Comments made to my undergrad writing class:

1) As I leave them for 5 minutes to complete a short exercise:  "After you try your best on your own, feel free to talk with each other, or take out your cell phone and call your helicopter parents."

2) After a student mentions how arbitrary Greek gods are and is searching for words to describe them:  "Yes, they're kind of a-holes.  Or, since they are Greek, I should say, 'alpha-holes'."

3) In trying to relate to students, I drop Harry Potter references, then later say about a particular writing technique, "It's small but extremely mighty... like a house elf."

4) When that falls somewhat flat with the majority of students, I elaborate, "No, really, we may be from different generations, but I can relate, really I can.  When I was younger, you have no idea how much I was bullied on social media.  The other kids used to send me the nastiest letters by Pony Express."

5) When I pause over the plural of the word "thesaurus", someone says "thesauri", but then I'm like, "No, it's thesauroi," and I write it on the board in Greek.

Later, when someone uses the word "chiasmus", I'm like, "Want me to write that on the board in Greek too?", and someone says yes, so I do.

Still later, after I use the word "appreciation", I'm like, "Should I write that on the board in Greek?", and when someone says yes, I'm like, "But that's not a Greek word, come on, people!".

6) As part of my standard guessing game, I ask students to guess how old I was when I read a particular book, so this time, I asked them how old I was when I read The Thorn Birds (answer: twelve!).

No-one knew what that book was, so I had to explain to them that it was a 1980s trash sensation whose plot was essentially "a woman f*cks a priest in the outback" (substituting "makes love" for "f*cks"), and that it was also a legendary TV movie with Richard Chamberlain as the priest.

"It was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time," I was like.  "Scandalous."

Then, I was like, "Name some other twentieth century pop trash sensations."

"Twentieth century?", one student was like.  "That's hard."

I then wrote "Peyton Place" and "Valley of the Dolls" on the board, and explained that those were pop trash sensations of the 1950s and 1960s that they should know about.

None of the students had heard of them.

First, I pointed at "Peyton Place".

"Written by Grace Metalious," I was like.  "She was a housewife."

Then, I pointed at "Valley of the Dolls".

"The 'dolls' of the title are the pills that the three main women characters pop constantly as their lives decay and become increasingly empty," I was like.  "It was also made into a legendary movie with its theme song sung by Dionne Warwick."

Then, I added, "This is the world you live in, you should know it.  These really are major cultural touchstones, really they are."

Then, again I was like, "Honestly, go ask your parents about The Thorn Birds," I was like.  "See what they say."