next »

[gaspode]

This semester I was railing against the students not proofreading before submitting assignments.  Mostly I talked about "your, you're" and "there, they're, their."  I said, "Please proof your papers and look closely at homophobes."

I almost choked on my cough drop with the laughing.

Welcome to the fora!

Thanks!

[venerable_bede]

As to the other slip: this reminds me of my alma mater's system for abbreviating subjects, using two to three characters: PS, SOC, GEO, ECON, HLTH, PSY, etc. Guess what the Comparative Literature courses were? They changed the abbreviation for some reason years later. It always got lots of snickers from the humanities majors This was in the 1980s; what took them so long to change it?

Arrested Development fans will no doubt remember Tobias Fünke's ill-fated attempt to create a portmanteau word out of "analyst" and "therapist."

[llanfair]

I wish I had a nickel for every embarrassing slip that I've come out with - and I've done the fart thing, too.  Laughing at myself is so much more fun than crawling under the linoleum that I usually choose to go that route.

[melba_frilkins]

I think this is my new favorite thread.

TZ, ever so proud of herself every time she types the L in "public"

I did miss that L once while writing on the whiteboard. Never again.

[tee_bee]

Cool! That means one could take courses in CLIT and Anal Geom in the same term.

Alan

*snicker* Awesome!

That's funny right there, I don't care who ya are. [Chanleling my inner Larry the Cable Guy.]

[tee_bee]

The school of which I speak is a northwestern Pac 10 school whose mascot is a waterfowl. Just down the road from a land-grant school whose mascot also elicits snickers, unfortunately. Another clue: my alma mater is probably going to change its name to University of Shoe Magnate with Really Ugly Sports Uniforms.

Did we go to the same school, tee bee?  I was a Comp Lit major, despite the laughs....

*Snort.* I teach public policy at the MA and PhD level. I tell my students, when I find this error, to set their autocorrect in Word (most of them use it) to always correct "pubic" to "public." I know that I have mine set up. Or just run  a search and destroy on the word. But it always comes up once a term, and is good for laughs and is a teachable moment. Since I don't teach A&P in the bio department, I don't have to worry about the "public bone." Although, when I was a kid, I never understood why they kept talking about "public hair" in the books I was given to read about "the changes." I clearly had never heard the proper word before.

As to the other slip: this reminds me of my alma mater's system for abbreviating subjects, using two to three characters: PS, SOC, GEO, ECON, HLTH, PSY, etc. Guess what the Comparative Literature courses were? They changed the abbreviation for some reason years later. It always got lots of snickers from the humanities majors This was in the 1980s; what took them so long to change it?

[icicles]

My spouse went to the flagship directly north of your state. I have a hard time calling myself one of their mascot.

I once TA'ed a class where the prof taught Swift's poem about a "City Shower." It was really funny when the students in section would make the inevitable slip, then get embarrassed.

The school of which I speak is a northwestern Pac 10 school whose mascot is a waterfowl. Just down the road from a land-grant school whose mascot also elicits snickers, unfortunately. Another clue: my alma mater is probably going to change its name to University of Shoe Magnate with Really Ugly Sports Uniforms.

Did we go to the same school, tee bee?  I was a Comp Lit major, despite the laughs....

*Snort.* I teach public policy at the MA and PhD level. I tell my students, when I find this error, to set their autocorrect in Word (most of them use it) to always correct "pubic" to "public." I know that I have mine set up. Or just run  a search and destroy on the word. But it always comes up once a term, and is good for laughs and is a teachable moment. Since I don't teach A&P in the bio department, I don't have to worry about the "public bone." Although, when I was a kid, I never understood why they kept talking about "public hair" in the books I was given to read about "the changes." I clearly had never heard the proper word before.

As to the other slip: this reminds me of my alma mater's system for abbreviating subjects, using two to three characters: PS, SOC, GEO, ECON, HLTH, PSY, etc. Guess what the Comparative Literature courses were? They changed the abbreviation for some reason years later. It always got lots of snickers from the humanities majors This was in the 1980s; what took them so long to change it?

[tee_bee]

I also attended that school. When the announcers spoke of the Husky Women's BBall team, it would make folks a bit startled. And the Cougars is a funny mascot in our Desperate Housewives era.

Back to slips: I used to go to Saratoga Race Track a lot to watch the horses, and heard that there was a horse named, just to mess with the track announcer, Shiny City Shoes. Say that three times fast. The story was that the announcer didn't rise to the bait, and referred to the horse as "shoes" for the race. The horse may be real, but the announcer story seems fanciful.

I tried to confirm this, but only came up with a dog with this name:

http://www.wannabeeminpins.com/spats.htm

Found some references to horses with the name. It's not uncommon, but they're not Kentucky Derby contenders, by and large.

My spouse went to the flagship directly north of your state. I have a hard time calling myself one of their mascot.

I once TA'ed a class where the prof taught Swift's poem about a "City Shower." It was really funny when the students in section would make the inevitable slip, then get embarrassed.

The school of which I speak is a northwestern Pac 10 school whose mascot is a waterfowl. Just down the road from a land-grant school whose mascot also elicits snickers, unfortunately. Another clue: my alma mater is probably going to change its name to University of Shoe Magnate with Really Ugly Sports Uniforms.

Did we go to the same school, tee bee?  I was a Comp Lit major, despite the laughs....

*Snort.* I teach public policy at the MA and PhD level. I tell my students, when I find this error, to set their autocorrect in Word (most of them use it) to always correct "pubic" to "public." I know that I have mine set up. Or just run  a search and destroy on the word. But it always comes up once a term, and is good for laughs and is a teachable moment. Since I don't teach A&P in the bio department, I don't have to worry about the "public bone." Although, when I was a kid, I never understood why they kept talking about "public hair" in the books I was given to read about "the changes." I clearly had never heard the proper word before.

As to the other slip: this reminds me of my alma mater's system for abbreviating subjects, using two to three characters: PS, SOC, GEO, ECON, HLTH, PSY, etc. Guess what the Comparative Literature courses were? They changed the abbreviation for some reason years later. It always got lots of snickers from the humanities majors This was in the 1980s; what took them so long to change it?

[cc_alan]

Cool! That means one could take courses in CLIT and Anal Geom in the same term.

Alan

*snicker* Awesome!

Heh.

The "ANAL Geom" one actually showed up on "The Tonight Show" 10+ years ago. Jay Leno used to (still does?) do a bit on Monday nights and show headlines sent to him by viewers. Someone sent in a course schedule for a community college showing the listing for Analytical Geometry and Calculus  as "ANAL Geom and Calc".

Alan

[karmann]

I was hungry one day, and instead of telling the class that in music we label chords with Roman numerals, I said we label chords with ramen noodles. 

[systeme_d_]

I was hungry one day, and instead of telling the class that in music we label chords with Roman numerals, I said we label chords with ramen noodles. 

I love this one!  So cute!

[wildwest]

My very first semester of teaching was as a visiting lecturer in Germany.  I was only 23, and had just finished a master's.  I was younger than most of my students.  I was teaching a course in English vocabulary development and drew a picture on the board to try to illustrate a certain word.  When I heard snickers, I stepped back and looked at the white board to find that I had drawn what looked like a phallus.  It was so embarrasing and funny, that I just lost it.  I couldn't stop laughing, even after the students stopped.  So much for that lecture, and so much for being taken seriously that semester.

I committed other faux paus--mostly related to translating things badly from English-German.  Like the time I told my colleagues, in front of the department heard, that I "rode" my boss on the way to work (I meant to say I caught a ride with him) (my boss was the said department head).

Oh well. 

 

[missemily]

I was explaining the use of the semicolon and said, "Think of it as a light period." Some of the women in the class began chuckling, and I realized what had I said, so I added, "That's a girl joke."

[ms_turtle]

Well, I almost made a slip yesterday. It's midterm week and there was a fresh face in the front row. FF asked a strange question, and I almost said, "who are you, are you even in my class?"

[ohnoes]

TZ, ever so proud of herself every time she types the L in "public"

I did miss that L once while writing on the whiteboard. Never again.
/quote]

I missed it in a cover letter.  Apparently, I believe in pubic education.