Well, I have made it through another semester. As of 11:17 yesterday, I am a free woman - until I start getting all those complaints from students who are not happy with their grades.
"Why did YOU GIVE ME a C?"
"It was a gift. I could have given you the F you deserve."
"I was not failing your class."
"No, not until you turned it the paper of which 80% was copied and pasted from Wikipedia."
"But I worked hard on that paper. It was eight pages long."
Yes, but there was not an original thought in it."
"This isn't fair."
"Well, neither is plagiarism."
This is just one scenario. We'll see how it really plays itself out. Fortunately, this type of situation does not come up too often.
Though most schools on the semester schedule are done for this academic year, my beloved older child, who is on the quarter system, has another five or six weeks of school. This is midterm for them. More importantly, it is U Chicago Scav Hunt weekend. This event is held every year on Mother's Day weekend. I think this is so all of us can sit around and wallow in our great success as parents. Knowing that our children are willing and able to participate in this exercise in creativity has to make a mother's heart sing.
Scav Hunt began at 6 am on Thursday morning. At 6:13 am I had two emails from Offspring 1 - one wanting to know her blood type because each Scav Hunt team had to have someone of each blood type donate blood. The rarer the blood type, the more points the team earned. She also wanted JCL (Junior Classical League) ribbons and trophies from high school - confirmation of a long standing record of nerd status. Since those preliminary emails, we have had a conversation about whether or not I knew a disgruntled bee keeper and if I had any suggestions on how to construct a pipe with which you could blow bubbles and smoke at the same time.
Many of the Scav Hunt items require a great deal of creativity; others require stupidity, and still others just require balls - literally and figuratively. Today's call featured the status of the wicker phallus that they were building. (She has promised to send pictures.)
Because the scav list aims to have something for everyone, the college aged knitter is not left out.. Knit something useful out of plastic grocery sacks and demonstrate its usefulness. I suggested to my child, who does knit, that perhaps she could knit a condom for the wicker phallus. I suspect that both would be equally useful.
Reading the list is quite amusing even if you have no intention in actively participating. Offspring 2 did a dramatic reading in her Biology class on Thursday morning but was cut short because the language of the academy is not suitable for high school ears.
I have included the link to the complete list. It is not too late to help the team!
2008 List
