If your professor assigns these readings in the first week, run.

Ah, the start of the semester—a time for excitement, a little nervousness, and a lot of new Pilot G2 pens! The first week should be syllabus week, but we all know that some professors get a bit eager when it comes to starting to assign readings. Let’s be clear! The real tragedy is having readings at all in the first week, but small tragedies are tragedies nonetheless, and if you were assigned these readings, it’s a sign to drop that class faster than Prezbo running the 100-meter dash in lamé (which has not happened yet, but there’s still one more year).

These ones go out to all of the first years in Lit Hum:

  • If your class starts off with The Aeneid instead of The Iliad, be on the lookout! Think about the kind of tone that your professor is setting… think about Dido…
  • If your professor is going backwards chronologically on the syllabus, they are just trying to confuse you on the passage ID quizzes. Don’t let them convince you that Paradise Lost came before the Bible.
  • All of Dante’s Inferno for the first day of class. To which circle does the professor who does that belong!
  • All of anything for the first day of class!
  • Anything for the first day of class!

Some of this stuff is just plain propaganda:

  • Hypernationalist short stories that literally end with a character writing VIVE LA FRANCE as large as possible on a chalkboard. VIVE LA FRANCE, I guess! I GUESS!
  • Sometimes Aristotle is necessary, but usually not. The guy was just saying stuff! Just like this article, kind of.
  • Any presidential garb from the past century. Is this Columbia University in the City of America?

Honestly, miscellaneous, because sometimes professors are just random and that can be a red flag:

  • We have all been personally victimized (or actually victimized) by Freud at one point. Having to read any Freud is a travesty, but reading Freud in a class about clothing? I bet Freud had never even seen a bowler hat in his life!
  • Maybe this isn’t a reading, but if your professor is assigning sit-down passage ID exams on your readings, maybe they’re not a good person. Maybe they are just hateful and loathsome creatures who were created in a lab to torture you in the most precise way.

If a first reading gives you the ick, maybe it’s a sign. When in doubt, drop the class!

pile of books via Bwarchives