I’ve laid out my plans for the class:
Twenty lectures, each a critical mass
That the students must master;
Though if this year’s like last year
The first two lectures through the whole term will last.
—Morris Swadesh III
Students looking for linguistic heroes
Soon learn instead to celebrate zeroes
Since almost every conundrum
From arcane to humdrum
Is a cinch without an empirical pose.
—Mannfrum van Tuckett
From standing in loco parentis
To students, most non compos mentis,
Who enact Barbarella or
Blue Velvet—nunc De Laur-
entiis timeo et dona ferentis.
—Pumptilian Perniquity
So your shiny new title is “Adjunct”—
And thus you will learn that you’ve been punked.
Life’ll school you, D.Phils;
Learning welfare pays bills
Means the subject of life you have just flunked!
—Κόμμα Ο᾿Κῶλον
Sites where students can rate their professors
For most teachers are powerful stressors.
Though you teach with great flair,
And your grading is fair,
You still score so much worse than your lessers.
—Chaz Tushka
Though I labored on case for a year,
Still the ergative failed to appear.
With my functionalist profs
My degree may be lost,
For the grammar is just much too clear.
—Aspergillus Niger
We follow a simple template
For each course until you graduate:
Some dubious claims
By illustrious names
And a theory ten years out of date.
—Pete Bleackley
Reading theses is really quite fun;
If you haven’t you ought to try one.
From the literature review,
To conclusion—right through—
The insights are second to none!
—Shiraz Sauvignon
