Please tell me you slapped the learning support teacher upside the head—and then said you didn’t know you what you did was wrong.
Please tell me that someone slapped this student.
That an instructor “made me think” is the highest praise I can give.
I’ll jump in here, as I freelance by helping to grade papers. This is about the dumbass students in my classes, though.
If you’re first language is not English, and you still have a heavy accent and all your notes are in your native language, NOBODY believes that you made this incredibly eloquent argument. Especially when I can google the same phrases.
Oh, and the presentation is supposed to be like a business meeting. It’s okay if you don’t own a tie and forgot to borrow one, but coming in in ripped jeans and abercrombie t-shirt doesn’t cut it as business attire.
Teachers are not dumb enough to believe that the phone was not being used to text answers. Just try to get a grade like everyone else.
Now, to the students I get to review:
YOU’RE is YOU ARE. YOUR is your.
I actually like when students slip in a non-sensical phrase to see if I’m paying attention, but please don’t curse. It only shows you’re too dumb to come up with a good phrase.
Comparing Hamlet to Lear to Henry = great paper.
Comparing Hamlet to “other movies by Mel Gibson” (wish I was kidding) = C, or a B if it’s a really great argument.
There’s no reason, in this day and age, anything should be misspelled. Wrong versions of the word is better than showing you didn’t even give a frog’s fat behind to bother checking that FRIEND is not FIREND. You’re an English major, fer chrissakes!
To the students in Bio, specifically: Og bless you all. I was lost on the first page of the first paper, and actually had to turn down a professor for the first time in 8 years.
Gaudere’s Law strikes again!
D’oh! Not previewing strikes again!
Airman Doors, I 've been thinking about how to reply to your post. I’m feeling testy enough this afternoon to say what I’ve been trying to convince myself not to write.
I hate to tell you this, but if you’re getting nothing out of school, it’s your problem, not the prof’s. Either you’re at the wrong school, or in the wrong program, or putting in the wrong amount of work. People who decide they’re too good for what’s being taught drive me absolutely crazy. It’s true in some cases, of course, but if you’re sticking around in a situation where it’s true in the majority of the classes, it’s your fault. And frankly, you’re probably one of the students who makes your profs’ lives miserable with that attitude.
You’re going to hate me, but this reminds me of one of my favorite games from high school - the Wait Until the Last Minute When All Materials Are Checked Out so the Parents Must Lend Me the Car to Go On A Tour of the Local Libraries game (or WULMWAMACOPMLMCGOATLL.)
I loved going to all the different libraries in town, it was one of my favorite activities. Once I’d done my research, I’d spend the next hour just perusing each library, looking through the stacks of books, wandering the aisles… it was totally awesome. And like a good Pavlovian subject, I found it rewarding enough to repeat the behavior for each and every report I was assigned. What a machine is man!
I can think of few Doper’s whose screeds I enjoy more. He should put them together in book form and publish them.
Seriously.
*except that I seem to remember reading that anything we post becomes property of the Reader…
Find a better professor. A lot of college students think that Calculus 101 taught by Professor Jones is basically the same class as Calculus 101 taught by Professor Smith. It’s not. Professors vary all over the place in how much busy-work they assign, grading policies, knowledge and interest in the subject, and pretty much everything that matters. Find out who the good professors are, and do everything you can to get into their class.
I had a kid turn in a biography of Marie Curie that she just printed off of some website. It still had the links UNDERLINED and IN BLUE in the body… and the web address was still at the top.
I don’t take it personally. Say your peace.
I have been the most participatory student in every class I’ve been in. I have taken classes in various subjects. I have taken classes that I thought I would like, I have taken classes that I knew I would hate. All of them (save one, in the interests of honesty) have one thing in common: I haven’t learned anything.
You may find this to be a credulous statement, but the simple fact is that the classes are geared to the Lowest Common Denominator. I am not the LCD. With the notable exception of this semester’s Spanish class, I have been bored to tears. In fact, I thought so much of my Spanish teacher that I told him personally that he was the best teacher I’ve had so far.
The reason why this is true is because the educational system is geared toward giving 18-22 year-old, never been out in the real world, straight from high school kids a “well-rounded” education. If it were possible to slip the gen-ed crap and get right to it I’d probably be much happier. Instead I’m languishing in classes that are giving me terminal ennui, and wasting up to 5 years of prime earning potential while not learning a damn thing.
Why am I doing this? Two reasons. First, I need to provide a stable income to take care of my family. That’s not easy to do when people won’t give you the time of day without a degree. Second, family pressures. I am the kid that’s supposed to make good. My family has never let me forget that I let it slip away 13 years ago. So I have to stick it out, or tell my family to go to hell. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t and all that.
So that’s my sob story. Take it for what you think it’s worth. As for it being my fault that I’m not learning anything, yes, it is. That’s what I get for reading everything I could get my hands on. That’s what I get for taking an interest in politics, history, psychology, sociology, music, and a myriad of other subjects from a young age. That’s what I get for knowing what my limitations are and avoiding subjects that would do nothing but delay my graduation and make me even more unhappy than I am now.
The moment that graduation ceremony is over I am going to be gone like a shot out of a gun and I will never look back. This is undoubtedly the most onerous period in my life. The happiest day of my life will be when it’s all over and I can get on with life by doing something important.
Perhaps you should try the sciences. When I was an undergraduate, I was able to take on projects that not only did I learn something, but my professors didn’t know what answers I would find. That was some of the best of school, I thought - I got to learn techniques and get advice from teachers, but the data and information was new to us both.
It could be that you’re so damn smart. It also could be because, as you said, your school caters to the lowest common denominator. Go to a school that doesn’t - there are plenty out there. Or, take more advanced classes - graduate level classes usually allow good undergraduates in, and I can’t believe those wouldn’t challenge you, either.
I feel your pain there. I was lucky or smart enough to go to a college that had pretty minimal general-education requirements, and that took a “Chinese menu” approach to them- take one course from column A and two from column B. And even then, I found some of my general-education classes unbearably boring.
Different colleges do have different approaches to and different levels of emphasis on general-education classes, though. In my (admittedly limited) experience of looking through college catalogs, I found that large state universities are less likely than small colleges to require a lot of general-education classes.
I’ll second this. My major classes in sciences were much better than general-ed classes. Didn’t cater to the lowest common denominator, either.
So why are you going for a liberal arts degree*? Well-roundedness and introducing inexperienced 18-22 year-olds to the larger world is the hall-mark of a BA degree. And why haven’t you tested out of courses in which you ‘know’ all the material? Have you tried to get credits for ‘life experience’?
As others have suggested you might want to look into a BS degree where you’ll find that the requirements for gen ed credits are minimal at many institutions. Some departments in my college only require a total of 12 (YES 12 credit hours) in humanities.
Methinks you’re getting a degree just for the sake of getting a degree and have chosen a major that doesn’t suit you. Fight my ignorance.
[footnote *: this is an assumption on my part based on your post, correct me if I’m wrong]
Well, you certainly haven’t learned the meaning of credulous.
We have the Column A/Column B approach as well. The problem is that as much as it is a ticket punch for us, it’s the same for the professors. Their boredom often mirrors mine.
Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education mandates how many of each we are supposed to take. There is nothing in the world more terminally boring than sitting through a writing class where the first three weeks is made up of teaching people how to write. In my mind, this is something that people should already know how to do before they get to college. Or a history class. How could you not know when World War II occurred? It takes a special kind of dumb to be ignorant of the seminal event in human history. It takes an even more special kind of dumb to be ignorant of the Constitution if you live in the United States (see here).
I initially chose Communications because I have a technical background in it and I figured that if I delivered the whole ball of wax I’d be good to go. Little did I know that I already knew what I needed to know. So now I’m switching to Political Science, figuring that I have a certain affinity for the subject, only to run into the single most ignorant professor I’ve ever had. So, what does that leave me? Science? The hard sciences leave me cold. I’ve little interest in forging a career in science. The social sciences don’t excite me, either.
I’m enduring because I have to. The important thing is getting the degree. Once I have that in hand I’ll be OK. Too bad it will entail two more years to get it.
Touche. I meant incredulous. At that, even that word might be too nuanced. Perhaps I should have said unbelievable and been done with it.
Whatever. If you’re choosing a degree and a school that are uninspiring for you, it still isn’t the fault of the profs.
You may indeed have a prof or two who’s a moron, and certainly your thread seems to indicate that. I had some, too. But if you’re feeling like this in most of your classes, you can either a) change something or b) stop whining and blaming the professors (as a whole).