Teaching millennials.

The other day I was teaching writing to the freshpeople, and we were going through people's papers post-grading in order to talk about argument development and editing.

At one point, I asked them to read a (just over a page) paragraph from one paper, so that we could do some editing techniques on it.

"But it's so long!", someone sighed.

"It's just over a page," I was like, "C'mon.  Has Twitter rotted your brains that much?".

And then, I put on a millennial voice and was like, "Oh man, this is so long, it's more than one hundred and forty characters!".

A few people laughed, but most didn't.

Anyhow, for the guessing game to determine the order in which we discuss people's papers, I usually have them make a list of some category, and then they select which ones they think are my favorites (e.g. from a list of Harry Potter books or recent movies, etc.).

This time, they had picked Mexican food and made a list and then selected from it, and from that list my least favorite thing was fish tacoes.

So, when it came to the fish taco girl's turn, I was like, "Man, fish tacoes, I just don't like those."

But, she was like, "They're awesome, maybe you just haven't had the right one!".

At that, I was like, "Maybe, or maybe you're going to have me go around and try dish after dish after dish of something I really don't like."

At that, I mugged, "Millennials, they're so passive-aggressive..."

She laughed, but most people didn't..

It's funny how you can tell who's cool based on whether they get the jokes I make or not.