Punk'd

This week I started teaching a class on rhetoric and space exploration. Today's class was devoted to JFK's use of pathos in his 1961 appeal to Congress to beat the Reds to the Moon. Part of our discussion was to focus on Kennedy's verbal delivery, so I had them listen to an archival recording of JFK speaking. When I got to class, I turned on the projector and speakers to give the audio file a test-run, as the technology in my classroom is famously unreliable. Everything seemed ok until I tried to make the speech turn off - every time I clicked on something, another speech would start playing, until the classroom sounded like some kind of installation art piece involving the overlapping voices of American presidents. I kept turning things on and off to make it stop, but to no avail. This went on for some minutes, until a student confessed that they were playing the speech from their laptops. Little monsters. I stormed out of the room in jest, and told them that they are all meanies.

I'm telling myself that this is their way of saying they like me.