Bathelling in assignments
The Deeper Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd defines the word bathel like this:
| bathel (vb.) To pretend to have read the book under discussion when in fact you've only seen the TV series or movie. |
I do not like to bathel, and in fact it is one of my life's ambitions to find and read the books on which the TV series and movies I have seen – especially those I saw as a child. This ambition has inspired me to read Tom's midnight garden, The Children of Green Knowe, Anne of Green Gables, The Hundred and One Dalmations, Babe (aka The Sheep Pig), Archer's Goon, Jumanji, Dot and the Kangaroo, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, The Last Unicorn, Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left, Finders Keepers and I'm sure several others I can't think of right now.
I was talking about the word bathel at the AUMS barbecue yesterday, and Nicholas called me to remind me that I had lost track of time and what I should be doing was helping students in the MLC Drop-In room. So off I went to help people with their t-tests, conics and subspaces. And it occurred to me while doing this that a small number of the students I was talking to were attempting to bathel about their coursework.
These few students were attempting to use information they'd been told in their lectures to talk knowledgeably about a problem, without having tried to organise and connect the ideas first. They hadn't sat down with their notes