I haven’t seen the movie, but I understand that you get to ogle Angelina Jolie’s ass briefly; I have to disagree about it being a complete waste of time.
:smack:
I teach Ancient History at my university – and I enjoy that time of the semester when the Iliad quiz rolls around; most of the questions are worded in such a way that I know who’s actually read the assigned text, and who’s only seen Troy.
I mentioned as a joke prior to the quiz on Gilgamesh that I, personally, have never read it, but that it looked cool enough to assign, and that I was really looking forward to how the students answered the questions so I could find out what it was about. Most of the students had a bit of a laugh, but there were one or two who thought I was telling the truth and were (briefly) very happy.
My niece is far more interested in say, Hugh Jackman’s ass. I know, as I took her, my favorite niece, and my stepdaughter to see Wolverine and she did a lllllooottttt of sighing; when the two older girls started mocking the story, the youngest said, “Um…there was a story? I thought it was just beefcake.”
(Well, she didn’t actually say beefcake.)
By way of an update, she did end up having to read the poem (or at least the Sparks notes). It turns out that the assignment was less a paper than a take-home test; she had her choice of either of two basic questions, but she had to answer very specific questions on, as written above, either poetic devices or Christian/pagan tension. She and my sister ended up pulling an all-nighter.
I did not help.
I haven’t seen Troy. May I ask if Achilles dies in it? Since the Iliad does not deal with his death, I wonder if students who write papers on the poem ever get caught that one. One of my SAT tutorial students asked me to look over one of her papers and was shocked when I pointed out that a discourse on the meaning of Achilles’ death was dead giveaway that she hadn’t read the poem.
He does. Somebody gets him in the heel while he’s trying to save Briseis.
Spezza finished his post with “(Not that I’m condoning this behaviour! However, I am pointing out the reality that success in today’s world in not as highly correlated with effort as it used to be.)” From this, it’s clear that his opening statement was meant to emphasize the greater magnitude of the problem – the full context clarifies that he’s not defending the actions of Skald’s niece but rather lamenting the larger flaws of the world we live in.
Laying into Spezza with sarcasm like that makes it sound like you took the initial statement at face value without finishing reading the post. That’s kind of funny given that this whole issue is about people not doing the required reading.
One too many people up all night, sounds like.
Erasmus Darwin, you are right and I apologize to you, Spezza. My sarcasm was misdirected and I meant no offence to you personally. Posting prior to thinking through, and all that…
It is a hot-button issue for me, obviously. These are the same kids who are going to come to me and try to get a job in a few years, and it scares me to death…
The year 1991 may have been before Snopes, but the article says that the urban legend goes back to the 1930’s. Hmmm. :dubious:
A bit of a hijack, but there’s a concept in folklore called ostension, which refers to people who take urban legends into real life. There’s a variety of subcategories that get more specific. In short, it is possible that it’s both an urban legend and a real event in his life, though it’s probably that the behavior was (ultimately) suggested by the legend, either directly or through someone else’s experience. See http://www.ostension.org/index.html for a lovely and complete discussion.
I don’t think Snopes claimed it as true or false, and anyway, just because something did or didn’t happen before doesn’t mean it can’t happen again. Hell, Skald could’ve read about it in MAD Magazine and done it in real life. Finding the issue of MAD wouldn’t “prove” he’s a liar. Just what the hell is your beef?
Seriously, dude, what the hell is your problem?
I’m not repeating something that a friend of a friend told me his cousin heard about. I repeated, somewhat sheepishly, something that I myself did.
I don’t recall ever hearing about such an instance of academic wiggling before college. It was just something I had in mind to do if I ever really needed to, which I decided was practical only because of the lack of blue book use and the small size of the liberal arts faculty at my college making it possible for me to get a rep for being anal retentive in that particular way.
It would never have worked in the business school, which is where I really needed it more than once. I waited as long as I did because, hell, I was an upperclassman and wanted to see if it would work. I figured the worst thing that could happen would be the teacher making me take the test over again, and by that time I knew that this teacher was the only one who’d fall for it.
Is this the same sister that was, as you put it, infantilizing your mother?
If it’s any consolation, the only reason I caught it is because I almost made the same mistake myself (and I’ve likely done it on other posts in the past). I just got lucky and happened to re-read the end of the post an extra time before it sank in.
I’ve got no problems with you, Skald, nor was any snark meant in my post. Was just pointing something out.
Depends on the movie. Watching the movie Beowulf to write about the poem is closer to watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit when you need to write a report on Watership Down. Both have at least one rabbit, but that’s about as close as you get.
Bingo – that’s where I got the idea. It was an article on “the alphabet of cheating” or something like that – 26 different ways to get one over on your teacher, if I remember correctly.
And although the overall article is fuzzy, one I remember solidly is “M”, for “Moreover…”. They clued you in on writing two sentences on “Page 2”, beginning with “Moreover”, and to just turn in that page.
Worked like a charm for me in 1985 in Ms. Zettel’s English class.
Nope. I’ve got anywhere from 4 to 7 sisters, depending on how you count. 
how many if you count in base 6?
Probably better, actually, since the movie version of The Hobbit contains at least some of Tolkien’s original poetry, and Tolkien’s poetry is influenced to at least some degree by the poetry of Beowulf. She’d still be much better off with, say, Theoden’s eulogy than with “Far over Misty Mountains cold”, but at least it’d be a step in the right direction.
I’m actually less concerned about the fact that she was trying to fake it by watching a movie instead of reading, than I am about the fact that she thought that would be effective in this particular case. Questions about the plot of Beowulf, yeah, it’s at least reasonable to expect that that might be similar in the book and movie, but about the poetic forms? Huh? Especially since the teacher probably chose that topic specifically to weed out the movie-watchers.