I am the MLA*

I and the courses I teach are the whole of the humanities enclave in this cluster of university programmes: the rest of my colleagues are from the social sciences, physical and natural sciences, maths and commerce. This means (among other things) that I am also the only one to require students to use MLA referencing for their assignments.

It occurred to me this morning that the possibilities for misrepresentation are therefore considerable. The only quality control in terms of my teaching the system of referencing correctly is me, so there’s nothing to stop me making it up as I go along, save my academic conscience. How could I exploit this? All cover pages must be green? Every electronically-submitted assignment must include an mp3 of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”? All lists of Works Cited must include the writings of Kim Il-Sung?

My imagined options are endless, idle and largely very silly.

*system of referencing