February 16, 2011

The Bourse has bought the NYSE. This is wrong.

One of my students came to class tipsy. She giggled through “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” I was going to make a statement about students in general, but realized all my present examples are her– how class becomes a variable and not an absolute, that if it is convenient to schedule a meeting during or have three or four brews before, well, why not? On the other hand, I don’t remember having a greater percentage of engaged and eager faces staring out of the rows at me, a higher level of participation in class discussion. I suppose coming drunk to a class on the Romantics is not altogether inappropriate, but it would have been better had it been Keats.

Meeting about accounting for the Cambridge trip. The level of fixation and anxiety is fascinating, the clear assumption that accounting for every penny is all that matters, and the rest of the activity is but an incident which, for a day or two, irritates the balance of the books. No one has spoken to me once about the educational experience, only about receipts. On the other hand, our business personnel are patient and kind. I think they’ve been told I’m sort of a wild man who will disregard everything they say, or explode in their faces if the wrong thing is said. I’ve expended a lot of energy avoiding the reputation I got anyway.