Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you're slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.

We are winding down the semester (I am just like my students and am procrastinating. They procrastinate assignments, and I procrastinate getting grades entered into the computer system. My most hated task). So I thought I could tell a few student stories.

My current fav comes from my office mate. A student asked, "Is the exam going to be comprehensive, or just on what we learned?"

I asked my students to write essay questions for their exams. One that they all really liked was "If you were given $1 million, what would you do with it?" One student seemed to have a particularly hard time thinking of what to do with that amount of money, so he asked me what I would do. I said, "Buy a house with a garage. I am tired of scraping my windshield!" Then all the students began giving me suggestions on how to not have to scrape the frost and snow off the windshield, including pouring a bucket of hot water on it. Brilliant plan.

I walked into class last night and saw that my students had kept the tables in rows and columns rather than arranging a circle as we always do. As I walked toward the front of the room I noticed several of them watching me rather defiantly. I smiled and said, "Are you rebelling against the circle today?" "Yes! We hate the circle! You can't make us move!"

But there were two ladies who had moved and wanted recognition. "We hate the circle too, but we were the good children." They can say that because they are both at least 20 years older than I am.

There was much rejoicing in one of my classes last night. I handed back the papers, and when I passed one student his, he jumped up and cheered. "I got an A!" The rest of the class was happy for him and he got a few high fives.