Millions of pages of unread and neglected course readings came forward yesterday morning, demanding recognition and relief for their grievances. According to them, the students who are entrusted to take care of them, think deeply about them, and recall them for important tests have instead prioritized eating and sleeping over reading.
While some shorter essays or chapters are lucky enough to get skimmed, others are thrown away, crumpled at the bottom of backpacks, or worse—utterly abandoned on CTools.
“That’s the worst; the type of neglect that breaks my heart,” said attorney Matt Lee about a particularly lengthy, 136-page reading entitled ‘The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Time and Space.’
“My client has been abandoned in a lonely little folder in the middle of the internet. When students select a course, they have to be prepared to face the consequences. It is absolutely unacceptable that they are ‘too busy’ to download my client, to make an effort to get to know him…to love him, like any piece of academic literature deserves to be loved.”
Other readings that are lucky enough to be downloaded complain of the sheer glee with which they are promptly deleted at the end of each semester. According to recent reports, only .15% of course readings are preserved, either in physical or digital form.
“I saw my carefully-chosen reading on ‘Sociological perspectives on language in diaspora’ crammed inside of a notebook, smashed right up next to an annotated, highlighted—highlighted!—copy of Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ speech,” said Kurt Stillman, professor of linguistics.
“Not only was my essay deprived of such loving attention and decoration, but it was eventually thrown into the recycling bin while the speech was saved in a special folder! Ain’t my reading an intellectually stimulating and groundbreaking reading?”
The unread pages claim that they will no longer endure neglect, food stains, or crumpling. They demand harsher punishment for such crimes as well as increased rates of preservation, annotation, and cuddling.
At press time, approximately 26,350 students successfully bullshitted their way through their class discussions for the day without having done any reading.
Originally published: Dec 2013
