EclectEcon

For the past several years, all of my teaching at The University of Western Ontario has been concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It makes for long days, but also long weekends and long blocks of time to read and do research.

I always conclude my last Thursday class with,

Thank you, keep well, and have a nice weekend. The weekend begins on Thursday at Western.

I wouldn't ordinarily have said something like that except that several students in previous years had told me that Thursday night was the best night to go out, and then they would just cut their classes on Fridays.

Imagine my surprise (and this just shows how naive I really am) when [h/t to Newmark's Door] I read this statement as the third of about 120 items in the list, "You Know You're in College When..."

3. Weekends start on Thursday.

Many of the students who had classes on MWF told me they didn't understand why I said that since they still had classes on Fridays. They tended to be among the better students, of course.

In the spring and summer, when I have taught at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, there are no Friday classes. Fridays and Saturdays (and some Sundays) are reserved for field trips for various classes. So at that institution, the weekends do indeed begin on Thursdays.

And this coming academic year, I will be on sabbatical at Guelph University, where I will be visiting every Tuesday through Thursday. Once again, the weekends begin on Thursdays!

Digression: Further evidence of my naivete is that there are several references to "beer pong" in that list. I could easily infer that it is some kind of drinking game, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what it really is all about. The most amusing part of that article comes at the end, when it talks about "Bud Pong", a variant of the game from Anheuser-Busch:

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing "Bud Pong" kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.

The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had "never seen anyone playing with water. It's always beer. It's just like any other beer pong."[1]

Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch's public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It's preposterous,"[1] while advertising news site Adjab opined that "someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco."[10].

On October 19, 2005 the company professed surprise that some players were using beer instead of water, and withdrew the game in response to criticism. Francine I. Katz stated that "Despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended."

If I ever play this game, I want Phil Miller on my team. And Ms. Eclectic thinks it should be played with single-malt scotch!