April Fool's! ;)

• Young college students are easy to play tricks on! 
• My April Fools joke: I made up a handout that had instructions for the students to write a 4 to 5 page paper on children's book illustration.
• One thing I know is that art students HATE to do anything different then art! Writing a paper is agony.

•  I already had them write one paper {for real} and heard moans and groans! I kept cheering them on saying things like, "Hey you are in college folks." "This is such a great experience!" And "It a great way to learn how to critique and talk about your art." They really didn't want to hear any of it. Most all of the 2 to 3 page papers I made them write earlier, were exactly 2 pages. I think I only had 2 students that wrote onto the 3rd page. 

• Back to today...April Fool's Day! I handed out their FAKE assignment. 
• I had one student begin to protest. He said, "I don't really know that much about this topic. There is no way I can write 4 to 5 pages on it."
• My assistant said, "Go to Boarders or Barnes and Noble to research!" 
• I said, "Ya guys I had to write 15 page papers in grad school."
• They all shut up. 
• I proceeded to give the rest of lecture. 
• At the end I said, "Oh, by the way...the paper assignment, well it's an APRIL FOOLS JOKE!" They all looked relieved, and some laughed. I made them promise to not tell the late comers about the APRIL FOOLS assignment. 
• We had a few late comers and the whole class played along. ;)