It was brisk autumn evening in late May when LAWS9000 Lecturer Darryl Fishbone (42, Divorced, Alcoholic, Gambling Addict) began earnestly tapping away at his Lenovo keyboard with no more than two index fingers, not realising that he was creating an exam paper that bears a closer resemblance to hieroglyphs than to the English language.

**************

Many had assumed that it was merely Darryl’s his great affection for Double Oak Kentucky Bourbon that had led to so many of the exam papers that he had written, and the emails that he had sent, to be completely incomprehensible.

While Darryl’s love of his dear Bourbon is no doubt unwavering, his frequent grammatical mishaps are not caused by any indiscretions of this nature (or because a court order has stopped him seeing his kids since Easter), but are simply a result of the fact that he simply doesn’t give a shit about this fifth-year elective course that no other academic wanted to teach.

We here at the Obiter applaud Darryl’s bravery for taking on the challenge of teaching LAWS9000 to 32 students who really don’t want to be there, but we must call out unscrupulous behaviour when we see it. Darryl you must be better. Margaret isn’t going to take you back either way, no matter how many problem questions you write where she realises she was wrong to leave you and wants you back.

In spite of Darryl’s illiteracy when it matters, when it comes to dishing out exam feedback he suddenly transforms from a former first XV Nudgee old-boy into what only could be described as a poetic bulldozer, characterising students’ work as ‘impossible to read, largely self-contradictory, and so shamefully insipid that it surely must have been written by a supine protoplasmic invertebrate jelly’. Perhaps an unfair takedown from the likes of you, Darryl.

No more to come.