Today, a non-rant about students who’ve brightened up my week. It’s rare in my work these days that students routinely visit me in my office. Most of my office hours are spent either in class preparation, grading, or revising fiction and checking up fiction markets for the purposes of submitting my own stories to them. But there are a couple of students who’ve taken advantage of that time to come to my office, either for help with their schoolwork, or else just to chat. This is nice, I like it: it breaks up the monotony of the office hours. One …

“I was so drunk on Sunday night, because my girlfriend’s father was suddenly in town and he made me go drinking with him, and we drank soooo much, so I know my essay is one day late, and I’m sorry. I was hung-over.” That’s the more amusing spoken version of what was scrawled on an envelope bearing one essay that had been slipped under my door sometime early on Tuesday morning. I don’t even know whether it’s true, but it amused me enough to let the lateness slide. I mean, imagine being forced by your girlfriend’s father to drink until …