More gloriously awful student ideas*
SEK’S STUDENTS: So we had this idea for our project, like a live-action, flash mob reenactment of “LEEROY JENKINS!” where we find like some random students studying or in the park and—
SEK: Let me stop you there. You’re going to surprise random students—
SEK’S STUDENTS: We have the costumes and everything. We’ll just walk up to them, stand around, then I’ll yell—
SEK: I don’t think this is a good idea.
SEK’S STUDENTS: Really? ‘Cause we’ve already made like four or five.
*I really didn’t intend for this to become a series. I think they may just be messing with me at this point.
This isn’t honestly doesn’t seem any more ill-advised than most of the stuff students get up to, at least at the colleges I’ve been to.
I mean, that’s not to say it it’s a good idea. It is not. But I wouldn’t call it GLORIOUSLY awful.
… unless they’d planned to do it at night.
… or in Colorado …
I think they may just be messing with me at this point.
I wouldn’t rule this out. There is a lot of down time in college, even for students who study hard and work. Hatching schemes, particularly one that involves a professor, is a great way to pass time.
Would this have served as an acceptable project?
I’d argue that it’s glorious, and even awful, in the older sense of that term.
Yes, that’d be an acceptable project, and it is awesome.
Although I don’t entirely grasp the message that is conveyed by that–maybe it’s just that I don’t speak Siamese . . .
I watched the video, and am slightly appalled at how your students spend their time. Also, yeah, they’re messing with you. I hope.
Not sure they want to do that at Colorado – where the surprised student might be carrying a concealed weapon and when startled ….what could possibly go wrong????
kind of my first thought:
perhaps, your students might want to spend some of their spare time going out into the world, get a sense of what actions might and might not get them killed, or at least grievously harmed, before suggesting it as a class project. or maybe they just all have a death wish.
College campuses are still college campuses. While a group of strangers wearing World of Warcraft costumes suddenly screaming “LEEEROY JENKINS” and going into some kind of strange performance might be a bit off-putting, it’s still substantially less weird than a lot of other things I’ve seen happen while wandering campus.
But then perhaps I’m inured to weirdness given the semi-annual zombie/human wars that take over our campus twice a year.
Where are the four or five for god’s sake? They can’t have made them and NOT uploaded them.
They’re still touching them up in whatever video editor Apples use. Have no fear, when they go up, I’ll link to them.
They know you, Scott, they know you.
Kindly allow me to repeat my mini-rant about how Improv Everywhere is neither improv (really kind of the opposite) nor everywhere (they tend to pull their stunts in NYC, although I believe that they’ve branched out a bit). They’re pretty good street theater–especially since I think they’ve deliberately stopped fucking with people’s heads*–but still.
*Which you may insist is the whole point of street theater, although I’d say that that’s more properly guerilla theater.
If they still do it, here is a good way to respond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDoSrmkUgE.