Comments on: Can I Take a Mulligan on This Semester?

By: KF

KF — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:29:49 +0000

Oh, man. They had a procedure for declaring academic bankruptcy at my undergraduate institution, but it was a means of wiping not just a semester’s work but their whole undergraduate career off the books. The assumption was that most students who would want or need such a policy would be first-year students, and would just begin again with a clean slate.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:16:12 +0000

Actually, at my current institution you can indeed take a mulligan, though we use the more fiscally oriented term “academic bankruptcy.” Once in a student’s career, they can declare the results of a semester’s work unavoidably avoidable. But you don’t get to pick and choose: it’s the whole semester, even if you did pull that once class up….

By: KF

KF — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:23:04 +0000

Mais oui, mon cheri! � bient�t!

By: marcus

marcus — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:08:53 +0000

Visiting old friends in foreign countries provides a great karmic lift, n’est-ce pas ?

By: KF

KF — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 01:19:50 +0000

Oh, and Francois—I forgot to say:

I do hope the next hour brings you some joy (every time you reread this sentence).

Thank you for that, and for your thinkings-through. A day as a degree in the arc of the swing—there’s something very nice about that…

By: KF

KF — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:51:10 +0000

Shasta! Holy cow—long time, no see! So nice to meet up with you again, and how appropriate for our meeting-up to take place out here in the blogosphere. Thanks for your good wishes for a lightening semesterly load—which I could definitely use—and for the denial-and-beer suggestion. Yes, by all means—let me know when you’re around town, and we’ll meet up…

By: Shasta

Shasta — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:29:20 +0000

Kathleen, hello! A former Pomona student who reads my blog from time to time told me that you had your own blog, and I was delighted to have a chance to catch up with you. I do hope the semester lightens up for you–the only strategies I have for dealing with such circumstances are denial and beer, in that order. If you’d like to join me in some denial and beer next time I make it out to Claremont, let me know!

By: Francois Lachance

Francois Lachance — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 01:04:54 +0000

Hmmm. Because I was not conversant with the terminology of golf, I had to look up the expression “to take a mulligan.” In so doing I wondr how the “do over” could be applied to a span of time as long as a term or a semester. The mulligan usually refers to doing over a single shot in a round of golf? If the mulligan applied to the whole semester then the round would be multi-semester? Would a day in the semester represent one degree of the arc of a swing? I now imagine the learned blogger of Planned Obsolescence as a Duchamp-like figure off the staircase and on the links.

Were there not moments of levity this past semester?

If you want a quick fix of pure delight see the ping pang pong pung entry on Weez blog. Or a serene scan through some of the illustrations there. Perhaps Elouise could loan you a few to perk up the space of Planned Obsolescence? Jill Walker has also been doing neat stuff with digital snaps. Oh, just be iconoclastic and let the ekphrasis of commentators people your blog with Duchamp parodies.

I do hope the next hour brings you some joy (every time you reread this sentence).