"I'm thinkin-a tryin out for a scholarSHIYAP."

A student of mine has four hour-long detentions he needs to serve with me for wasting four days of class last week. And today, he was on the time-wasting track again. So I said, "Wasting this hour will get you another detention. That will be five. Is that what you want?"

And then, in my head, I said, "You mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns!"


(And thinking of that movie, and how alarmingly similar I had sounded to Richard Vernon, was really the only thing that could've helped me out of this funk I'm in over my students' not-up-to-par work -- and clearly my not-up-to-par teaching -- on these research projects. Ungh.)