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Chronicle Higher Ed Teaching
Chronicle Higher Ed Teaching
<http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/11/2002111201c.htm>
Chronicle Careers
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
By Robert Michael
I'm now teaching in a different lecture hall, one I'd never taught
in before. It's a flat room on the second floor, in a building where
most of the classrooms offer stadium seating only. In my new
room, while the students face me, I face a family of pigeons.
Outside the windows of this classroom, the pigeons put on a sex
show, for me alone. So in the middle of my lecture, I shake my
head, No, I just can't go on with these pigeons having "wiolent
zex," as a German colleague put it when I told her the story. The
problem is, when I stop to tell the students, "look at what they're
doing now!" they turn to see the feathered little devils instantly
disengaged and dancing around the roof like, well, pigeons. But I
don't care, I'm emeritus.
I hope to guest lecture and teach part time until something goes
drastically wrong with my mind or body. Then this emeritus will
turn in his key and hang up for good his wooden sword.