Try, try again

*I tweaked and resubmitted a chapter proposal concerning Battlestar Galactica and fandom's fitting response. Maybe this one will be the proposal that gets accepted. This is the third attempt at getting some love for this current line of my research. I'm bound and determined that these ideas will see print. Brilliant ideas, I tell you! Brilliant!

*I visited the MRI Mobile late Tuesday afternoon (think bookmobile but with no books, just an MRI machine) and had the ankle-o-pain magnetized. There was some concern by hospital staff that all my piercings would be a problem. The MRI tech proper: "I've been doing this for 25 years. Your piercings aren't going to be a problem. Don't take them out." Thank goodness. All the piercings have to be removed with pliers and there's always the risk that I won't be able to get them back in if the metal gets bent too much or whatever. If I lived in a big city, not a problem. I don't live in anything remotely resembling a big city. MRI mobile, remember? I tried levitating metal objects after being MRI'd, but to no avail.

*Spring semester starts tomorrow. I'm teaching three classes I could take or leave. That's an occupational hazard, I'm afraid. In order to teach the way cool stuff, you have to teach the mundane stuff. Thankfully, I rarely have a semester where all three class are "meh." This just happens to be such a semester. I'll deal.

*Already dealt with a student crisis this afternooon: homesick, tears, cry for help. I'm a good listener, when I want to be, and I'm quick with the Counseling Center's number. I'm a professor, Jim, not a therapist!

*I'm in a really yucky space mentally and have been for quite some time. STK finally called me on my shit tonight. I love my job and my family but feel like I'm adrift. Is this what life is all about? That lostness translates to frustratedness, angriness, and general unlikeableness. Dark Me ascending is never a good thing. I'm in a space where I don't like people very much. Oh, I can fake it, but I'd prefer to be holed up in my home office by myself. The fewer people I encounter, the fewer who can irritate me. I have zero tolerance for anyone and anything. Z-E-R-O. Over the years, I've acquired the tools to get myself out of this space. The question of the evening is: When will I decide to apply those tools?

Hold the Phone

Dr. Footwork called this afternoon--he met with the radiologist, they went over my films, and they decided the oddness in the image probably isn't any kind of damage. They think. So, we're back to mystery pain. The next step is an MRI, which will happen late Tuesday afternoon. I'll meet with Dr. Footwork on Wednesday to go over the results.

The Doctor . . .

w00t. w00t.

A special shout out to Dr. Elusis. She jumped through the last phlaming hoop today and PhinisheD her Ph.D.

Welcome to the club! Your super secret decoder ring is in the mail.

Fiddlesticks

Remember that nagging case of post tibial tendonitis? After four more months of decreasing activity and increasing pain--ice massage, anti-inflammatories, and rest didn't do a damn thing--I finally caved and went to a doctor. We talked about all my attempted treatments, he poked around the ankle for 2-3 minutes, and offered his thoughts.

Doc: This isn't tendonitis.
Me: Ugh! So the sports medicine folks were wrong?
Doc: I'm pretty sure. You don't flinch at all when I mess with the tendon. The pain is inside the ankle, right?
Me: Yeah. Right under here (points to place where tendon runs).
Doc: Right. But I don't think that's the source of the problem. Let's get some x-rays. If that doesn't show anything, we'll go with an MRI.

So I trudged off to the x-ray lab, had some photos taken (5 minutes total--I love living in a small community--our hospital is part of the Mayo Clinic), and returned to Dr. Footwork. He turned on the light and took a quick look at my ankle.

Doc: Hmmmm
Me: Huh?
Doc: Hmmm. Just want you want to hear when a doctor looks at your x-rays, right?
Me: Uh, sure.
Doc: There's something showing up right here. This is fairly unusual, but not unheard of. I think you've damaged the deltoid tendon. See that spot right there? That's usually a sign of damage. I'll consult with the radiologist just to get a second set of eyes, but I'm thinking that's the problem.

The deltoid tendons are the ones that, in very basic terms, connect your leg to your foot.

It looks like I've damaged the posterior deltoid--that's the one on the inner part of the ankle. The damaged area looks to be right where the tendon connects to the ankle bone. So, I've been running on a damaged tendon for months. Figures. The good news is that this isn't something terribly serious like a tumor or damaged bone structure. If the diagnosis is confirmed--I should hear something today--I'll probably have to go for an MRI to get a crystal clear picture of what's going on. After that, we're more than likely looking at arthroscopic surgery to get things cleaned up.

What was my first question to the doc after he mentioned the probability of surgery?

Me: So, will I be back on my feet and ready to run when the weather warms up?
Doc: Are you training for an event?
Me: Well, I'd like to run the local 15K in July and a half marathon in August, maybe another in October.
Doc: I don't see any reason why you couldn't be ready for a race by the end of July. You should be ready to run by April, no problem.

Good news, good news. Let's keep the fingers crossed that the doc is right. ::crosses fingers::

Supermacho!

The following email slipped through the school spam filter. Boy, am I glad it did.

Be a supermacho!

Charge your one-eyed monster for 110% and have a lifetime fiesta with Your girl

This is the one and only remedy which works flawlessly!
Ask me why? Just because it's the Original thing.

You can Order it here:
URL withheld because I don't want anyone trying to horn in on my supermacho, lifetime fiesta vibe. Go charge your one-eyed monster somewhere else, buddy.

I Knew It

When A shipped off for the Marines several months back, he assured me he wouldn't deploy to Iraq for "at least a couple years. That's what I'm being told. Two years, then I'll have to do a tour in Iraq." Well, I talked to A couple days ago--he finally arrived at his permanent post in Hawaii. He called to give me his email address, his new cell phone number, and to generally chat it up. He casually mentioned he'd be deploying to Iraq in October. Uh, what happened to a couple of years? When I asked if he's receiving any special training, he said he wasn't. Instead, they're doing physical training, physical training, and more physical training. Not just get your ass in shape training, but combat training.

I've always been opposed to war. Now that it looks like I have a son headed into harm's way in a few months, you can bet I'm doubly opposed to war. What a stupid way of accomplishing any kind of change or conflict resolution.

The Return of the Feast

Friday, January 19, 2007, Feast One Hundred & Twenty Seven

Appetizer--Which television shows do you just refuse to miss?
Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Studio 60

Soup--Who did you last speak to on the telephone?
A, my son, called from beautiful Hawaii to let me know his new phone number, email, etc. As much as I dislike the institution as a whole, the military has been good for him. The bad: he's scheduled to head for Iraq in October.

Salad--How many pillows do you keep on your bed?
Nine. Four "regular" pillows, two body pillows, and three decorative pillows.

Main Course--Name one addition to your computer (software, hardware, etc.) that you'd love to have.
How about a new video card?

Dessert--What is your favorite foreign food?
I love most ethnic foods (I ate Afghani food last night), but Middle Eastern fare is definitely one of my favorites.

Help us Barak Obama. You're Our Only Hope

Well, it's official. Barak Obama is making a run for the Presidency. If any candidate in recent history had a chance of wooing my vote back to the Democratic party, it's Obama. We'll see if he's able to keep up all the great ideas he puts forth in The Audacity of Hope. He's smart, he relates to common folk, and is an absolutely fantastic public speaker.

Come to think of it, I might just vote for him based on his eloquence. I need some new presidential material with which to work in my rhetoric courses. Bush the Younger is just plain awful, Clinton played so many damn word games that you never knew what he was really saying, and Bush the Older was plain and uninspiring. You have to go all the way back to ravishing Ronald Reagan to find some truly excellent presidential speaking. Considering the President is the voice of a nation, 20+ years without a terrific speaker is pathetic.

Guess I'll be paying attention to the news for a while, eh?

War of the Ornaments

I'm not sure how the tradition started, but each holiday season my lovely sister-in-law sends all our family members an ornament. Somewhere along the line, she confessed to STK that picking an ornament for me was particularly challenging. Given her belief that I would reject anything other than a black ornament, I can understand the challenging nature of her quest.

This year, however, she crossed a line. Call it a shell across the bow, a thrown gauntlet, or a stick in a hornet nest, she has wakened a holiday giant that was best left sleeping. Just a few days before Yule, I received what will forever be known as the hideous cock ornament.

Have you ever seen anything more repulsive? Seriously, give it another look.

Who in their right mind designed that thing? Can anyone explain to me how this thing even remotely relates to Christmas, let alone any holiday?!

The moment I opened the box containing the Christmas Cock, the clock started ticking on my search for an even more repulsive holiday ornament. The War of the Ornaments has begun.

Ibuprofen, anyone?

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that lawmakers' criticism will not influence Bush's plans and he dismissed any effort to "run a war by committee."

"The president is the commander in chief. He's the one who has to make these tough decisions," Cheney said.

How's that president making all the tough decisions approach been working out for ya, Dick? From where I'm sitting, war by committee has to be an improvement.

President Bush, facing opposition from both parties over his plan to send more troops to Iraq, said he has the authority to act no matter what Congress wants.

"I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward," Bush told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview to air Sunday night.

He is the decider, you know. This guy couldn't make a good decision if his life depended on it. We already know he can't make a good decision when other lives depend on it.

I have a headache. I need to quit reading the news for a few years.

George Bush, er, Leeroy Jenkins

Well, the President has decided that more troops will secure the cluster frak that is Baghdad. Yeah, right. Will this guy ever learn? This whole operation has been so frelling botched from the beginning that there's little or no hope of a positive outcome. The best take I've seen on the President's refusal to listen to anyone outside of his intimate little cohort, comes from Kung Fu Monkey.

Check it out.

George Bush, are you Leeroy Jenkins? Thanks to WWdN: In Exile for pointing the way to this video.

Help Wanted

A few nights back, STK and I had a dinner conversation regarding my growing discontent with students. For the most part, the students I encounter are engaging, likable people; there are a few I'd probably seek out as a friend if I were 20 years younger. My discontent has nothing to do with whether or not they're likable people, but how they treat the educational process.

I specialize in a less-than-mainstream part of my discipline: the rhetoric of popular culture. In a nutshell, I'm interested in how popular culture artifacts function as part of our public discourses regarding cultural beliefs, attitudes, values, and social conventions. One day we might address how Britney Spear's antics contribute to our cultural conversation about feminine sexuality, the next day we might address how a Godzilla film acts as a cautionary tale regarding nuclear technology. My courses aren't quite that scattershot, but you get the idea. Considering that most of us are immersed in popular culture 24/7, I believe we're influenced by the ideas we see, hear, and read. Sometimes our core values are reinforced, sometimes our core values are challenged. Nevertheless, over time we can't help but be subtly influenced. We pick up on the major debates raging across talk television/radio and talk about these things with the people we encounter. We might pick up on recent fashion trends and adjust our own dress accordingly. We see a thought provoking film and spend the next few days re-examining our own beliefs. While I don't believe popular culture is the only culture influence that can do these things, I definitely think it's a major contributor. Understanding that phenomenon seems like a worthy, and important, career path for an academic, no? Shouldn't we take some time and examine those things that contribute to the formation of our cultural attitudes and values? And it's fun, too! Yesterday, I got to spend 1.5 hours talking about the cultural significance of Spider-man.

Back to the dinner conversation. I turned to STK and said something like the following: "I love what I do. REALLY love what I do. But students just don't seem to get it. I'll show a portion of a film, stop the DVD to engage in some discussion, and students growl. They want to sit around and watch TV shows or movies all day. Getting them to discuss anything other than the basic plot is like pulling teeth. Oh, there are always a couple students who do some good critical engagement, but the vast majority just sit there like I'm talking a different language. Am I nuts to be so passionate about this? Shouldn't more people be concerned with the deep meanings conveyed by popular culture? Seriously, there's more to Harry Potter than a story about a young magician who drinks pumpkin juice and fights the forces of darkness. There's an important message in the Harry Potter narrative regarding choice; Harry chooses the path of a moral individual. From the start of the very first book, there's an underlying message regarding choice; being a moral person requires that we continually choose to be a good person. It's not as simple as just being a good person; A moral person emerges from the moral choices he or she makes. Students don't seem to care about any of that. They just want to see Harry kick Voldemort's ass.

STK paused, thought for a moment, and said, "Most people don't want to think about life that much. They just don't care. It's easier to go through life not thinking, not challenging their own thoughts and actions, and just see that stuff as entertainment. You, on the other hand, you think about everything. Should people think more? Probably."

STK's right, of course. Most people don't see popular culture as a source of serious ideas or a significant contributor to everything from sexuality to national identity. I'm a pretty engaging teacher and the students seem to enjoy our discussions of these ideas, but how many of them actually buy it? From their papers, not many. They can spit back the theories, but their analyses are usually less than critical.

What brought on all this self-reflection? A fart joke, in the classroom, directed toward Wonder Woman. Oh, and a sexual comment regarding Supergirl. I'll see if I can muster up the energy to expand in another post. ::sighs::

I love my job but there are days when I wonder if I'd be better off working in a comic book store or as a barista.

Conversational Realities

Student (comment directed toward me): I think my date wore that same vest to prom.

Briefs

*Wicked busy at school and it gets busier tomorrow.
*TLO goes in for ear tube surgery Thursday, 7:30 AM.
*I have several things I'd like to blog about, but no motivation to write. Maybe tomorrow.
*The cold weather finally descends this weekend. Teens and twenties for the foreseeable future.
*I miss my dog.
*We talked about getting a puppy right away so he or she would be ready to travel this summer. I'm not sure I'm up to the stress of training a puppy.

Farewell

I received an unexpected, but welcome, email over the weekend. A long-time friend shared his sympathies and some much needed advice. I hope he doesn't mind, but I thought I'd share a part of my response to him--I just don't think I can write another version of events without going into another fit of crying. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm tired of crying. For today.

As the subject of your email suggests, arrivals and departures are the way of the world. I, of all people, should be able to grasp this concept. Intellectually and spiritually, I know this is as close to a fundamental truth as I believe exists. Emotionally, change hurts no matter how much we've thought out the various processes and scenarios. Still, your email reminded me of all the things Bishop has given freely, the lessons he helped me learn and the difficulties he helped me survive.

So, I made the best of the long weekend, spent tons of time with Bishop, thanked him repeatedly for offering his unwavering love and friendship, and made him as comfortable as possible. Unfortunately, we couldn't entice him to eat and by Monday evening he wasn't drinking any water. We spent Monday night watching movies, Bishop's head in my lap. Sitting there, I realized it was the last evening I'd spend with my dog.

I'll spare you all the details but we took him to the vet this morning and had him put to sleep. I was bound and determined to save him any undue suffering. All three of us were in the room with him; I held him as he slipped away. I figure I owed him that much. Wagging his tail until the very end, he drifted off to sleep.

Despite the traumatic events of this morning, I'm feeling far better today than I did over the weekend. The anticipation of the loss was killing me. Today, I'm dealing with it. Having lost her partner six years ago, STK is amazingly wise in matters concerning loss. She's quick to remind me that we never really get over the people who leave our lives. Instead, we learn to live with the absence. Feel the pain. Cope. Get up tomorrow. Repeat.

And I'm sure that's how things will play out presently. I turned to look for Bishop several times today, my eyes welling up when I realized I wouldn't find him. I swear I saw him move through my peripheral vision earlier this evening. Tomorrow, I'll probably look for him less and the tears won't come as often. By this time next year, thinking of him will evoke more happy memories than sad (although a twinge of sadness will always accompany fond memories).

Farewell, my friend. All other dogs who enter my life, and there will undoubtedly be another one or two, will be judged by your standard.* You gave me so much. I can only hope I gave enough in return. Rest well.


*The subject of another dog came up this evening, in fact. We'll likely hold off until summer, when we're around to watch and train a puppy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a new addition to our menagerie.

Fuck

Today has been a horrible, no good, fucking rotten day. Bishop, my companion for over 12 years, is dying. He's been reluctant to eat anything for the last couple days, so I took him to the vet this morning for blood tests. I knew when I took him what the results would be: kidney failure. He's not suffering, right now, but the not eating will start to catch up quickly. So, we'll spend a couple days coaxing him to eat, making him comfortable (which isn't really a problem--he's sleeping peacefully on the coach right now), and saying our goodbyes. I'll call the vet Tuesday morning and set the appointment. And how's Bishop handling the whole thing? He's wagging his tail non-stop, like the happy-go-lucky lab that he is. Me? I'm the human who gets far too attached to everything in his life and I've been crying for most of the day.

I can't even begin to explain how important this dog has been in my life. Maybe someday.

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

Even though STK, TLO, and I don't celebrate Christmas proper, we still like to make it a festive day. It's hard not to view December 25 as a day that's, at the very least, out of the ordinary. The phone is ringing far more than usual as the various family members call to wish us a happy holiday (even though they know we celebrate Yule . . . huh?), the town is even more quiet than usual, and any regular television programming is usurped by holiday marathons. Who doesn't like taking a day to catch up with family, relax, and watch the Polar Express? Cute movie, by the way. We managed to come away from the holiday season with a decent haul of loot, too. Some of the highlights of our booty include:

DVD Home Theater System (A gift to ourselves--our old system died a couple weeks back.
Superman Returns and Angel: Season 3
12 Months of Kaladi Brothers Coffee
Excellent goodies from Bath and Body Works and Aveda
Multiple Barnes and Noble gift cards.

We really didn't need any of it, and we've mentioned to our respective 'rents that the focus should be on the grandkids, but they just keep sending stuff our way.

Keeping up with my tradition of taking on a home improvement job on every major holiday, I tackled the problem shower for a couple hours. Since moving into the house, the master bath shower has always been unable to produce anything more than a luke warm water flow. Obviously, something has been amiss. I took the valve apart, managed to spray water all over myself and part of the bathroom floor as the valve blew out of the sleeve (I swear I thought I had another level parts to disassemble before shutting off the water--I was wrong), and found the problem. After removing some wicked calcium deposits (yea local limestone!) and putting everything back together, I think the problem is solved. The remaining problem, one I didn't discover until I had everything torn apart and put back together several times, is a slow leak (a couple drops a minute). After closer inspection, I think the leak has been there since we moved into the house and valve sleeve has been funneling a small amount of water back into the wall. For six months. And probably for several months, maybe even years, with the previous family. Thankfully, it wasn't enough water to do anything more than make the area damp. I hope. I'll head down to the local hardware store tomorrow AM and procure the gaskets I believe will solve the problem permanently.

Exciting day, eh? Here's wishing everyone a peaceful day.

Holiday Spirit

Just so all the Christmas celebrators don't think I'm a total Scrooge, I thought I'd share recent holiday indulgences.

*STK had a Hoho Mocha at Caribou Coffee. That's a mint white chocolate mocha, more or less.

*I purchased Sarah McLachlan's Christmas album, Wintersong, a couple weeks back and have listened to it a half dozen times.

*I have attended no less than three Christmas parties and never once uttered, "I'm not Christian," "Happy Yule," or "Merry Solstice," when greeted with "Merry Christmas!" In most instances I smiled and said, "You, too." Hey, whatever you believe is your business. I just hope you have a merry time celebrating it. Where's the dessert?

*We bought a small carton of egg nog today. Great in coffee. ::slurp::

*We've already watched Rudolf and The Grinch and plan on watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, my favorite Christmas program, in the next couple days.

*I changed my blog template to reflect my festive attitude.

*I've eaten fudge, peanut brittle, & frosted sugar cookies within the last 24 hours. The cookies had a delightful red & green thing going. There may have even been a red sugar sprinkle involved.

Sins of Our Students

I read the following piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier today. As The Chronicle is password protected (it's really not good enough to warrant password protection), I've copied the entire piece directly to my blog. This piece is spot on. If you want to know the mindset of most undergraduate students, here's the sad truth.

---
The 7 Deadly Sins of Students

By Thomas H. Benton
An Academic in America

I've been teaching for about 10 years now, and, of course, I was a student for 20 years before that. So I have some experience observing my students' sins, and perhaps even more experience committing them.

The sins that I see in the everyday life of the typical college student are not great ones. Most of the time, they don't seem like "sins" at all, even if one accepts the religious significance of the term. But they spring from thoughts and behaviors that, over time, become habits.

Enabled by institutions, students repeatedly take the path of least resistance, imagining they are making creative compromises with duty that express their unique talents. So they choose self-indulgence instead of self-denial and self-esteem instead of self-questioning. They do not understand that those choices will eventually cause more unhappiness than the more difficult paths they chose not to walk.

The traditional model of the "Seven Deadly Sins" provides a helpful means of categorizing -- and perhaps simplifying -- the complicated and cumulative experience I am trying to describe:

Sloth: Students often postpone required readings and assigned preparations, making it hard for them to understand their classes the next day. Gradually, lectures and discussions that were once interesting start to seem boring and irrelevant, and the temptation to skip classes becomes greater and greater, especially when the classes are in the morning. Sometimes students arrive late with -- in my opinion -- insufficient shame, closing the door behind them with a bang. Slothful students regard themselves as full of potential, and so they make a bargain: "I will be lazy now, but I will work hard later." Like St. Augustine, students say to themselves, "Let me be chaste, but not yet." More on lust later.

Greed: Students often pursue degrees not for the sake of learning itself but with the aim of getting a better-paying job, so they can buy a bigger house and fancier cars than those owned by their parents and their neighbors. That often leads to greed for grades that they have not earned. Some students cheat on exams or plagiarize their papers; others, sometimes the most diligent, harass professors into giving them grades unjustified by their performance. The goal of such cheaters and grade-grubbers is not the reality of achievement but the appearance of it. They will then apply to graduate programs or entry-level jobs that they do not really desire and for which they are not really qualified. They want to be lawyers, but they are bored by law courses. They want to be doctors, but they do not care about healing people. They want to go into business, not to provide useful products and services, but to get rich by any means necessary. And so they come to believe that no one has integrity and that there is no basis -- other than the marketplace -- by which value can be judged.

Anger: Seemingly more often than in the past, professors encounter students who are angered by challenging assignments, which they label -- with bureaucratic self-assurance -- "unfair" or even "discriminatory." When students do not succeed, they sometimes conclude that their professors are "out to get them" because of some vague prejudice. Students feel entitled to deference by professors who "work for them and should act like it." They do not come to office hours for clarification about an A-; instead, they argue that they are paying a lot of money and, therefore, deserve a high grade, and, if you don't give it to them, they will "complain to management," as if they were sending back food in a restaurant. One hears rumors of cars and homes vandalized by angry students. But, perhaps, the easiest places to find uncensored student rage are the anonymous, libelous evaluations of faculty members found online at Web sites such as RateMyProfessors.com. Often those evaluations say less about the quality of a teacher than they do about the wounded pride of coddled students. More on that topic soon.

Lust: I have seen students come to classes barefoot, with bare midriffs and shoulders, in boxer shorts, bathing suits, and other kinds of clothes that, even by fairly casual standards, are more appropriate for streetwalking than higher learning. When did liberation from uniforms transform itself into the social demand that one prepare to be ogled in the classroom? It is hardly a surprise that on RateMyProfessors.com, students are asked to rate their professors' "hotness" -- in other words, the teachers' worthiness to be sexually fantasized about by bored students. Even in high-school classes, as an observer of novice teachers, I have overheard lewd remarks about female teachers from denizens of the back row who fear no rebuke because none is forthcoming from the current culture.

Gluttony: It hardly needs saying that most colleges struggle to control alcohol consumption by students and the embarrassing incidents and tragedies that result from it. But there are other manifestations of gluttony these days. For example, when did it become acceptable for students to eat and drink in class as if they were sitting in a cafeteria? Nowadays, I occasionally encounter a student who thinks it's OK to consume a large, messy, and odorous meal in class. I once saw a student eat an entire rotisserie chicken, a tub of mashed potatoes with gravy, several biscuits, and an enormous soft drink during the first 10 minutes of a lecture. I felt like a jester in the court of Henry VIII. It seems hard these days to find a student in class whose mouth is not stuffed with food. Such students will often say that they have no other time to eat, but previous generations -- who were no less busy -- managed to consume small snacks between classes. That is why colleges have vending machines.

Envy: I think competition is a good thing in education; up to a point, it encourages students to work harder and excel. But the envious student, perhaps daunted by some temporary setback, comes to believe that education is "a rigged game." Envy is the voice of resignation that cringes at the success of one's peers: "Listen to her, trying to impress the teacher, like she's so brilliant. I hate her." Envy is the feeling that no one "earns" anything because there are no objective criteria of accomplishment; and, as a result, success and failure seem to be based on political and personal preferences. But envy is not limited to differences in effort and ability. Even more pervasive is a sense of unjustified economic inequality, but, it seems to me, the fashionable students in their convertibles who jeer the commuters at the bus stop commit a greater sin than those who envy their money and status.

Pride: I once asked a group of 20 students how many thought they were "better than their parents"? All of them raised their hands. I didn't ask, but I assume they all believed they were better than their teachers too. They would rise higher, be more successful, and transcend the limitations of their elders. We read this belief in our students' expressions: "What you know is not worth learning. They're just your opinions anyway. I am young. I have infinite potential. You are old. And you're just a college professor. But I will be rich and famous someday." They have rarely been given a realistic assessment of their abilities and prospects. Out of this pride -- nurtured by the purveyors of unearned self-esteem, personal grievance, dumbed-down courses, and inflated grades (often in the guise of liberality) -- the opportunity to earn an education is squandered by prideful students who can make a potential heaven seem like hell.

The concept of the "Seven Deadly Sins" comes out of the Christian tradition, but it also has value as an ethical guide or at least as a means of avoiding unhappiness. Increasingly, as a professor who teaches undergraduates, I believe that one of the paramount purposes of a liberal-arts education is to help young people acquire the wisdom to escape those sins, particularly the last one from which the others often spring.

A liberal-arts education, as I see it, is not about acquiring wealth and opportunities to further indulge one's desires. Nor is it about cultivating in students an insular, idolatrous view of their nation, ethnic group, gender, or religion. It is also not about celebrating the so-called "great tradition" of authors, philosophers, and artists.

It is about the recognition, ultimately, of how little one really knows, or can know. A liberal-arts education, most of all, fights unmerited pride by asking students to recognize the smallness of their ambitions in the context of human history, and more. Whether it is grounded in faith or not, a liberal-arts education should help students to combat the Seven Deadly Sins with the "Seven Contrary Virtues" of diligence, generosity, patience, chastity, moderation, contentment, and, most important of all, humility.

Of course, moral perfection seldom arrives at graduation, even in the best of cases. I teach the courses, and yet I must present myself, at last, as the "Chief of Sinners." The behaviors I observe in students often reflect the deeper drives -- the resentments and weaknesses -- of their teachers. Perhaps the impulse to identify the sins of others reflects a corruption more serious than any I have described here. And that is why, next month, I will sermonize on the "Seven Deadly Sins of Professors."

Thomas H. Benton is the pseudonym of a soon-to-be associate professor of English at a Midwestern liberal-arts college. He writes about academic culture and welcomes reader mail directed to his attention at careers@chronicle.com
---

The one section where do disagree with the author is his discussion of lust. To be honest, I don't care what a students wear's to class provided she or he participates in a meaningful way. Jeans, pajamas, whatever. For the record, I've been identified as "hot" on one of the professor rating sites and I've been described as "the best dressed professor on campus" at my current gig. Both those comments make me feel pretty darn good. There you go.

Harry Potter News: Title Announced

Go to Rowlings' site, follow the directions, and the title of the next HP book is yours! No announcement regarding the date, though.

1. Click doorway in mirror to see Christmas tree.
2. Click on the top half of the door to get the wreath.
3. Click on the top of the mirror to get the garland.
4. Click on the spider web right next to the door to make them go away.
5. Click the 4th chime in the window and get the key for the door.
6. Drag key to unlock the door.
7. Door opens to show a desk with a package.
8. Click the bow on the package and it will open.
9. Click the inside of the package and a game of Hangman is shown where you can play a game to guess the name of the seventh book.
10. You can keep playing till you get it right and when you do a check mark will appear.

Nice name.