Yes, but now they seem to be the majority–they used to be excellent seasoning, now they are a main entree.
I do think that some of these people think Animal House IS college, whereas I think that college is more like The Sure Thing.
but I digress.
As I was just about to say, if you haven’t had a significant problem with about 97% of the individuals you have had, it would almost be certain that there had been a LARGE amount of overlap with your seven original subclasses. Having the original subclasses average to be less than half a percentage point would have been far too unlikely.
Which case would of course be expected. One example of a piss-poor attitude is likely to carry over into other examples. (Some people I know would be quick to add that I know the scoop on that from my own life!)
While Tomndebb has a valid point in that your use of the term was unclear at the very least, the UNION of the seven original subclasses could also be termed a subclass. A subclass of all the students throughout your various “classes” – literally.
I see where in another post you refer to a D as well as an F as a failure. Were you speaking loosely (D is nothing to be proud of in most cases, after all) or is the definition of an academic failure in an individual class different for you where you teach?
I have had the impression from what somebody said that you were in the UK. In all American colleges D is still considered a passing grade, AFAIK.
True Blue Jack
You could be right. But you could also be turning into a curmudgeon :). It seems likely to me that the percentage of dumbasses in school hasn’t noticeably changed since the GI bill.
Daniel
A "D"sucks. If it is a D in your major–it doubly sucks. You should not get a D in a class, no matter if it is technically passing. It’s passing without having a mastery of the material–gee, I want that person as my accountant/engineer/doctor/teacher etc.
I may well have curmudgeonly proclivities, but the fact remains that entitled spoiled morons are on the increase. There have always been kids who tried to play the system and parents who thought the world owed Jr something 'cause he’s their’s. My point is that they are a majority now.
I see it in in elementary school (parents doing Jr’s homework, even in second grade). I see kids in my daughter’s HS attempting Honors or AP classes that do not belong there. Should kids be challenged? Absolutely. But for whose sake? If for their’s, great. If for the school’s percentages and rankings, then no. And are the AP classes being dumbed down to accomodate these kids? Maybe–hard to say. My daughter has not yet taken AP English; I’ll know more when she does. She is taking AP European History this year, but I am not familiar with the curriculum (in my day it was called Western Civ–and there was no AP).
My daughter took a Debate class-she thought it would help her in thinking and critical analysis (I think she took it to win arguments with me. 
). The kids in that class could NOT put a friggin’ sentence together. Seriously, noun and verb. Hey-challenge yourself and stick a Direct Object in there for fun. It was embarassing to listen to their “debates” on parent noc. Lord, I know they’re kids and all, but how do you get to HS and not know how to express a cohesive thought?
Argh–now I’m all worked up. Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves. And there sits the teacher, wondering–do I go back to 5th grade when they should have learned the 3 part essay and apply those principles to debate or what? I don’t envy the teacher’s position one bit.
Before class, after class, and during breaks, students are on the cell phone as soon as they’re out the door. Apparently they can’t live without 'em. :rolleyes:
And yet we old fogies made it through high school and college with little or no electronica.
And here’s yet another category I could do without: Students Who Expect Me and all Their Other Profs to be Awake Day and Night Waiting for Their Emails to Arrive.
Had a conversation the other day that went like this:
Student: Did you get the email I sent you?
Me: No, when did you send it?
Student: Last night?
Me: When?
[blank stare from student]
I go home, check it, and find that he sent the thing at 2:30 in the frikkin’ morning.
He had seemed surprised that I wasn’t up at all hours looking for his communications.
Well, of course you’re right. But I have a few thoughts on the subject.
A short time after graduation a friend was giving me encouragement about facing interviewers. He told me of one young woman who franky told interviewers about a course she took and flunked.
The reaction of the interviewers? That she showed a tremendous amount of guts just to take the darn course! And they hired her!
Now, granted, I don’t know all of the facts. Apparently the course was an elective, but was it outside her major? You can have electives within a major.
More to the point: For all I know there were extenuating circumstances that became known to the interviewers. Did she have a learning disability that she struggled against? Or extremely difficult circumstances during the time?
And I don’t recall the position, nor would my friend be likely to.
But, yeah, in general, D’s suck the mop! Certainly particular careers make it more imperative to avoid them like the plague. Yes, I wouldn’t want a doctor, an R.N., an engineer who hadn’t earned consistently high marks.
I’ll go out on a limb as for teachers, though. To me it seems far more important that they are not pseudo-intellectuals, that they not lack curiousity, and that they are not communication-challenged.
True Blue Jack
I’m a counselor/advisor at a community college, and I tend to see these people after they’ve either been put on academic probation or finally decided their GPA matters because they would like to transfer. Many of them really seem to assume that the professors will drop them from a class if they stop showing up, and are shocked to discover their GPAs are shot to hell because they couldn’t be arsed to fill out a form or, if they did, make sure that the drop went through.
This shit pisses me off too, and I’m a student. I’ve had two or three classes this semester where someone’s actually answered their phone in class. Unbelievable. And then there are the people who answer cellphones in the library and think that if they rush towards the door really fast while holding their normal-voice-level conversation it’s OK. Because they can’t whisper “I’m in the library, hold on a second” into the phone and then walk out quietly and resume the conversation once they’re outside. Fuckers.
THe people who blow everything off and then try to do as much extra credit as possible at the end of the semester piss me off too. I’m in a rock history class–rock fucking history–which is just about the coolest, most irreverent thing you can possibly get college credit for. Nobody read the book, which is all about rock stars fercrissakes–why wouldn’t you want to read it?–and now the entire class is flooding the schedule for extra-credit presentations, which they butcher terribly by speaking in monotone while staring at the monitor or their notecard the whole time.
There is one thing I do like about all of your subclasses: they make it easier for me to awe my teachers by caring in the least.
When I went to a major public university (the largest in its state), orientation didn’t cover this much or at all. My community college, AFAIK, doesn’t even have an orientation. Do you really think it would matter, anyway? Nobody’s paying attention at orientation.
I know someone whose Anthropology teacher (in the 60s) made every student smoke in every class period because tobacco taxes went to the university’s anthropology fund.
Just so’s we can fight some ign’nce, cocaine “intoxication” is more likely to make a student more awake and alert. It’s much closer to caffeine than it is to heroin/beer/weed. “Enjoyable drugs = temporarily stupid” is a fallacy. Amphetamines–close relatives (in main and side effects, anyway) to cocaine–have been fed to and/or sought out by soldiers, pilots, and students to make them more alert for decades.
Someone in one of my classes seriously told me that she’d have to study hard for the final “because it’s too late to drop the class.” :eek: TWO WEEKS before the final and she hadn’t thought to drop the class a couple weeks earlier on the already-ridiculously-late final drop day.
Oh, please.
In my physiology lab, we had to operate (not dissect) a rat and a frog. Somehow I doubt that coke or ectasy would have helped much there.
Come to chemistry lab hopped up on coke or speed. That’s a brilliant idea–let’s see how impaired your judgement is while working under a hood. That really wouldn’t be such a good idea.
This is also called engaging in risky behavior–a sign of a drug problem.
There is a world of difference between caffeine and cocaine. I have yet to meet anyone with a mild coke habit, which brings me to an odd fact that I’ll share with you. Talk about ignorance–in college I was taught that cocaine was the ONLY drug that was not addictive. How wrong they all were. Of course, I was also taught that Venus most likely had life on it, too, so… :eek:
I loved college (when I wasn’t suffering teen angst and railing against the Machine and the Man)–but IMO, kids should keep to the limits. Party hard or “party hearty”, but be responsible for your work and grades. I think that alot of kids are- and more power to them. Don’t cheat/plagiarize/pay people to write your papers etc. Do these people think that they are above this kind of work? That they shouldn’t ahve to do the scut stuff to get that degree? Or are they effing illiterate, having had Mom and Dad hector teachers for their grades all through school? I keep hearing how competitive it is to even get admitted to college now–but where are these bozos coming from? They get in somehow.
I didn’t understand it back then and I don’t understand it now. As was said upthread though, now even the lamest attempts to participate etc are seen as great achievements. Guess we should be grateful for that.
Of course a student on financial aid might just not show up and take the blister, rather than dropping a class, if doing so put them below full-time status. In that case, an F gets them academic probation, but dropping down to part-time loses them their financial aid. Still sucks for everyone else, of course.
Can’t speak to that, as I’ve never come to any lab hopped up on coke or speed nor seen anyone in such a state work under a hood. I don’t know how impaired your judgement would be. It’s not something I would try, but (having used all four at least three times) I’d rather someone come in there hopped up on coke than drunk, stoned or high on heroin. Of course, I’d much rather everyone came in completely clear-headed in the first place. But then again, I’d bet someone who had to stay up all night working problems, writing a lab report, etc. would be doing better in lab if they were on uppers than if they weren’t.
Anyway, I’m not saying it’s a good idea to hop oneself up on drugs before coming to lab. I’m just saying that not all drugs are the same. I’ve been around a lot of cocaine use and participated in some of it myself, and I’m just saying that “impaired” is a broad brush. And I never said there wasn’t a world of difference between caffeine and cocaine, I said that cocaine was a lot closer in actual acute effect (nevermind legal status, addiction potential etc.) to caffeine than to beer/weed/heroin. I’ve known lots of people with mild coke habits; most coffee drinkers I know are far more addicted than most of the coke users I’ve known, and many of them would have terrible withdrawals if they stopped drinking coffee every morning. The difference is they don’t have to pawn off their stuff or steal things to get their fix, because caffeine is cheap and you can buy it in any store.
“Cocaine is the only drug that’s not addictive” is definitely a fallacy, I must agree. However, it really doesn’t have a significant physiological addiction component. Withdrawal is incredibly unpleasant, but really from a psychological standpoint. It’s not at all correct to say that it’s not addictive, but it’s not addictive in the exact same way that caffeine, alcohol, heroin, benzos and morphine are addictive.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to start a debate with you. If your point is that recreational chemistry is for Friday night or never, well, I agree.