Meme

In this day and age I guess you know you've arrived when you're a meme.  One of my students first showed me this a couple years ago, before I even knew what a meme was.  Truthfully, I had completely forgotten about it until my student Abel and my friend Cinse's son Richie mentioned it to me.  I guess when your picture is on the Internet (and for some reason mine is too much - just do a google image search for Gary Scudder - it's not as bad it was a couple years ago, but I still pop up way too often) these things happen.  My good friend Mike Lange always tells me that he doesn't want any Internet profile whatsoever, and I suppose there's some logic in that.  The one thing I find bothersome about this particular meme, beyond the ridiculous hat, of course, is that in it I require students to buy a $150 textbook and then don't make them read it -when in reality I would never choose a book that expensive and I abuse my students by making them read every word of every book.  The Core Division, where I am housed here at Champlain, really makes a very concerted effort to hold down book costs (actually, I think we care about it too much, but that's just my own personal belief).  Still, if the silly meme gets across the message that some professors are careless in how they assign and use books then it is all for the good.  Except for the hat.  And at least I'm not a cat with a big frown.

Well, in fairness, I do tell them that they're going to fail a lot.