Giving the teacher an apple replaced by leading the students with a carrot.
The majority of students today expect assignments with finite parameters, clear grading paths, and a checklist of things they can tick off to get an A.
“Pick my own topic for an essay? What do you mean by that? What topic do you want me to pick? Is there a list?” It would approach the comical if it weren’t so sad.
Even though I explain during my course introduction that merely fulfilling the parameters of the rubric will usually net no more than a C, and that to get an A they must write so well that I forget that I’m grading a paper and become simply a reader, my students want me to tell them how they’re supposed to do that.
I am a PhD student in Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas-Denton. I began my vocation through a nine year apprenticeship with my mentor, Richard M. Owsley. I can be found around Denton troubling students and professors about this and that. A fringe scholar wandering the borderlands between the Academy and the World, I love the hell out of Socrates and Yoda while tending to act like William S. Burroughs and Jaba the Hut. My current projects include studies of the Dào Dé Jing, the intersection of Karl Jaspers’ periechontology with Tarot, and the challenge of queering existential hermeneutics.
CALL ME MAGGIE 
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