Today is the last day of Saturnalia, the ancient Roman winter festival. Congratulations to our many Roman pagan readers!
Here's what Saturnalia involved, according to the Encyclopedia Romana:
During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. . . Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters' clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. In the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that "During My week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the functions over which I preside."
Although Saturnalia is ending, it's not too late to take advantage of the inversion of the social order. Professors switching places with students fits well with the Roman custom of slaves switching places with masters. So if any of my students want to grade the huge pile of Property exams currently awaiting my ministrations, you are more than welcome!
I'd be more than happy to grade my exam.
Scan them in, post them here, attach a poll underneath, and we'll grade from the comfort of our snowed-in homes. The comment sections alone ought to provide more feedback than a 1L will get from all of his other classes, combined.
By my calendar, we are neither in 2008 nor 2009 today but somewhere in between......
Theo, that would be great. I could always use the help! :)
There's very important work to be done by students at this time of year. Hot chocolate duty? Tough stuff - especially if you eschew that Swiss Miss garbage. Packing up and driving home? Mall-crawling at 4 am for Christmas presents, because finals don't leave time for that stuff? Don't even get me started on making batches of chocolate chip cookies and peppermint bark.
Which was cool.
Since I know all the answers and in any case don't care what grade I would get, I would be more than happy to take the exam if the students would then do all the grading! Do we have a deal?
Wouldn't (tenured) professors switching places with adjuncts fit even better?
By the way, we're in a state with both abstract and Torrens systems operating in parallel. Does that matter?
Nathan Bissonette
Deputy Examiner of Titles
Ramsey County, Minnesota
You win the thread.
Hell, you win the blog.
I'm with you. The pagan holidays are getting too commercialized.
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