College kids nowadays don't appreciate what they have.

The BBQ Pit
1

Given my history with college I know that it’s unfair for me to say so (I failed out 10 years ago), but with the fullness of time I’ve gained some perspective.

There was this one kid this morning in my history class who was sighing, muttering to his friends, and generally denigrating one of the other students because she had the temerity to a) participate, b) ask questions, and c) contribute something useful to the class.

What I wanted to do was pull him aside and explain a few things to him. First of all, he’s paying for the class, so what sense does it make to sit there with his thumb up his butt and chide others for trying to get their money’s worth? He should be participating as well. This isn’t high school, it’s not a popularity contest.

Speaking of popularity contests, why do people think that school is one? That brings me to my second point, which is that he shouldn’t care whether someone wants to participate, even if he doesn’t. The class is 50 minutes long, 3 times a week no matter what. The time goes by at the same rate whether we listen to a long-winded boring lecture or we have an absolutely roaring discussion.

Third, and most important (at least to me), is that if the guy doesn’t want to be there he can quit and go to work, whereupon he can find out how much it sucks to try to find a good job without a diploma. There’s always the possibility of lucking into a good job, but it’s statistically very rare. He can live my last 10 years for himself and find out how lucky he really is to only have to “work” a few hours a day. As it is I will have at least two days a week where I can get no more than 3 hours of sleep, non-consecutive, because while I am going to school I will be pulling 12 hour guard shifts at the base. That’s not a complaint, that’s just a fact, and an obligation that I took on willingly. This guy thinks he’s being overworked? I think he needs to learn a life lesson.

In fact, I think that most people should work for a living for at least two years before they go to college so they can appreciate what a luxury it is to be able to go to school. It’ll add character and focus, making for a better learning environment. God knows that the suffering I’ve endured for the last few years has given me that all-essential perspective.

In conclusion, again, I don’t know that I have the right to say this, but I really think that somebody has to, so I guess I’ll take the heat. Kids need perspective, if only to realize that what they have going for them is better than most people could ever imagine.

The real shame is that it took me so long to realize that.

2

Ugh don’t get me started. The worst part is that in all likelyhood he isn’t paying for his school either his parents are. It simply boggles my mind at the number of classes some of the people I know skip. I know of one that keeps a tally and it was up over 30 for a semester and I just stared at her dumbfounded when she told me. Its not like I am perfect I have skipped a few classes so I understand the mentality. But skipping on average more than once every two weeks is bogus.

Meh I get pissed off sometimes when people ‘participate’ by asking stupid ass questions and wasting my time.

I don’t think you will get any heat and if you do it will be unfounded. As long as you don’t paint with too broad a brush, there are many college students currently working their ass of and are grateful for what they have.

3

Dude, you’re, like, so old! :slight_smile:

Good rant, one wasted on spoiled kids unfortunately.

4

Not to interrupt your rant, Airman (which I thought was on-target), but I have a question…

How did you manage to flunk out of college and yet end up teaching in one?

Zev Steinhardt

5

I generally agree with what you are saying and I hate people like that too. I find that as I take higher level courses they don’t, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

One caveat: If the target of your rant, that is the person speaking in class not the person talking to his friends, happens to be an apple polishing douchebag who raises his hand at every oppurtunity just to show off his own knowledge and generally wastes the class’s time I can understand the grumblings.

6

You’re a professor? I guess you are stuck with the assholes in the lower level classes then. Sorry.

7

Funny that you mention this. I just started college for the first time, and these people drive me up the wall. In my psych class I had a few little assholes sitting towards the back, snickering, and talking. Took a couple of “shut the fuck ups”, but the problem was quickly solved. Ah threats, they never fail.

8

Airman’s not a professor, he’s a returning student.

9

Oh and don’t get me started on the morans that send the class off on some 20 minute tangent with their inane questions.

10

D’oh! Upon re-reading the OP, I don’t know why I assumed he was the teacher? Maybe becomes he comes across as bright here on the boards…

Sorry about that. Carry on.

Zev Steinhardt

11

I’m not saying this was the case with the kid you’re pitting, but when I was in college, all too often the following scenario would play out:

  1. Teacher explains a Concept.

  2. Everyone in room immediately understands the Concept

2a) Except for the Doofus.

  1. Doofus asks teacher to re-explain the Concept.

3a) Teacher complies.

  1. Doofus asks teacher to re-explain the Cocept again.

4a) Teacher complies.

  1. Doofus begins inventing preposterous hypotheticals that are so preposterous that they could only possibly happen in some alternate dimension where the sun is a giant apple and the dominate life-form on Earth are bipedal lobster-people, or some shit like that.

5a) Teacher tries to explain this to Doofus.

5b) Doofus still doesn’t get it.

  1. Class ends, without ever having moved past the explanation of the original Concept, because Doofus wouldn’t shut up.

  2. Doofus commits Brain Cell Suicide with a beer bong at a frat party that weekend, wiping out whatever minisucle information he might have gleaned from his class-room dominating remedial Q&A session.

  3. In the next class session, revert to 1.

Granted, the teacher bears a good portion of the blame for this by not shutting down the Doofus earlier and moving on, but still. I can’t count the number of classes I’ve sat through thinking, “shutupshutupshutUPSHUTUPSHUTUP! EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS THIS BUT YOU! SHUT UP SO WE CAN MOVE ON, YA FUCKIN’ MORON!”

Other than that, I agree with your rant 100%

12

Speaking from the perspective of a professor: there are no inane questions. There are off-topic questions, and there are questions to which the best answer is “I really don’t have the time to get into that right now, and it’s not really central to this discussion; why don’t you come to my office hours and I can explain that in more detail if you’re interested?” But in my admittedly limited experience, questions are always a good thing. Far better than a class that’s effectively unconcious, at any rate.

If the class is getting derailed by questions, blame the professor: it’s his or her job to keep things on track. But if a student really doesn’t understand what I’m saying in lectures, then they’re only “morans” if they don’t ask.

13

I agree with Miller, and Wolfian. Sometimes a student will ask interesting, useful questions, but I’ve had my share of classmates like Doofus and Apple polishing douchebag too. After awhile, you start rolling your eyes as soon as the annoying classmate raises his hand.

14

Which is why I have instituted a rule about Concept. I will explain Concept twice during the class. Any student who still does not feel they understand Concept can come and see me during those things called Office Hours, which I have plenty of.

Students are free to ask me questions on my cigarette breaks, as everyone smokes in the same desginated area outside the building, faculty and students.

They are not free to interrupt the 40 minutes I get in which to eat my lunch, however.

It’s not always the young college students who don’t appreciate their educations, and not always the old college students who do. One of the most annoying students I have is in his 40s. The second most annoying student I have is in his 20s. So one annoying kid, and one annoying old fart :wink: .

15

Yeah you’re right, but it’s more fun to complain about the moran students! :smiley:

16

I have the privilege of being off campus in a different city than the main university. Most of the students here are already in their twenties and have been through the whole ‘had to work, realized I’m lucky to be able to go to school’ thing, and most of my fellow freshies have it in their heads that school is important, don’t goof off. There are no dorms here, and very few school sponsored activities, so it doesn’t really feel like a university, it feels like the school it should be.

17

Thank you for (inadvertantly) highlighting another pet peeve of mine. I’m going to school to get the piece of paper, papyrus, parchment, sheepskin, whatever. If I learn something, great. If I don’t, well, at least I’ll have the credentials to prove once and for all that I’m an intelligent person.

It’s uncanny how people presume idiocy or incompetence because of a lack of a degree, as if that is the ultimate proof of competency. If I may be allowed to stroke my own ego, I am qualified to do an abundance of things but without the degree I am shut out. My mother-in-law (who has a law degree) and I had a discussion once where I stated that the difference between us is that she’s overqualified and everybody knows it whereas I am overqualified and nobody believes me. She didn’t argue that point with me.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am going to school with the intent of learning something, but at the same time the end goal is what is truly important, not the individual classes.

All the same, I want to graduate summa cum laude just to take away any other excuses. :slight_smile:

18

Miller, I just have to tell this story from when I was an undergrad. There was this freakin’ CS major who was taking Quantum Mechanics. Why would a CS major take an upper level physics course as an elective? There are two options: maybe he just loved physics, but, since he didn’t actually do a physics minor, just took Intro Physics (which is a lot of CS majors take anyway because it’s one of the few science courses that satisfy their requirements) and Intermediate Mechanics (the other prereq for QM), I’m pretty sure it’s because he was a swell-headed dork and he wanted to brag to people that he took quantum mechanics. He was well known to us already as a moderate but bearable pain-in-the-ass from the other courses, but QM was, apparently, his time to shine.

Every day, he’d ask lots of questions until the whole class (made up of physics and astronomy majors who had some business being there and had to learn this stuff to, ya know, graduate?) began groaning every time he raised his hand. I don’t mean that he was asking off-topic questions, or even dumb questions, like he wasn’t able to comprehned what was going on. He just didn’t appear to remember what had happened in the previous class. In fact, he didn’t appear to remember what had happened 15 minutes ago. He was constantly asking, “Where did that equation come from?” as though the professor was trying to trick us by just making shit up, when we’d just spent the last half hour deriving the equation in question.

During the second week of class, he asked the prof to define some term tha had been used since the first day, and the prof was a little snappy in his reply. CS-boy took offense at his tone, and whined that the professor hadn’t defined that word before. The prof went off on him and told him that he certainly had defined the term, just not that day. This was not a general ed class where the professor was going to hold his hand and everything was going to be presented in easy-to-understand soundbites. Students were expected to study their notes, do the required reading, and follow along in class. If he couldn’t keep up, the professor would be delighted to sign his drop slip.

Beeeeeeautiful. CS-boy shortly discovered that he was going to have to rearrange his schedule and, regretably, had to drop QM.

Anyway, I have one rule in class: Respect your fellow students. If students are talking during lecture, I tell them once to keep it quiet. The second time I tell them that if they think their conversation can’t wait, they should take it outside so they aren’t disturbing the students around them. That usually just shuts them up for good . . . but once three students did actually get up and leave! :eek: That was humbling! But honestly, I’d rather have them gone than blabbering during lecture.

19

Dude, I’m in college and college students tick me off.

My main quibble is with people who don’t understand the following: you are responsible for your own education. Make that happen. Along the same lines, other people are responsible for their own education. Let that happen.

20

You’ve never had the pleasure of having a student ask in the middle of a C++ programming class which set of genitals (male or female) you’d have preferred if you had a choice when you were born, or something like ‘If pickles cost a nickle each how much does a red cat weigh in England?’, or perhaps ‘Why does schema start with s?’