Oh, who doesn't know the philosophical theses of Ignazio Silone?

My Advanced Composition professor has this maddening habit of guiding the class through a particularly difficult article or essay and pointing out all the words or facts he assumes we don't know. Like it's a character flaw to not know what the word "macedoine" means (n. - "mixed diced vegetables; mixed fruit in syrup or jelly"). When we come across one of these real stumpers, he'll ask if anyone in the class knows the word or the reference, then throw up his hands in vindication and say something like, "There you go -- the twenty-five year streak is unbroken!" Basically, total asshattery.

HOWEVER. This time, I'm on to him. I went through the article assigned for tomorrow and Dictionary.com'd the hell out of it. So tomorrow in class, I can be like, "Oh, I'm sorry, professor. Were you talking about jeremiads? You mean, prolonged lamentations or complaints? How terribly pachycephalic of you."

Unless, of course, the extracurricular research was his plan all along.

In which case, I am too dense to be in graduate school.