S**T My Professors Say

Despite my hopes to get better in touch with my inner city dweller this semester, much of my time has been consumed by the beast that is the Emerson lifestyle. More of training camp for future yuppies than a traditional college experience, it’s difficult to find time simply to play in the city. Being sucked into the vortex that is Boylston Street has made it difficult to find material for my blogging needs. While the adventures of navigating through Emerson’s red tape would be enjoyable, I’m not too sure if I want to relive my day to day frustrations. And though I have plenty of stories from work involving difficult stage moms, passive aggressive office reminders, and people who can’t read a simple website, it would be nice not be fired for breaking federal privacy laws. I’d hate to end up on one of those 60 Minutes specials as that dumbass who gets fired for blogging about work.

But that’s not to say I haven’t been enjoying the past few weeks. There has been plenty of couch dancing at apartment parties to this little medley. I helped plan a Westborough Baptist Church counter protest in support of equality and acceptance. I even tried lamb for the first time at a local Ethiopian food restaurant with my friend Rachel. This will certainly make me more qualified for Peace Corps deployment in Sub-Saharan Africa one day.

But in all honesty, I’ve spent much of time performing physco-analytical analyses of Marxist social movements and understanding the role femin-nazis and the second wave women’s movement have played in developing the field of queer theory. Challenging, enjoyable, but certainly not leisure reading. While the course work is dense, lectures are always an adventure. Like the students, professors at Emerson seem to be eccentric and opinionated. Qualified and educated? Yes. Ability to go a whole lecture without one snide remark? Unlikely. But anyway, enough of my musings. Without further ado, here is some shit my professors have said. Hope you enjoy.

“The term SMO is short for ‘social movement organizations’. But I think that’s just because referring to them as SM [sado-masochism] would be embarrassing.”

“Well, theory IS sexy.”

“It occurs to me that the Teaparty candidate in Delaware began a public campaign against masturbation two years ago. She’ll enjoy the move to Washington because a lot of that goes on there.”

“Let’s take a look at those women on madmen. All they do is get drunk, have affairs, or both! Much better to join the mass [women’s] movement.”

“Who needs free speech rights for people you don’t like?”

“I hope you all enjoyed the reading last night. Who doesn’t love a good ol’ fashioned ball shaving?”

And without further ado, from my favorite guest lecturer from University of Northern Texas…

“Like we always say in the Department of Women’s Studies at UNT, you can’t spell c**t without u-n-t!”

Welcome to the madness that is my time at Emerson College.