College kids are whiny assholes

The BBQ Pit
1

This is coming from another college kid.

Ugh. Seriously.

I was sitting in my 8am History of Psychology course this morning. It’s a hard class, senior level. It’s not a requirement. And it’s at 8am, so you can expect most people that signed up (and this is a mainly commuter campus so you have to get up early to get here most likely, I get up at 6-6:30 and I don’t live too too far) probably want to be here. I took it because the TA for the class told me all the grad schools she looked into were interested in whether she took this class.

Our professor is a nice guy. We have a 3 question quiz at the start of each class. He drops the five lowest. Each question is like half a point.

He tells us exactly what to read for each class. So far it’s never been more than 15 pages. He puts all our notes online way before we discuss them. He told us this. Everyone knows and prints them out. He told us “study the notes, it’s where I get the quiz questions.”

So this prof is basically handing us literally everything we need to know to succeed in this class.

I admit I haven’t been putting aside much time for this class. I usually only look over the notes 15 minutes before the quiz starts. It’s my problem and I don’t complain that I usually only get 2/3. It’s my fault.

I got a 3/3 on today’s, it was actually very easy, IMO. The stuff he asked us was pretty much in boldface on our notes.

Some girl asked if he will ever get our quizzes back. He said no because he might re-use questions for our exams. This girl got heated and kept saying it was unfair and we should have them to study. A couple other students jumped in as well, and were all pretty upset. Others were complaining that the first question was tricky, because they got the early middle ages confused with the late middle ages, and they didn’t know when the fall of Rome was. And the answer to the question was a boldfaced heading at the beginning of our notes.

He goes over the quiz right after we turn it in. You get the answers. He explains why the answers are right and even where they are in the notes. And the man spoon feeds you all the notes! What more do you want? Him to take your exam for you? Just give you an A because? He even gave us a detailed timeline showing how everything we learn flows over time so we also get the big picture.

Yeah the material isn’t really that easy, but I think he gives us too much really. Not that I mind it, but people still want more. Upper level classes are supposed to be hard. It’s for juniors and seniors only. It’s not a requirement.

Why do college kids expect their professors to learn for them? Why are you even here?

College takes effort. Sorry, but it does.

Same thing happened in health psychology today. She gave us a pass/fail quiz (basically if you’re present, know how to spell your name, and put any letter down, you get all the points) at the beginning of class. 4 questions, for her to take attendance and get an idea of how many people are doing the readings before class.

I haven’t read any of the book yet, and I got a 2/4. Sounds shitty, but in reality I got a 4/4 because she isn’t grading on how many we got wrong.

People started freaking out calling the questions tricky and unfair. I was able to answer 2 of them correctly without reading and honestly without paying attention in class. These people spent over 10 minutes of class time (when we should have been going over the material they got wrong) bitching about the difficulty of the questions.

Again, another upper level. She tells us exactly what to read and when. She puts her powerpoints online. I only show up because she takes attendance for points. Classes are supposed to challenge you. How do you expect to learn anything if they don’t? And they came from a different professor’s quizzes (so her exam questions won’t be exactly the same), and they were only graded for completion. Anyone who can write their damn name gets the points.

It kind of makes me sick thinking about how my peers must view their college experiences. Some of my favorite classes have been on the difficult side. It’s when you learn more. But it seems my classmates expect their grades to be delivered on a fucking silver platter just because they show up. Bullshit. I work hard, and you know what? I get lots of fucking A’s. Try it sometime.

I’ve known almost no professors that are “out to get you.” I think I’ve had one just truly horrible and evil professor in four years of undergrad (so about 35 good professors, had a couple repeats). Most really WANT you to do well, and they do what they can to facilitate that. If they just give you the answers, what’s the fucking point?

I don’t know where this mentality starts, but I wish it would stop. It’s poisoning my classroom experience, when kids are taking up class time to complain about shit they should actually be grateful for. We are all privileged to even be here. So quit fucking bitching and start taking responsibility for youselves. I’m paying damn good money to LEARN, maybe you should think about that.

2

I used to think this when I was in University as well. Bunch of whiny bitches. When I started working in the real world, and now after several years of that, I realized the sad truth is that most people in general are whiny bitches when it comes to doing work.

It’s not their age, they won’t change.

3

True. And they’re also by and large lazy and dumb, or at least were when I attended in the Gilt Age of the last millennium.

Sure, I weep for society now, but at the time I thought it was a godsend, at least in courses graded on a curve. It allowed me to do minimal study, concentrate heavily on perpetual intoxication, and still receive accolades. The one-eyed-man, I suppose.

4

Which local university are you attending?
BTW, I agree with you completely. I got royally pissed off at my classmates too. When I’m lazy and I fuck up, I understand that I get a shitty grade.
This is all in the past. I’m so old, I’d flunk any class given today, regardless. :slight_smile:

5

I just got back from a class where, on a day where the instructor is telling is what to highlight because It Will Be On The Test, three out of eight students did not have their text, anything to write on, or anything to write with.

These are the same three that bitched about how hard the last test was, where he did exactly the same thing. Not just a little - “I will ask you to remember this sentence, to be able to complete it when these key words are missing.” Literally, telling us exactly what the questions would be, and what we’d have to know. 6 of 8 people made Cs or worse on that test.

I want to kick them all out of the class, really. It’s an elective - nobody HAS to be there. Yet they choose to register, and then fuck off, and then try to bitch their way into a good grade. I want to smack them.

On the bright side, I can tell the instructor wants to smack them, too, and occasionally we have a little over-their-heads moment to that effect. It’s priceless.

6

My chemistry teacher, god bless her, keeps asking me when I last took chemistry, because I’m NOT struggling in her class. My answer of, “umm…I think I might have had chemistry in high school, but I don’t really remember for sure. I graduated in 1992, so if I *have *taken it, it’s been a while!” fails to satisfy.

What I really WANT to answer is, “Effectively never, I don’t know a mole from a joule, but I’m not a moron. You teach well, so it’s easy to understand; I have no idea what the problem with the rest of the students is other than pure idiocy and laziness.” I don’t think that answer will really make her happy, either! :smiley:

The older I get (I’m 33 now), the more I think college should be for 30somethings and up, not for teenagers and 20somethings. Can’t we just move all of them into service industry jobs for 10 years until they age like fine wine, and THEN let them go to college and start their “real” careers?

7

I love, love, love my school. Because of it’s many, many eccentricities, you don’t usually have to put up with that shit: if you perpetually slack off, there’s A) no final exam to cram for to save your ass and B) you’ll probably get kicked out of the college at the end of the semester. It happened to me, and I chose to grow the hell up and try again a year later.

But when I took a couple Community College courses…oy. Never again.

Sorry you’re having an unpleasant time, myskepticsight.

8

Are you in my class?

Seriously, I have like the easiest class I’ve ever had - the professor is very nice, outlines everything in the syllabus to the smallest detail, and only assigns 30 pages of reading a day. His quizzes are stupid simple. Yet my classmates were all whining yesterday about having a quiz and a 4 page paper due the same day, and complained about having to read 30 pages before as well. Oh, and if you get lower than a 50% on the quiz he offers retakes. He let me retake it yesterday with the tards since I missed on Monday from the fucked up weather. All you had to do to score perfectly was read the 20 pages of material he assigned. Seriously, I have never had a more gentle and easy class.

The prof. is a fresh PhD from Italy, and I told him after class not to let them bully him into being easier than he is. Fuckin’ slackers. Nice way to represent the US.

9

I hate to say this, but I’ve had students everywhere from 18 to 50, and no particular age group has a monopoly on laziness. :wink: Although the older students do tend to be more serious about their studies, as a general rule.

As a teacher, it’s REALLY FRUSTRATING when you have your students underline every freakin’ thing that’s going to be on the exam and then end up with a bunch of Cs for finals. Seriously, sometimes I think it’s not much spoonfeeding them as giving them an IV that they deliberately rip out of their veins and then complain later about being sick.

10

Lol

I used to teach College Math. I wasn’t tough. Still, sometimes a ‘protest’ was happened. It didn’t happen to me as often as others, but they would. The protest would be a complaint by students to the Dean that the tests were too hard.

It is fun sitting in a room with them when they find out that the ‘hard test’ was problem #5 from each homework that they ‘did’.

:slight_smile:

11

Absolutely. People that complain when things are not handed to them and they might have to put some effort in don’t change when they are handed a diploma.

Whiners are whiners and you will see them throughout your life. Get used to them.

12

I took an interesting History of English class as an undergrad, about half Linguistics majors and about half English majors. We were reviewing the mid-term test, and one of the women who did poorly was pretty upset. When the professor wouldn’t budge, she pulled what she probably thought would be her secret weapon: “But it’s my major and I’m trying really hard.”

I think I got the picture of how this woman got through high school. For the record, I was proud of the professor when he told her that if this was the best she could do after trying really hard, she might want to consider another major.

13

I think the folks at RYS would love some input from the OP.

14

It’s also sad when people behave this way in classes that are designed to teach them what they need to know in order to do their jobs. It never occurred to these people that if they hated the Web Design course, they’d probably not like web design as a career. Yet I’d hear “I hate designing web pages. I really want to be a web designer!”

Morons.

Robin

15

I think similar to your line of thought. Everybody in that class is paying to be there, please leave if you are going to take time from the people that are serious about learning. Also many of the classes had to turn away students that want that class. Let them have it and put yourself somewhere besides that class.

16

There is nothing like working on a group project to convince you that most college students (other than you) are lazy, whiny, and shouldn’t have passed third grade.

I wonder, I’m sitting on a plane next to a women with high school kids who is going on and on about how competitive college is nowadays. How they HAVE TO GET the best possible hgih school grades, excel in sports. And I’m saying “certainly, if you want to go to Harvard or Princeton, but you can’t tell me this is true of St. Cloud State” and she says it is. But I just graduated from the same system as St. Cloud State, and I’m here to tell you that most of my classmates were mouth breathing shaved monkeys. Have we reached a point in higher education where the distribution is purely binary - great colleges and colleges for yahoos?

17

I’m an English lit. undergrad in my final semester of university. I completely understand the complaint. It ends up making courses more difficult for those of us with a desire to be there. It makes professors jaded and bitter, it gives grad students a chip on their shoulders, and the complaining takes away from time we could spend preparing for the next writing assignment or exam.

(Can’t believe my first post is in the Pit—the one forum I said I should avoid at all costs. . . . The fates must be laughing.)

18

I attend a “Public Ivy” with the highest rate of application of any university of the country. The average freshman has to have a weighted GPA above a 4.0 - I think the average is somewhere around 4.3.

And yet, many of them are mouthbreathing knuckle-draggers. I always wonder how they got the grades they needed to get in - I’m one of a small handful of junior college transfers in my major.

Oddly, the group work I am doing this quarter is really fantastic, despite what seems to be a prevalence of the lazy. My groupmates really have it together and are enthusiastic about their work. I was pleasantly surprised.

19

Yeah, now we can talk about the high schools. I know that I got a lot of slack in high school because I was pleasant and bright. I remember a teacher giving me an A because “even though you didn’t earn it, I know you’re capable of it.” Who was I to argue? Needless to say, I was disabused of this attitude once I got into college.

However, this was in 1975. Has it gotten even worse? It seems so from my going back to school in 1990. It’s a cliche to say that today’s college is yesterday’s high school, but . . .

20

:eek: That’s an upper-level elective class?

I read all these threads on the SD about college students and I get really depressed. Has it always been like this? I don’t remember this from my college days. There’s something wrong and I don’t know how to fix it! :frowning: I know all kids aren’t like this; the few college students I know are mostly very hard workers with ambitions.