And another one....

Kate used the Serenity Prayer as the basis for her "prayer for my career."

And I got to thinking: a version of that would work well for me, too. So here goes:

God grant me the skills to inspire the students who do care
The strength of character not to take personally the boredom in the ones who don't
And the intelligence to understand that it's the ones who care that I'm teaching for, anyway.

Oh, and Joel did the Ten Commandments, so here's my version (not as elaborate as Joel's, but then, my background is more "plainspoken.")

1. I am ricki, thy professor. I hold the keys to your grade. Thou shalt not piss me off.

2. Thou shalt not make any graven image of a data graph using notebook paper when graph paper or computer program hast been specified.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of thy professor in vain, nor call her at home after 9 pm (even though thou hast been clever enough to find the phone number she dost not give out to students) nor refer to her as "hey you" nor mispronounce her name.

4. Remember the deadline, to keep it holy. [Yes, Joel and I have that in common]. Six days dost I give you to labor on your laboratory reports, if it not be done by the seventh, that is thine own sorry fault.

5. Honor thine other professors and teaching assistants; do not slander their names in ricki's hearing.

6. Thou shalt not unnecessarily kill leaves or insects or any thing that crawls upon the ground or flies in the air when we are on field trips. Nor shalt though damage trees by pulling the leaves off of them [Seriously: what is it with people and that? Out of a class of fifteen, I can usually count on having two or three who stand there and pick and shred the leaves of the shrub next to them if we happen to stop for a moment on a field trip. That kind of mindless destructiveness bothers me.]

7. Thou shalt not two-time research projects for my class. Thou shalt remain true to each of thine classes; if thou art doing research on turtles for Herpetology, thou must come up with something new for my class.

8. Thou shalt not walk off with clipboards, measuring tapes, staplers*, or other classroom equipment. Even though thy lab fees went (partially) to pay for it.

[*if I had been thinking the one time that happened, I could have kind of embarrassed the guy by doing my {pretty good} impression of Milton Waddams: "Sir? Sir? Excuse me? I believe you have my stapler."]

9. Thou shalt not attempt to blow smoke up my skirt when thou explainest why thou missed a deadline, failed to do a required part of lab, or otherwise failed to take responsibility for thine own deadline. Committing a falsehood in the service of saving thine own sorry ass merely compounds the error.

10. Thou shalt not covet my job, nor complain that I have "so much time off" that I canst not understand thy duress at having but a week to complete a lab write-up. Thou shalt not covet a larger truck, fancier cell-phone, or phatter wardrobe, lest thee begin working too many hours to pay for said thing, and thy grades slippest.


[as you probably have guessed, I LOVE doing this kind of thing. My favorite writing assignments in high school were when we were told to write a story or an essay "in the style of" some author we were reading - I remember doing a story in the style of the King James Bible, and one a la J.D. Salinger, and a parody of Oedipus....]