Prithee my worthies, and harken to hear my tale as I stand before thee, to unburden my restless, fretful soul; to unleash the wretched thing that is my twisted, tortured heart; to unlatch the closed realm that is my troubled conscience; in short, through my presence here, forced by the weight of my repeated transgression, I wish to reveal the true depth of my sinister character. I repent my sin of being a Teacher of Language and Literature, by which heretofore I have rendered many hundreds, nay, thousands of apt pupils nearly senseless, assaulted by an abundance of assignments, hindered by heaps of homework, and devoured by demonic deadlines. Relentlessly I hath required that the young scholars, with whom I have been charged with providing education, guidance, and encouragement, arise to daily challenges of analysis, interpretation, elocution, and inscription. Obstinately, I hath planned lesson upon lesson, based on the elements of novels, drama,--yea--even poetry, in a painstaking attempt to aid the students’ scrutiny of classic as well as contemporary texts and the subsequent articulation of their understanding in the form of various commentary, whether it be verbal or written, or otherwise. Seemingly without care nor regard for the children’s health and well-being, I hath stripped away the sheer pleasure of reading a passage and providing monosyllabic responses for the much-sought-after-top-marks, and replaced the established standard with a more mature and developed expectation of excellence. For all these crimes against adolescence, I humbly submit myself to thy judgment, and pray that thou hath mercy on my literary soul.