Niccum's Top 25

I took this post from Kurt Niccum's blog from a year ago. It makes me laugh.
-jason

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Thursday’s Top 25

This semester has proved to be the second most productive in my teaching career. Having sufficiently scared a large number of students, I walked away with over eight pounds of chocolate (actually about 6.5 after I finish eating lunch). My record still remains 10 lbs.

As you will see, the weight of the sweets does not nearly compensate for the amount of poorly written and poorly conceived material I must slog through. I love to teach, and I often mention that I would teach for free. I am not paid enough, however, to grade.

Of course my students, to a person, argue that I have created my own monster. If I would just choose not to make assignments and give tests, my life would be so much better. I would have to agree. On the other hand, I do prefer having hard evidence of the failings of the American educational system.

Still, this proves fascinatingly ironic. Of the 250 million surfers of the net in America, only 2% will be able to identify errors in the snippets below; even less will appreciate the humor. This number still exceeds the number of those who attempt to read my blog; so perhaps I should give up measuring student capabilities and composing blog entries. Until I decide… welcome to my blog all you foreigners! I hope you enjoy my tribute to America’s future.

We begin with what I lovingly call the “duh” files. Students, afraid that I might not catch the fine nuances in their writing, often leave me explanatory notes. Here are just a few:

“Now we must examine who these people were. They were real people who came from somewhere and were going somewhere and most definitely were on a mission.” (Always remember: wherever you go, there you are.)
Second Peter 2:17 is in a portion of Peter’s second letter.
Peter is the last of the apostles, and with this in mind, we can come to the obvious conclusion that after Peter’s death, there will be no more letters from the apostles. (Excellent logic. Unfortunately, faulty premises and untrue “facts” are the bane of all excellent logic.)
This is the reason I do not seek to be an elder in a church, because I don’t care for or like a lot of people. (Sounds like he needs to be a Bible professor instead.)
Kids are just like people, only littler. (It’s not the size that endears kids to me; it’s that they don’t write bad papers.)
The structure of Romans 12:9-13 is a structure itself, within the whole structure of Romans.
Paul’s letter to the Romans is obviously in the form of a letter.
Service is a great way to serve God and other people.

And now for my top 25 student errors:

25) “The lesson I have learned that teaches me in Matthew is that you should not let kids suffer in school.” (Could we change that to “should not let professors suffer in school”? Please???)
24) “She is an outdoors woman that has fun hailing hay with guys.” (I just want to know if the hay ever responds.)
23) “She asked me what I was studying and I told her Psychology and I lighted up.” (Ditto. Or is that Zippo?)
22) “The floor and the ceiling cannot take your stamen and falling.” (It’s such a stigma to be caught bringing a pistil into Horticulture 101.)
21) “Like these women one needs to step up even if they are in the right and end this corral before the whole church ends up in hell.” (Women should never be allowed near rodeos.)
20) “Without God doing this we would not be able to have entrails life.” (It took a lot of guts to write that.)
19) “I went to him shortly after in an attempt to make immense with the person who had been offended.” (Proof that obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S.)
18) “If the other person dose not fully understand what you are saying then it was not an affective discourse.” (Obviously doctors with really thick accents and overly exaggerated gesticulations make for better communicators.)
17) “One should not presuppose that he foresaw the intuitional church.” (So, will the real clairvoyant please stand up?)
16) “In the NIV it says ‘witch is no gospel at all.’” (Perhaps the NIV should start translating for the third grade reading level)
15) We have a three way tie for biblical sports fans: a) “A phrase worth studying more in the Letter to Laodicea is ‘golf refined by fire,’” b) “The religious claims being made are ‘the Lord is God’ and ‘Ball is God,’” and c) “They were to take a pure white lamb without any sports or blemishes.”
14) “If people really followed it, the quality of our community would improve incomprehensively.” (It’s true! The same thing occurs with my student papers.)
13) “All of God’s profits were being killed.” (Talk about huge overhead – those heavenly hosts are expensive to keep up, and the Pension plan is humongous.)
12) “Misplacement does not mineralize its importance.” (I think this was about the prophet Mica. He was always taken for granite.)
11) “In the Greek manuscripts the periscope does not appear until after A.D. 900.” (So now we know which came first – the periscope came before the submarine.)
10) We have a two-way tie for reading oneself into the text: a) “Jess’s dying on the cross was so important,” and b) “The Children of Israel were promised an Inheritance in the land of Canaan just as Christina is promised a home with God in Heaven.”
9) “I saw my friend there helping the student with her reading and spelling and since I am pretty good at English so I asked if a boy could do some heavy lifting while I help with what I’m good at.” (I couldn’t have said it better myself, at least while heavily sedated.)
8) “What would stop someone from saying, ‘Hey everyone, Thor now indwells my rubber ducky!’” (Apparently from Bert and Ernie’s Big Note Song Book of Germanic Mythology)
7) “So God had Moses have the children of God wander around in the dessert until every fighting man of that generation had died.” (What a way to go! I personally hope to die in a bathtub filled with chocolate.)
6) “Jesus identified the beard with his body and the cup with the new covenant.” (Maybe that’s why the denominational world call’s the Lord’s Supper the Whischarist.)
5) Another two way tie; this one for cannibals: a) “We are individualistic and survival-minded people, who carve and starve for respect,” and b) “She told of eating pizza in an Italian Chicago family.”
4) “As much as making money and martial possessions for your family is important….“ (Nothing says I love you like a pair of handmade nunchucks.)
3) “I expected to see all the people being rude or depressed, but, to my surprise, they were actually contempt.” (There’s nothing like actually exceeding one’s expectations.)
2) “Every one in this story, living and not, was excited about the birth.” (It’s the first time Uncle John, bless his soul, has shown any excitement since the funeral!)
and 1) “I went to install hurricane clamps to the raptors.” (That must have been particularly dangerous. Without training I’m sure the result would be a lot of Tyrannosaurus wrecks.)

I wish you and yours a very merry Christmas! (And if you are a student of mine, I look forward to you retaking my classes.)