For Evelyn, and maybe for justice also, but probably just Evelyn

at the end of this past semester, our english professor made us write a self-critique focused on our development as readers and writers while enrolled in her class. Professor Nims, we love you very much, but we still think you're a lesbian.

I know Evelyn loves this, and I just saw it lying around in my email, so I figured I'd post my self-critique:

The reasons for which I signed up for English 2850 were manifold: a desire to be the best writer I could be, my throat-parching thirst for works of great literary merit, and a weird, Jewish Freudian thing that has to do with my mom. But that is neither here nor there.
During the course of the semester, I experimented with new patterns in thought, novel ways of approaching writing, and a more socially-based viewpoint of literature and the pens medium. A breakthrough was not close at hand, however, and in my agony, the bulk of my experimentation was with synthetic club drugs and ether. At last, though, one Monday morning blessed me with a vivid and lively discussion concerning the urination habits of house-guests and shower-curtain saturation. While it may technically be more apropos of an anatomy and/or physiology curriculum, the lesson was not lost on me: hard work and accurate urination breed success.
Armed with a newfound appreciation for precise, pinpoint controlas well ancient to modern Indian, African, and American writingI was a new man. And one morning, lying in a hummock of jasmine petals with Zabaalawi, and smoking opium that Lu Xun left for me at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, my love for great literature set in like Nam.
Any critique of me vis a vis this course is incomplete without and intensely introspective assessment of how I relate to literature. Well, I would say. Very well.
Professor Nims, my life has been very hard. Born with a natural predilection for smelling salts and German pornography, Ive had to overcome many a bout of dehydration and public ridicule. This class marked the first place, both literally and metaphysically, where I could escape my perverted cocoon and take pleasure in the finer things, in room 6140s omni benevolence, acceptance, and transcendental love. While scholars maintain that loves meaning has been lost for hundreds of years, I maintain that the medium itself was recrafted, sculpted, and born into perfection in the hours we spent together in English 2850, section DG13A.
Cheers.

Love,
Joseph Leichman
The Semitic Scandal