Snobert Grateman’s book of his in-class slides — colloquially known as the Grbook — is a feast for the weary eyes of the average university student. Written by the legend himself, the Grbook is spiral bound with a front cover that features a flattering drawing of Grateman wearing a t-shirt that bears his catchphrase “presume something.” These words are printed on his Grpod as well, a miniature calculator mandatory for the class. No doubt the drawing is a critique of the individualism and narcissism encouraged by our hyper-consumerist and capitalistic society.
He uses symbols and acronyms without ever giving a key nor explanation, a refreshing approach to teaching in which he actually makes students work for it: an exercise in linguistic experimentation. His symbols are in fact inconsistent across his microeconomics and macroeconomics textbooks. I believe he does this in the interest of fairness, so that those who have taken his classes before do not have an edge over those who haven’t. We are all equally in the dark and ill-equipped.
What appears at first glance to be misspellings and misaligned printing surely could not be mistakes, but are actually intended to be a pain in my ass. His slides in class are in colour, but the pages in the $100 book are printed in monochrome — this way, if you aren’t paying attention in class, you’ll have to spend hours trying to decipher those charts in greyscale. What a fucking statement!
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