April 30, 2013

Finished classes for the semester with sort of a bang, I guess. R stomped into Readings in the Drama half an hour late on the last day of class, spent the next five minutes dropping things and loudly arranging herself; then five minutes before class was over slammed her book shut and began loudly gathering her things for an exit. This happens every class period. She is one of those people who make you ask yourself, “What do I do, of which I am wholly oblivious, that drives people wild?” As in a marriage, class and professor reach a point where they begin getting on each other’s nerves. I’m glad it was, for me, so late. M came late to poetry class and brought her infant daughter with her. I stopped myself from looking too directly, but I believed she nursed the child (a beautiful, happy child, it must be said) in class. People must not distinguish between levels of propriety anymore. At one point the baby was making such a din (not petulance, but happy baby playing sounds, however wrong for a classroom) that Merritt came in and took her for a while. M also produced the single most moving poem ever presented by an undergraduate in my class, so there it is.

I have willfully engineered today to be a day without particular duties, and I intend to rejoice in it.