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Professor's hilariously exasperated message to students illustrates how teachers are so done

"I will then promptly print 100 copies of the assignment out, put them in a pile, light that pile on fire, and dance around the rubble as it burns. I will then put my hand on the smoldering embers so that I may feel again. Feel what, you might ask? Anything. Literally anything."

Photo by Vanessa Garcia from Pexels

A professor's message to students has gone viral.

If you know any teachers, you probably know how utterly exhausted they all are, from preschools all the way up through college. Pandemic schooling has been rough, to say the least, and teachers have borne the brunt of the impact it's had on students.

Most teachers I've known have bent over backwards to help students succeed during this time, taking kids' mental and emotional health into consideration and extending the flexibility and grace we all could use. But teachers have their own mental and emotional needs, too, and at some point, something's gotta give.

A college student posted screenshots of a professor's message on Twitter with the comment "someone PLEASE check on my professor." It's simply incredible.

The message reads:

"There is no class tomorrow. I've got some things to take care of regarding this and my other class, and my full time job. I have received countless emails about zeroes on assignments either through errors I've made, you've made, or simply people not realizing or knowing they were supposed to turn it in and then realizing in panic they received a zero on it for (surprise), not turning it in. It seems that giving you a free assignment so long as you turn SOMETHING in created far more chaos than good will. Apologies. That's on me. And you. But also me. But also you."

Then it went on…

The professor gave a bulleted list of instructions for what clearly sounds like a very simple, easy assignment designed to give students an opportunity to boost their grades.

"- Submit it. I've extended the deadline until tomorrow before Midnight.

- If you do NOT turn it in before then. I'm sorry. It's a zero. No excuses at this point and frankly, I regret ever trying to make this assignment easier because it's created more problems at this point.

- I will look at these, do not do something stupid like type 'b' or 'i did it'. I will become enraged and bitch about you for exactly 15 seconds to anyone within my proximity who will listen. I will not hold back.

- After I receive these, I will give you full credit (pending the above prerequisites). I will then promptly print 100 copies of the assignment out, put them in a pile, light that pile on fire, and dance around the rubble as it burns. I will then put my hand on the smoldering embers so that I may feel again. Feel what, you might ask? Anything. Literally anything.

- I will then sleep like a baby, having put this nightmare behind me."

Absolutely classic.

The professor saw the tweet his students shared after it went viral and chimed in with a response.

And he added an update on how things were going on the assignment front.

Other teachers responded to his woes, commiserating over students being handed a chance to improve their scores and simply … not doing it.

It's been a challenge during the pandemic to figure out how much to expect of any of us, hasn't it? Some leeway is definitely warranted, but are we enabling bad habits when we give too much? There are no right answers to that question. We're all winging it, trying to navigate uncharted waters and having to constantly readjust as things change.

It's exhausting. We're all exhausted. But teachers are at a level of "done" that few of us can fathom. Healthcare workers can fathom it. Anyone working with the public the past two years might get close. But until you've actually taught, you don't know. Teaching is hard under normal circumstances. Pandemic teaching is a whole other ballgame.

We feel you, teachers. Hang in there, and enjoy this bit that will undoubtedly feel familiar:

This article originally appeared on 11.22.21

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Joy

13 times Ohio State's marching band threw hilarious next-level shade on Michigan

By next-level, we mean WOW.

@historyinmemes/X

Ohio State's marching band throwing the Michigan flag into the "trash."

What do you get when you mix a 127-year college football rivalry with highly competitive and talented musicians? The Best Damn Band in the Land, that's what.

Ohio State's marching band, which unjokingly refers to itself The Best Damn Band in the Land—or TBDBITL for short—even has the acronym for the nickname included in its website URL.

The rivalry between The Ohio State University and University of Michigan football teams is legendary, and so is the back-and-forth between their marching bands. Ohio State just keeps upping its delightfully petty game of trolling Michigan in its pregame and halftime shows, much to the delight of Ohio State fans.

In one performance, the Ohio State marching band members form two ships, one bearing the Michigan flag and one bearing Ohio State, and the Ohio State ship "sinks" the Michigan one. In another, the create a car race between the two teams with Ohio State hitting the "finish line" first. In another, the band storms a Michigan castle and replaces its banners with Ohio State flags.

Michigan's flag has been thrown away, donkey kicked, smashed with sledge hammers, stomped on, sliced with scissors and more as the TBDBITL members pull off impressive feats of choreography, all while playing their instruments.

Even if you don't give a rip about college football or either of these teams, you gotta admit this is unbelievably cool:

Marching bands don't often get the respect they deserve, especially in the shadow of the big football programs they support. But what these folks do is not easy. They work hard—in fact, one study found that “the physical challenges and demands of participating in competitive marching band is similar to athletes who compete in sports."

Add in the skill of playing a musical instrument and the coordination it takes to do both in a highly choreographed performance, and phew. Seriously, give these kids some accolades.

And in case you were wondering, yes, Michigan's marching band does similar trash-walking in their performances, such as this 2021 game in which they made Ohio State lose a game of beer pong:

People can root for whatever team they want, but I think we should all root for the marching bands, whatever side they're on. They certainly deserve it.

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Family

Does infidelity have an expiration date? Man considers divorcing wife who cheated 20 years ago.

It happened so long ago. Should he just let it go?

via Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

A man considers divorcing his wife after learning she cheated 20 years ago.

Is there an expiration date for infidelity? If you learned your spouse cheated on you 10, 20, or 30 years ago, would it be any more or less significant than if it happened last week? Is it easier to forgive something that happened years ago or does their silence over all these years make the indiscretion even worse?

A Redditor recently posted that he’s divorcing his wife after learning she cheated on him 20 years ago and the commenters overwhelmingly support his decision. Why? It wasn’t necessarily that she cheated, but how she handled the situation.

“My wife (44F) and I (43M) have been married 20 years,” the poster wrote. “We started dating in high school when I was a junior and she was a senior. We were long-distance for her first two years of college while I was in high school and did one year at community college, then we went to college in the same city for a year and have lived together since.”

The poster later clarified that they were “long-distance,” but they were only about 3 hours apart and saw each other a couple of weekends a month.

The couple has two children, who are 19 and 17 years old. The poster says that their 20-year marriage had been “pretty good” until he learned the truth about what happened during the 2 long-distance years in college.

divorce, infidelity, ami

A group of friends having some drinks.

via Lisa Fotios/Pexels

​The couple got together with some of the wife’s college friends after Christmas when the conversation strayed into some very sensitive area. “Her old college roommate commented that it was crazy that we met in high school, had a few wild years in college, then ended up together,” the poster wrote.

The problem was they were together the entire time.

“The roommate started to tell a story, but my wife cut her off and said she was uncomfortable about it. I sensed something was up, so I said that we actually started dating in high school and were together for my wife's entire time at college,” the poster continued.

When it came out that they were together during his wife’s “wild” years, the old college friends got really quiet and the rest of the night was extremely awkward. When one of the roommates was leaving, she told the poster to have an “honest” conversation with his wife about their college years.

The next day, the wife admitted to sleeping with at least 10 men during her first 2 years of college when the couple was in a long-distance relationship. She also admitted that she introduced her future husband to 3 of them as “friends.” But she didn't think it was a big deal because it was a high-school relationship she didn't think would last.

infidelity, divorce, reddit

A couple having a heart-to-heart conversation.

via Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

The wife is still in contact with one of the men.

Now is where the husband has a real dilemma. Can he forgive his wife for cheating on him with a significant number of men while they were in a long-distance relationship and never telling him? The answer was no. The big reason was that she showed a complete lack of respect by parading the men in front of him.

“I've stood by my belief that cheating on me with multiple men for years is unacceptable no matter when it happened and the fact that she continued to maintain relationships with these guys right in front of me was an unacceptable amount of disrespect,” the poster said.

On January 2, the man filed for divorce from his wife. Five days later, he posted about the situation on the Am I Wrong Reddit subforum and the commenters overwhelmingly took his side. Some could understand a little cheating happening while they were long-distance, but no one could abide by the way she introduced her future husband to the men she slept with.

"I actually came into this thread thinking, ‘Well, I could understand him getting divorced over cheating in the past, but if it's a 20-year happy marriage and a one-time mistake while they were in the very beginning of dating, I'd try to work on it.’ But the continuous humiliation of having your girlfriend cheat on you while you're getting introduced to those men and still know one of them? Man, how do you get over that," Candy Puppet wrote.

“It was 20 years ago, but that amount of savageness would be hard to look past, especially when she still associates with the other men. That is just a continual slap." Thanos13 added.

They also praised the friend who told the poster to have a conversation with his wife.

"Honestly, her friend who took OP aside is a good human. Could have let it slide & let him go on clueless about the wife's past." Likeapuma wrote.

The post goes to show that there are no hard and fast rules to deciding how to deal with infidelity and some people are okay with forgiving an indiscretion that happened years ago. Getting carried away and sleeping with someone while in college is one thing, but few could forgive the way the wife seemingly shoved it in her husband’s face without him being aware years later.

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Joy

Parents bond over the embarrassing questions their kids ask when they go off to college

A viral series of TikTok posted by comedian Chip Leighton has parents laughing over the truly outrageous questions they get from their freshman kiddos.

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They'll learn someday.

Heading off to college marks a major transition in a young person’s life—a distinct shift from childhood into adulthood.

Except, that shift isn’t always an instant transformation into complete self reliance, as many parents find out. In fact, lots of parents discover that their kids relied upon them for even the most basic information. Like, to a hilarious degree.

Chip Leighton, comedian and creator of the marriage/parenting themed TikTok series “The Leighton Show,” recently had parents share the wildest questions their college freshmen ever asked them after leaving home.

In the viral clip, we see oh-so innocent, oh-so bizarre questions ranging from "I can use my expired passport to get out of Mexico, right?” to “does the post office sell stamps?” to…wait for it…”what time is noon?”

Bless their hearts.

@the_leighton_show Posting this again for all the parents who just dropped kids off at college #teenager #text #college #freshman #funny ♬ original sound - The Leighton Show

After his original video got 2.3 million Leighton followed up with several more, each question more outrageous than the next—leaving parents virtually cackling.

Here are just a few gems:

“What’s grandma’s actual name?”

“Can I use the bathroom on a plane?”

“How often is annual?”

“Do we live above or below sea level?”

“How do I know when water is boiling?

“Pork chops are part of a chicken right?”

Of course, the comments sections of Leigthon’s videos were equally rife with hilarious anecdotes from parents.

One wrote, “My college freshman daughter: which one makes noise? Lightning or thunder?”

Another shared, “My college sophomore was recently filling out a job application and asked me if she was a veteran." Oh dear.

@the_leighton_show OK - the passport one was from a 29 year-old. All from your comments. #college #freshmanyear #teenager #text #funny #greenscreen ♬ original sound - 𝙷𝚊𝚗♡

Other parents went a different route, sharing comical misunderstandings their Gen Z kids have made.

“I told my college freshman son that something cost ‘sixty five hundred dollars’ and he told me to ‘speak English please,’” one parent wrote.

Another added "Daughter: What places have I been to? Me: Lists locations and Disney was one of them. Daughter: So I've never been to the US?"

While of course it’s fun to laugh at these (mostly cause we’ve all been there and thank god we aren’t there anymore) there could be something to be said of instilling a “there are no dumb questions” policy.

After all, going to college is an exciting experience, but it can also be a daunting and lonely one.

It’s a huge adjustment for teens to step into a new routine, new location, new friend group, new responsibilities…and all without having their normal support system close at hand. So even a simple answer to “how do I know which sock is the left one?” could be the very thing that provides a bit more emotional security during a big transition.

@the_leighton_show All from your comments. #teenager #college #freshman #text #humor #greenscreen ♬ original sound - 𝙷𝚊𝚗♡

And the bright side to all this—it’s easier than ever for parents to record these questions to bring up for a good laugh many years later.


By the way, Leighton has all kinds of hysterical comments gathered from teenagers, along with some other funny content. Find it all on his TikTok

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