And now, for something completely different

u know someone’s about to get dragged through the mud when an academic uses the phrase ‘it’s tempting to assume’

“it’s tempting to assume” is academic speaking for “you might think, if you’re a fucking idiot,”

Obsessed with this bookshop-cinema hybrid in Florence! During the day you can even sit upstairs and watch people choose their books downstairs 💛

Beware!

Avoid sci-hub too👀

From Ask for PDFs from People with Institutional Access

If you want to read an academic article that's behind a paywall just email the author and ask politely if they will send you the article. Most academics will be thrilled that you want to read their work and will gladly send it to you.

we’re really at that point in the year where no one cares about anything huh

My psych professor mentioned swaddling in lecture so I emailed him a picture of me being swaddled in my dorm room and asked if I could get extra credit because it was really hot in there and I got really sweaty and he was like “fabulous, sure”

I’m going to miss the Honors Advisor from my university.

This is definitely my favorite email i’ve recieved from a professor, with the subject line “back at it”.

My best/favorite teacher would literally take off the points for a question that the majority of the class got wrong from the total on the test and then hold a lesson on the topic because she realized if 90% of her students didn’t know the answer then she hadn’t done a good job teaching it.

I hate it when teachers take pride in having a large percentage of students get bad grades in their classes. It just means that students aren’t learning from you

I'm all for academic integrity and accurate citing until I change the access date in the footnote to make my professors think I didn't procrastinate

Why must we respond to two classmates? Why? Is it not enough that I typed 250 words of my own own bland fucking bullshit without having to say some more bland fumkin bullshumk to a classmate’s equally blund fuhnki bumshulk? “Hi Diane, Love that you and your faceless icon turned up today. I also agree that plagues in history were awful. That’s a really good point Diane thank you.” I’m gonna throw my laptop jesus crisp

Yeah, no that’s not an Ancient Greek Dionysus and here’s why

My absolute proudest moment as an ancient art history TA in college was as a student in a class on Gender in the Ancient World (a for-fun class I took when I’d basically wrapped up all my other degree requirements) and it involved me catching my Classics professor royally messing up in his own lecture.

So this Classics teacher (poor guy) was going on about Dionysus and what the Greek god of wine could teach us about the morals of the time, specifically about over indulgence being anathema to Greeks (“all things in moderation”) and to prove his point he shared this statue of Dionysus:

Which just happens to be the picture of Dionysus on Wikipedia, uh oh, first mistake! (Some of you nerds may already spot all of the other problems.)

So he starts rattling on about what this statue demonstrates to us how the Ancient Greeks viewed Dionysus and the sins of excess associated with wine drinking- his body is slightly puffy from over-indulgence, his muscles not carved like an Apollo. He’s off-balance, leaning on a faun for support. His eyes are glassy. He’s raising a huge, margarita-bowl of a cup. Basically, from this, we can see a clear visual of why Dionysus and his associated lifestyle and sacred objects were looked down upon in ancient Greece.

Meanwhile, I’m vibrating out of my chair like Hermione in the front row because oh my god how are you a professor this is all wrong oh my god…

Finally, the professor calls on my shaking raised hand, thankfully before I blasted off into the stratosphere with my sheer need to Be Right. 

And, with a voice only slightly shaking from high-octane adrenaline I say, “Except that statue is from the Renaissance. It’s by Michelangelo.”

The professor freezes like a deer in the headlights. I mean actually freezes, his eyes widen and he just stops. Dumbstruck. I wondered how many times he’s given this lecture and used this statue of Dionysus to make his point. I think the number of times he’d used this picture in a lecture was flashing before his eyes too.

Because if you go back to the ancient world there’s no effing way Dionysus would be portrayed so disrespectfully! Even if he’s the god of wine he’s not the one who overindulges, that’s his followers. He’s a god. Anyone who knows anything about Ancient Greece knows you don’t disrespect a god with a statue like that. Actually, Dionysus statues from Ancient Greece tend to look more like this in the Archaic period:

And in a late Roman example (Hi, Antinuous!) like this:

Yeah. There’s no “over indulgent” puffiness, no margarita glass, no glassy eyes or tottering form. Because Dionysus is a god. What Michelangelo’s statue of Bacchus reveals is what Renaissance people believed about Dionysus, not Ancient Greeks. 

But let’s briefly touch on all the other alarm bells about that statue. Because I didn’t know it was Michelangelo’s right away in that class, I was frantically looking that up even as my hand was raised, I just knew it was Renaissance and not Ancient Greek. Because sure, in Ancient Greece, this kind of sculpture denouncing excess existed, but we’d be looking at Silenus the Satyr, or just a Satyr in general to make this commentary, not ever with Dionysus who partakes in such festivities but is ultimately stands above them and definitely doesn’t fall prey to them (others fall prey to him). So basically, Michelangelo’s Bacchus has a lot more in common with an ancient sculpture of Silenus, not of Dionysus, reflecting on how Italians in the Renaissance viewed this ancient pagan god.

To tick off a couple other warning signs: the patina (that color stone and level of dirt, but without traces of cleaning or paint, was a give away because Renaissance people didn’t paint their statues the way ancient people did). The beautiful curly hair and laurels were impossible before about 200 CE because the drill tips needed to make fine curls hadn’t been invented yet, before that you tended to have carved masses of hair or lines of hair suggested on the scalp, nothing so elaborate. Also the features are much too fine, almost girlish, with a receding chin. Again, something you might see on a hyper realistic Roman portrait, but not something you’d ever see on a god. The child is out of place too, you do see children in ancient sculptures (like the statue of Hermes and Dionysus) but not really with such “childish” facial expressions, for the lack of a better word. 

So when I talk about how with material archaeology and art history it becomes impossible to mistake when a certain artifact comes from, this is what I mean. The ways of carving this weren’t available to the Ancient Greeks until way into the Imperial Roman era, at least. The stone is wrong. The morals visible in the carving are wrong. You’ll often too see Renaissance or 19th century statues being passed off as ancient here on Tumblr, but things like fine features are often dead give aways that something isn’t ancient. Stone work is a language of its own, and once you see enough to decode it, it’s as unmistakable to the eye as clothing from different 100 years ago looks out of date to even your average person today. 

(P.S. the professor made the point to thank me and said he would stop using this statue in future lectures. As you can see, I was proud of this shining moment of pedantry a totally normal about.) 

Purdue OWL was there for me when no one else was

The holy grail of searching through academic literature is coming across a string of publications that are like:

Here’s An Idea. Smith et al. 2016

Terrible Idea; a comment on Smith et al. 2016. Johnson 2016.

You’re Wrong Too; a response to Johnson 2016. Nelson 2016.

Guys Just Stop Fighting, None Of Us Know What’s Going On; a Review of the Current Literature. McBrien 2017.

Not even an exaggeration.

the uncanny valley between “this academic article doesn’t make sense because i’m an idiot” and “this academic article doesn’t make sense because the author is an idiot”

Oh I like this idea. I think I will use it. 

This is brilliant

I’M GOING TO DO THIS!!!!

this is a super cool.

and from a teacher’s perspective, it would also be helpful to have this info from the students, because sometimes the teacher thinks “these 5 things are the most important things for my students to master,” but if the students don’t get that message from the way the teacher is teaching, the teacher needs to know that something needs to change. And knowing what students think is important and helpful in understanding how your students think and learn.

in honour of "i don't want to do my assignment" here are the top 15 things my engineering profs have done over three years as an undergraduate:

- walked in 10 minutes late with a steaming cup of coffe "sorry I'm late but believe me you did not want me to come without coffee"

- forgot to schedule a midterm and when we asked about it was like "??? I thought you didn't have midterms here?"

- on his birthday, brought in a plate of cake offered it to us because "I don't like it but you can't tell the faculty"

- answered an email at 5am with "good evening Allie, "

- tripped on the desk so hard he had to sit down and then was like "that's why I'm an engineer not a ballerina"

- was frusturated about lack of participations while solving an excersize, sat on the floor in front of the board and said "I can stay here for the 53 minutes we have left of class, unless you guys tell me what the next step is"

- one of my profs was plotting with us to steal the other prof's copy of a really obscure dynamics book because "it's not fair that he doesn't share

- one day we were walking into uni and the prof was walking out and we were like "don't we have class with you in 10 minutes?" and he ws like "shit okay" and he turned around. I don't know if he lost track of time or was running away.

- one prof came up to me in the cafeteria to ask me for a favour and his friend (another prof) was like "poor thing, she's going to get sick of you" and I still don't know if it was directed at me or my prof

- one prof said "I see you guys more than my parents" and I was like "I see you more than anyone" and he was like "I'm so sorry"

- one prof "accidentaly" uploaded a picture of his co-worker (another prof) riding a bycicle to the class file area

- scheduled an extra class and when we all showed up was like "I didn't prepare anything, I didn't think youd come"

- when one of my classmates got really insistant that he was right (he wasn't) my prof put a peice of chalk on his desk, whispered "then you give the class" and walked out and everyone was like "you dipshit" but also happy because we had an exam later

- brought a bag of candies to class and threw them at people who answered questions

- got frustrated in the middle of an exam because everyone was solving the problem incorrectly and started giving a class right there