Adventures in student compliments

GRAD STUDENT, AT THE END OF CLASS: I found one of your articles.  It was kind of interesting. 

Comments

[A. Cephalous]

If it's any consolation, I also found one of your articles on JSTOR and found it interesting. I'd have more to say about it, but then I'd be a cyber-stalker, and no one likes a cyber-stalker.

Also, your statement sounds very much like one of Jim Dikkers' (currently an editor at the Onion) strips from the early 90s. Every one of them ended with a simple declarative sentence that somehow also managed to communicate the tedium of academic life, much like you did above. So, um, I'm not a stalker and don't worry, what you do is important, even if your students don't realize it. Look at me...I'm the next Tony Robbins!

[gzombie]

The student was practicing her (or his) skills at understatement?

[profsynecdoche]

I recently wrote an e-mail to a graduate student completing her first year about some things that she could do over the summer (in the absence of studying for a qualifying exam that my dept. has, thankfully, abolished). One of the items was that she and others in her position should take some time to read the scholarship of faculty in the department so that they would learn more about the methodologies and interests of people with whom they might be studying. She wrote me back and thanked me for the suggestion, saying that that would have never occured to her.

[Melinama]

Or maybe it's in the style of the farmer in the movie "Babe" who after his pig has managed to herd his sheep perfectly to a first place finish: "That'll do, pig."