Your New Assignment

Not to exaggerate anything and I admit I’ve had too much sugar todayand my head aches a little but I kind of want to complainto Bethany Hubbard, Madison Pirrone, Will Studer, EmmaSwintek, Danielle Bishop, Bryannah Dailey, Patrick Fisher, and Christopher Flake

because I happened to pull out the file on English 250 in Fall 2011and I see that you never came and picked up your final paperson Hamlet and The House of Mirth but I suspect that now,more than four years later, you have begun to sense that life

washes away! It washes away! Life escapes from us at all ages andwe need to grip it to the extent that we can grip it—but you justabandoned your final papers, a few of them quite good, othersriddled with weaknesses, upon which in all cases I wrote

detailed thoughtful comments in the margins—this took me hours,hours! Hours of my one life. I was trying to help you—help you care about poor brilliant Hamlet who fears that lifeis absurdly pointless—remember the graveyard scene?

You may not recall but we had a damned good discussion of it.And about brave unwise Lily Bart who keeps imagining merebeauty and charm can triumph over time. … Oh, don’t say you’llcome and pick up your final papers now, don’t even pretend,

it’s too late! I just chucked them in the recycling bin!The point now, your assignment now is for you to reflect onwhat your abandoned papers imply about your prioritiesand about our lives, our fate, and if you find you have something to say

send me 200 words on this, double-spaced, before the Christmas break.