About Me

Woman, reader, writer, wife, mother of two sons, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, state university professor, historian, Midwesterner by birth but marooned in the South, Chicago Cubs fan, Anglophile, devotee of Bruce Springsteen and the 10th Doctor Who, lover of chocolate and marzipan, registered Democrat, practicing Christian (must practice--can't quite get the hang of it)--and menopausal.
Names have been changed to protect the teenagers. As if.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Grading II

Still grading final exams. Universal suffrage seems more and more like a really bad idea.

A student in my "Western Civilization since 1500" class thinks that Germany failed to defeat the Soviet Union in World War II because Hitler insisted on mounting the troops on elephants for the invasion.

Really.

I suppose she sat there, probably hung over, terrified of failing, knowing nothing, and somehow, in some mysterious way, a little glimmer, an inkling, a scrap of a fact, a ghost of a memory drifted down and settled in. Something about a commander whose name started with an 'H' and who suffered a terrible military defeat.

Hannibal. Hitler. Ancient Rome. The Soviet Union. All in the past. A bunch of dead guys. History.
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1 comment:

  1. SentioetexcruciorMay 16, 2011 at 9:51 PM

    Your life and mine have just collided. Your students and mine confuse Hitler and Hannibal. Argh.

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