Thank you for your sympathetic icon! :D I have stolen it for my own purposes.

Re: for paranormal romance—De gustibus non disputandum. (I hope I spelled that right!)

As for my instructor, he's not going to get the best write-up on RateMyProfessors.com from me, although in other ways, I like how and what he is teaching us. Thank you for what you said about the role of a syllabus. I thought it was kind of like a contract, but I wasn't sure if that is how it was institutionally perceived.