As the first week of the spring semester comes to an end, Bwog shares some of the most wild and noteworthy words we heard from our professors.

Professor Edward Mendelson, Virginia Woolf: “Your mother doesn’t care about your thesis.”

Professor Michael Witgen, The Battle for North America: “If you don’t show up to class, it’s gonna be difficult for you to—actually, this is Columbia, so you’ll all probably still churn out f*cking awesome essays from any random sources on the syllabus—but please still show up to class.”

Professor John McWhorter Intro to Linguistics: “Now, even if a cat had seen a giant squid washed up on the beach, the cat could not the next day communicate to another cat that they saw a giant squid on a beach, nor could they even communicate to the cat that they saw something really big and strange on the beach, nor could they communicate to another cat that, in the past, they saw anything at all, nor could they communicate to a cat, then, that they were looking at anything at all.”

Professor Erik Gray, Victorian Poetry: “Art is the one thing that can link together conflicting halves.”

Professor Erik Gray, Literary Texts and Critical Methods: “Reading is a lot like sex.”

Professor Timothy Mitchell, Rethinking Middle East Politics: [on Canvas] “Dishonesty can now involve consequences worse than the embarrassment suffered by the MacArthur-prize-winning Mr. Critchfield in Chapter 4.”

Professor Jenny Boylan, Imagination and Revision:

• “All of your drafts should be uploaded to curse words. Curse words? CourseWorks.”
• “This is the puppet-eating puppet dog. Say hello to everyone, dog.”

Professor Margaret Vandenburg, New Millennial American Fiction: “Are any of you familiar with Y2K? Good. I’m glad it’s become popular again.”

Professor Colin Wayne Leach, Social Psychology: [In response to the question, “I was wondering what your policy on Covid is, Professor?”] “Covid is bad.”

Professor James Applegate, Earth, Moon, and Planets:

• “If your mother held you up to the sky on the night you were born and said, ‘Behold the stars, my newborn child!’ and then if you saw the stars again after a very long and happy life, they would look the same as they did when you were an infant.”
• “Infants are not good at seeing things.”

so it goes via LibreShot