Important work on my thesis (that I was totally doing and in no way playing Krakout whilst thinking about chicks) was interrupted yesterday by Josephus arriving with an urgent question. It's always flattering to be asked for advice by my junior colleagues, so I was glad to help.
"What can I do for you?" I asked in my most friendly and yet patronising tone.
"What the accepted procedure if an undergraduate signs off his homework with a picture of a penis?" Josephus replied.
Now, this is a difficult question. We have yet to write the paragraph of departmental policy that deals with representations of male genitalia, so a certain amount of improvisation is required. More importantly, though, it raises a number of important and yet disturbing questions. Some wished to know whether the image was a self-portrait (obviously I don't have the ability to recognise undergraduates purely by their naughty rods, though if it that was the artists' own attributes I'm not sure they were worth advertising). Others demanded to know whether the penis was worth anything without the working out, even if it was the answer to using trigonometry to prove the triangle inequality.
Mainly, though, I just want to know how someone can be admitted to one of the foremost mathematics departments in the country and still be unable to resist the urge to draw phalli about the place with idiotic abandon?
2 comments:
At least say it was a first year.
I've never seen anything bad on a homework here (except the huge first-page drawing of Pac-Man on the homework of a student called Pac Man, but that was done by one of the markers) but one of my little cherubs did once tell me to "suck a dick" before walking out of a tutorial. But since he was being something of a dick himself, it was one less prat to worry about and I was happy to see him chuff off.
The correct response is to add a note that his answer/proof is unique and has been handed on to the course director for discussion, so that he doesn't lose marks.
Alternatively just mark the answer to every question on his homework with a similar sign.
I once signed a lab book completion form kittykat after a student chose to address me as 'Hey, Kitty'. When he realised and few days later he was very repentent and thought he might lose module marks for non-attendance.
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