Loaded Stasis

Apparently, I didn’t get the message from Professor O’Connell, and I just had to test the limits by handing in my “book report” to Professor Rybcynzski three weeks late and twice the maximum length. This was grad school, when I was supposed to be on my best behavior, not my worst. Then again, this was grad school: book reports?! Here is his reply.
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Buried within this overlong and sometimes tediously argued (and sometimes quite funny) paper, is the assignment I asked for, so, except for tardiness, you have done what I requested. On the other hand, to follow your metaphor, fast-track writing means starting to write before you are finished thinking. A little more thought might have suggested that the over-burdened professor, reading 64 essays, might not have appreciated spending twice as much time on an essay, however amusing the author’s conceit.

18/20, late = 17/20

Loaded Animus

As the Philemon entry made clear, I really kind of got into bullshit in college. Nobody called me on it until Professor O’Connell in his economic development seminar. Here are his remarks to my third and final paper, when he just couldn’t take it anymore.
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Chris,

I have to come clean – I find your style of argument in this paper, while often informative and entertaining, ultimately and cumulatively irritating. Here’s why: you spend 90% of your energies “complexifying” yet in the end your conclusions – from so superior a position – are not only facile but (in your last sentence) self-negating. I can only take a certain number of levels of irony!!

In the end, understadning Kenyan exceptionalism is more important – for Kenyans and Tanzanians – than you make it out; but more importantly decisions have to be made based on the
weight of evidence, not on certainty!*

Prof. O’C A-

* To expand slightly – you write REALLY well, and overall the paper is very good. But really good criticism takes more work than you think.