The fall term is winding down at last. This means I’m done having to spend time in the classroom, but grading still lurks ominously on the horizon. I’ve managed to accumulate quite a pile of texts that need to be read for my own research once the term is truly over, but I am starting to wonder how I’m ever going to get through it all. Unlike bibliofemme, I am not a speedy reader.

But rather than griping about work, I shall leave you instead with an 8-bit existential crisis courtesy of resignedgamer. Enjoy!

Who knew the games of our childhood were so damn depressing?

Lady luck seems to be with me this week. I thought that right now I would be miserably grading final papers and final exams. I thought I would be sitting idly at the Daley Center all day tomorrow, waiting to be called and rejected for jury duty (something tells me purple-haired PhD candidates tend not to make the final cut). I thought I would most likely be forced to combine my miseries and grade papers while waiting grumpily waiting to be rejected from jury duty. But I have unexpectedly been spared all these miseries! The professor of the class I was TAing this term offered to grade their final exams *and* their final papers (seriously awesome!!). And the automated recording I called this evening informed me that I was not needed for jury duty. Yee-freakin-haw!

However, I am commited to not squandering these precious extra hours of my life. I am trying to get some dissertation work done before I really will have to grade a stack of research papers over the weekend. In that vein, I have finally finished reading a delightful nineteenth-century novel about honor killing and monomania. I suppose “delightful” is only an apt description if monomania and the unwritten law happen to be important to your dissertation research, as I wouldn’t really recommend the work for its literary merit. But then, I guess popular fiction is never really popular because of its literary merit. Ah well, at least I can scratch Beauchampe off my list. The prudent thing to do now would be to write some notes about the tale, but maybe a little rest first wouldn’t hurt ;-)

You kill me. You really do.

When you use footnotes, the footnote goes at the end of the sentence, after the period. It does not go here ¹. Where on earth do you get the idea that it goes before the period²? You’ve read texts with footnotes before. I know you have. I made you read texts with footnotes. So why, why do you insist on freakishly putting the footnote before the period?

I know I’m excessively anal about things like footnotes.³ But honestly, when you’re 20 years old and in one of the leading colleges in the nation, I would think you would be able to figure this out. If you’d never seen at footnote before in your life, maybe I would be more understanding. But after 10 weeks of class reading sources with footnotes, after encouraging you repeatedly in class to look at websites on how to cite things properly, and after I marked up your papers the first time you used footnotes incorrectly, I would think you could get this down. Sure, it’s a minor detail, but that’s almost why it annoys me more. When students struggle with difficult concepts, you expect them to mess up. But when they can’t do something a well-trained chimp could do, I assume it’s because they’re being lazy, indifferent, and/or obstinate.

In conclusion, students, if you want me to be angry when I grade your paper, go ahead and put that footnote before the period. I dare ya to.⁴

1. Cf. half of the final papers I received this week.
2. Looks really stupid before a question mark, doesn’t it?
3. Dr. Tsou can attest to this, re: a certain BA paper we jointly supervised.
4. Any defense attorney who would like to pioneer the footnote insanity defense should contact me asap.