Good Adjuncting Stories

[Heather Hoffman]

From an essay on "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

The poet imagines a setting of the little town emptied of its folk. Then goes on to say, “thy streets forevermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.” He is saying art is deserted here and will never be able to return.

The sad part is, the student's entire paper revolved around the concept that "Art isn't there." So, um, he has to write the entire paper over...

Another student wrote a paper on World War II where she talked about how the Beaches of Normandy are next to the Arctic Ocean. When I got out a globe and showed her how, um, that isn't true, she realized that she'd mixed up Normandy with Norway.. but she was still reasonably certian that major battles during WWII happened near the Arctic Pole...