Quietly snickering after collecting her students’ essays for Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 64: The Canterbury Tales, local teaching fellow Judith Klenderman told reporters Monday that she actually doesn’t know the difference between MLA and Chicago citation styles, and “couldn’t care less” which of the styles her students had chosen to use.
In section last week, Klenderman told her motley, rag-tag band of terrified freshmen, apathetic seniors, and unfazed English concentrators that for their assignment, they “would receive points on the consistency of their citation style, preferably MLA or Chicago if you must.”
“I don’t care which one you use,” Klenderman had said, looking directly into the eyes of a trembling first-year. “Just make it consistent.”
In fact, Klenderman, a third-year graduate student in the English Department, has no idea of the differences between the two. “To be perfectly honest,” she said, “I don’t know where the periods and the parentheses go. And I don’t give a flying fig off a rolling donut.” When asked how she would evaluate her students’ work, she replied, “I’ll probably read them over, then cast lots to see who gets the B-."