CAMBRIDGE, MA — Area student Mark K. Anderson '20—who has yet to start the necessary readings for his U.S. in the World paper due tomorrow—feels pretty much done with the assignment now that he has compiled a thick list of puns for the title. All that remains is the final 11-and-a-half pages.
“My TF will be so entertained by these punderful topics that she won’t even ask how I spent the three weeks I was supposed to be drafting and redrafting this paper,” Anderson asserted.
During a LamCaf study session yesterday, Anderson treated his classmates to bi-hourly witticisms. “How about ‘Hegel’s Bagels: An Exploration of the Phenomenology of Jewish Pastries in the 1920s’?” he asked his compatriots. “Or ‘Ponzu Schemes: Imbalanced Trade Relationships Between Tokugawa Japan and the Dutch East India Company at the Turn of the 17th Century’?”
In between bouts of inspired brainstorming, Anderson regaled the group with a 40-minute summary of a 22-minute 30 Rock episode. Chrissiana P. Parker '20, present at the study session, expressed concern that Anderson’s class is on gender in the British Empire and is not remotely related to the subject matter of his moderately amusing puns.
Experts report that the cleverness of a paper title actually inversely relates to the grade received. Some theorize that this phenomenon could be due to the “Too Clever For His Own Good” principle, in which the TF feels it necessary to punish students for being overbearing, cheeky little shits.
At press time, Anderson had discarded “For All In-Tents and Porpoises: Motivation in the Construction of Temporary Housing for Aquatic Mammals” in favor of “A Checkered Past: The Exchange of Scottish Textiles and Late Ming Dynasty Board Games Along the Silk Road,” leaving him at an impressive total word count of 18.