MARGINALIA

Both James Joyner and Steven Taylor are talking about things professors write in the margins of papers:

Joyner:As to the issue of pedagogy, I would note that I seldom used the “interesting” device in my professorial days. Both my then-colleague Steven Taylor and I used what became a catch-phrase, “not so much,” to signal to students that their response to the question, while certainly appreciated, could use some polishing.

Taylor:One of my favorite Joyner-ism, when we taught together, was when he would write “You Made That Up” or “YMTU” for short.

When I am perplexed, I find a good ol’ fashioned “Huh!?” often does the trick.

And yes, “not so much” was, and remains, rather popular. One student thought it should be on our polisci club t-shirts.

The standard marginal comment on a Mark Hasty-submitted paper was more like “What?” or “In English, please,” or “Who taught you handwriting, Helen Keller?”, but I can’t resist this anecdote: I took a seminary class on transformation and, in comparing notes with my classmates, we discovered we’d each received the same comment at some point during the term. So, on the last day of class, we presented our professor with a rubber stamp engraved “But what about the sin of self-denigration?”.

Thankfully, he had a sense of humor. Otherwise I’d probably be working at the car wash . . .

A THOUGHT WHILE WAITING FOR THE COFFEE TO FINISH

It’s a good thing Ronnie James Dio uses his middle name, so we can distinguish him from all those other well-known Ronnie Dios.