The Wrap Up

I said goodbye to my students this week.

I always have to keep it short, a quick "nice getting to know you" and a mumbled "feel free to stop by my office any time."

Anything more than that and I'll start crying.

But this semester my business writing students were amazing, friendly, hard-working, and a lot of fun. So to commemorate our time together, I gave them a little present.

These pencils were a bit of an inside joke, as they had swear words on them.

Earlier in the semester we discussed the use of contractions in business writing. We determined that one should use contractions to set a friendly tone or to make online reading easier and that one should avoid contractions when they want to be formal or to sound forceful.

One of my students added, "oh, so it's like, oh shit, no contractions!"

"Exactly," I said, writing it on the board. It must have been the first time they saw a swear word on the dry-erase board because they got a good laugh out of it.

Anyway, that explains the pencils:

I've got some grading left to do, and will be on campus on Tuesday for exams, but then I get a three-week vacation! 


Celebratory hair cut: