Undergrad Anthropophage

[rynling]

Me, in front of a course proposal committee: I am a very serious scholar, and my classes are very serious and scholarly.

Me, in class: Anthropophagy (the consumption of human flesh) is one of the strongest taboos common across cultures. Putting aside the primal fear of being hunted, one can argue that there are many ways for a person to be eaten. You can have all your time eaten by a job, for example, or you can feel your heart being eaten by an unhealthy relationship. Please write (or describe the plot of) a short story in which the metaphorical fear of being consumed becomes literal.

I mean listen. How else am I supposed to talk about Kenji Miyazawa, beloved communist poet and author of the absolutely fucking incredible short story "The Restaurant of Many Orders"?

The class on Kobo Abe's short story "The Bet" (about absurdist corporate architecture) is going to be good too, I think. I've discovered a network of access tunnels under campus, and I've made up a super disturbing story to go with them. What I'm going to do is divide the class into three sections and, over the course of the class's running time, give three short underground mini-tours. I practiced this a few times over the summer, and I think I should be able to pull it off smoothly.

ETA: If this sounds overly cute and precious to you, please remember that I'm not being paid very much; and also, I'm totally going to get Covid. I figure that I might as well enjoy myself.

Comments

[lassarina]

I would've loved things like that when I was in university, to be honest. Not all learning is fun, but I think it's great when it can be.

[rynling]

It would be really cool, I think. If my students learned things.

But mostly I've resigned myself to providing entertainment. What I essentially do is provide daycare for the adult children of the ultrawealthy.

I mean, my actual goal is to strengthen literacy and communication skills while demonstrating practical models of lateral thinking, but you know what they say about leading horses to water.

[lassarina]

It's baffling to me to go to university and not want to learn at least some of what's available to you. I confess I paid less attention than I could have to my science classes, but I was so hype for almost all of my history classes, and literature, and and and.

[rynling]

And this is why you are a writer, while most people are not. Cheers to that, honestly. 🥂

[lassarina]

Cheers. (It's just. There are so many things out there I don't know! Why waste an opportunity to learn more?)