Sure, my students frustrate me at times, and they confuse me often; but they also make me laugh and think daily.

Every single day I laugh in each of my classes.  My students are funny, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, often all at the same time.

We are reading Oedipus the King and Antigone, and just the other day a student commented that Antigone and Ismene were “delicate little incest babies.”  I laughed and laughed not solely because her comment tickled me (which it did, greatly), but also because it was clear that she had synthesized so many ideas we had studied with her own thoughts to come up with, off the cuff, that comment.

I laugh every time I think about it, which is often.  I’m cracking up right now.  But I suppose I find this so humorous in part because, like Lydia in Beetlejuice, I myself am strange and unusual.  Perhaps that’s why I have found occasion to slip a brief re-enactment of the eye-gouging scene in Oedipus into nearly every class discussion we’ve had.  Umm, I think it’s been every class discussion we’ve had since reading that portion of the play.

Did I mention that my students also laugh every single class period?  For some reason, they find me entertaining.

If you’re unfamiliar with Oedipus the King, Antigone, or Beetlejuice, you should really Google them.  Each in its own way is a bizarrely good time.