Because everyone needs a smile in their life, and academics are just comedians without formal training.
[Currently I’m in the middle of a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and I have about two and a half years to go. The program is mostly theory-oriented, but I’ll also get certification as an English teacher by the end of it. This semester, my coursework included introductory phonetics and phonology, introductory morphology and syntax, Japanese, as well as a bit of music.]
Josh: “Any help with this?”
Professor: “You can do it.”
Josh: “Yay.”
Professor: “Yeah, we’ve got a nouniness continuum.”
Professor: “I had to look up what ‘Whovian’ is.”
Zoe: “How can you claim to be a real nerd?”
Professor: “WhEn DiD I cLaim to be a rEal neRd?”
Professor: “[Jesus probably looked like an average Jew at the time.] Judas didn’t say, ‘Just get the white guy.'”
Professor: “There’s a language learning app…it’s like Tinder for
language learners.”
Ettie: “Dolphins sleep while they swim.”
Helaman: “They half-sleep.”
[tense silence]
Professor: “I’m staying out of this one.”
Professor: “Unless it’s a children’s book where the rice has risen up against its masters–‘burn! burn! burn!'”
Professor: “I was the model for this painting. Just so you know, all that definition on the bicep–all real.”
Josh: “I treed the mountain.”
Professor: “If we wanted a really good example of using tree as a verb, that was not it.”
Professor: “Does it exist? The general consensus of people I agree with is that it does.”
Bonus round: Fall 2021 quotes, Road Trip to Phoenix Edition
“We’ve been driving the entire sun time. Also known as day”
“We drive as a colony, not as an individual”
“Just two kids from the Midwest who’ve never seen rocks before”
[About the AC] “I always forget how I can change the temperature as well as the…aggressiveness”
Bonus round II: Fall 2021 quotes, Auna Making Devious Remarks in the Corner of the Classroom Edition
“I am tired of life and its obscure sufferings.”
“[Free-response questions? More like] trapped-response questions.”
“Sober, we have nothing in common.”
“The aggressive cheerfulness of Christmas music is purposefully designed to counteract the gloom.”
[Ettie herniated 10 discs] “There’s something sadly impressive about getting double digits with that.”
“Zombies on the peripheral–feels like an album name.” ∎