just read the fucking book, Jared.

If you had literally looked at the fucking cast list – you didn’t even have to read a single line of the play, Jared – maybe you would have found a modicum of shame along with the answer to your question of “What’s a hamlet anyway?” You know what kind of question that is? That is a question so absolutely fuckwitted that there is no other rational explanation in this world or the next than your complete unwillingness to pick up any of the required texts for this class and drag your eyes across one — that’s right! — 1 page. I can only hope that you decide looking on Shmoop.com for a half-decent summary isn’t too much of a burden for you when the time comes for you to submit your research paper at the end of the term.

If you have any other questions, you know when my office hours are! Feel free to stop by any time.

HC ’20