While our students are stressed in these final days of the semester as they confront the deadlines for their papers, our faculty members are awash in a sea of red ink, wading through assignments, grabbing for anything with caffeine, looking (sometimes in vain) for key points in tortured paragraphs, and offering the wisdom of the ages in precious margin notes to students.  Yes, they think, the old maxim of academe is true:  “I teach for free but they pay me to grade papers.”  So today we honor the heroes of our community, the cherished members of our faculty who—at this moment—are too busy to even read this installment of “Monday Mission.”  For many of us, most of our important lessons were learned at the margins—the margins of our papers.  “Interesting analysis.”  “What were you thinking in this section?”  “Lousy transition.”  “Did you intend to complete this thought?”  “Is there a source for this?”  “Reflects your best work in the course:  B-“

The world is better because Samford faculty members take the time to write great margin notes.