Radically Mundane Modes of Disruption

In thinking about alternative forms of pedagogy, how to divest myself of habits of productivity, efficiency, and perfectionism, all of which are sustained in and by the academy, I remembered an event that has accompanied (haunted?) me since its occurrence, until recently. A paper I wrote in graduate school was returned to me with feedback (I don't remember the class, perhaps a result of the grad student's proverbial experience of insidious trauma throughout grad school?), and one of the corrections proffered by the professor was about my use of italics; that it was unnecessary. I was always drawn to the aesthetics of an italicized word, its subtle shift in position, angling towards a direction different from the company it kept. I found it surreptitious. That within a sea of conforming morphemes, one could subtly signal disruption.