When I was growing my my great aunt and uncle owned a farm in rural WI and had lots of different animals like llamas, donkeys, miniature horses, emus, peacocks, chinese deer, and varieties of waterfowl (with their own pond enclosure) including a breeding pair of black swans.

You are not wearing enough layers until you physically cannot move your arms!

I was just going to say that I wish I had access to a thermostat that controls my office. Our building cranks the heat in the winter - seriously two weeks ago when it was bitterly cold outside, it was over 80 F in my office.

I think this was a very cogent way of explaining it. I would add that the meme in its most basic sense contrasts ‘hypothetical stakes’ of this potential exchange. One outcome (laughter) is not as permanent as the other (death). This leaves little room for error in judgment of character.

I can appreciate your reaction to the original meme and I think that there are an awful lot of men who care deeply about these issues.

I wish the following story was a joke (it most definitely is not): not too long ago in a discussion of scores on evals, a friend (who teaches in a different department) remarked that the easiest way she knew to boost her student evaluations was to lose 20 lbs.

I like that idea too - because I feel like no matter how hard you try, in addition to your actual subject material, you must teach students how to think. This takes more time than the 15 weeks (we go by semesters) I have with them.

I find it eye-opening to “compare” comments with my peers. I have never heard any of the men talk about students that mentioned their appearance (whether the prof wore a suit every lecture or was more of the eccentric type with sandles and mismatched socks).

Weirdest comment received on a teaching evaluation: “Wore different earrings to each section.”

As a fellow fledgling professor, I would say that the reason that most professors do not take evaluations seriously because they are basically consumer satisfaction surveys. Students do not know what “good teaching” is to properly evaluate it.

I love Jena Friedman’s look from 2:37-2:38.

It definitely makes me jealous that some of the students are from such lovely climates that they don’t even think about checking the weather or how they are going to dress for it. :P

I do the same. So invariably sometimes I will look like a crazy person in rainboots with an umbrella even though it might start out sunny (or end sunny) because there was more than a 40% chance of rain and walking around on campus without proper gear really sucks!

Besides friends, I still insist that I receive a text from my parents (mid-fifties) and husband (29 years-old) letting me know that they got home safe from traveling (driving, flying, etc.). I just hate that feeling of not knowing...

I find it interesting to observe the difference in people’s habits concerning dressing for the weather. I think some people from climates much nicer than the two seasons we have in WI (the cold season and the muggy/hot season) are not used to checking the weather. I asked my students about this once and most of the…

Love this! One of my favorite parts of Lilo & Stitch :)

I have a companion parrot and I would agree with you 100% percent on the parrots as pets thing. In fact I persuade people not to keep parrots as pets.

As an actual Roman Historian, I feel compelled to weigh to say that basically everything on the Romans on the internet is at best specious and at worst entirely incorrect.

We had the same idea in our house after shutting Season 4 of weeds off! Our terminology is different: mil’ parker’ed

I have actually taught (twice) an introductory course on Public Speaking at a major research university in the midwest and honestly, there are so many issues with this speech (beyond misogyny and heteronormativity), that I find it appalling that this speech actually made it to the delivery in front of his class.…